Question on Fingerpicking for Ukulele Chords with Doubled Notes

Posted by on April 21st 2020 @ 3:49 am

A question from one of my local ukulele friends:

I am teaching my grand-kids ukulele. I taught them the arpeggios – adding a C on chords, such as F. They wanted to play Hallelujah and we played it. Easy enough but I was thinking that plucking the arpeggios would be nice. How do you suggest making Em chords work as an arpeggio?

Anytime you have a note that is doubled in the same octave on an ukulele chord, you can use one of the variations of what some call ‘3-string technique’ … essentially, you just pretend you only have 3-strings for a while and experiment with fingerpicking patterns. A few of the almost limitless possibilities for Em in 4/4 include:

32132132
12 3 12 3 12 3 12 3 (where the twelves are a double-stop)
12312312
43134313 or 23132313 (identical)

You sort of just have to play with it until you find what you’re looking for. Hope that helps!

Ryan's favorite starter ukulele: The Enya Nova U Concert Ukulele 23” on Amazon sounds great, is easy to play, in tune and nearly indestructable. "I left it in the car through the heat of summer to see what would happen, and it still plays beautifully."

Post filed under All UkulelePlay! Blog Posts.

This site contains some affiliate links which help support the site, but cost you nothing extra if you use them. Thank you!