Today’s question and a boatload of advice come today from Graham Shaw posting in the Ukulele Tabs and Uke Stuff group on Facebook. Sigh … the E chord. What can I say? There seems to be no end of advice on how to play it, yet people still struggle with it.

My advice: Don’t bother playing the E Chord in root position (4442). I’ve been playing for ten years and I’ve never once ‘needed’ to play it in this position. I usually choose to play the barred version of E (4447), which not only is easier to play, but sounds much better (as the root of the chord is doubled rather than the fifth).

This advice also extends to the D chord, most of the time. I prefer to play the barred 2225 version of the chord, rather than the 2220 version for the same reason as above. Doubling the fifth of a chord makes it sound unbalanced and top heavy. Doubling the root makes the chord sound more ‘rooted’ and fuller.

Skip the stress and barre these chords.

Addendum … Here are a couple of replies I fielded to objections to my oversimplification above.

This is part of the beauty of music. Many will gleefully agree with you; however, there are others who might question your approach. Some of us have even played longer than ten years.

Yes, its great to be able to agree to disagree, but I’d be careful about discounting someone’s experience just because they haven’t played a particular instrument as long as you. I’ve actually been in music my entire life, my father was a band director, I play many instruments, I got my degrees in vocal performance and music composition. When I talk about the doubling of the root as opposed to the fifth, this is backed up by five hundred years of common practice theory. A root doubling is more stable sounding than a chord that is doubled at the fifth. This is one of the reasons that the ukulele often sounds more awesome playing 7th and and 9th chords, not only do those add extra color, but avoid the problems of doubling the third and fifth of chords (doubling the third is the most problematic of the three).

Sorry I have to nit pick at one point here. There is no chord position that always sounds better, it depends what is being played around it. Sometimes one will sound better and sometimes another, and sometimes the only way to make a fast transition is to use a different chord position than usual. When composing, variation can be attained by repeating similar song segments with different chord positions. Sure you can get by with only one if you like but in doing so one should be aware and consider that you are undoubtedly limiting yourself and some songs aren’t going to sound quite right.

I should have mentioned that I was talking about strumming/fingerpicking to accompany oneself while singing – in which case I still think the barred versions of E and D sound better, they are more balanced to my ears … of course additional inversions are also good if you are playing up the neck.

If you start talking about ‘composing’ for the ukulele, of course, no one position is going to do all things for all songs, but at that point, once you’re really writing music for the ukulele, there’s nothing that says you have to be using all four strings at the same time and your options open up exponentially.

Post filed under All UkulelePlay! Blog Posts.