Let's look at some popular chord progressions that have people scratching their heads about the non-diatonic chords. This might help bring a little understanding to some different harmonic content. If nothing else, it opens up your chord vocabulary to new ideas!

Here’s one I’ve wanted to make for a while. My good friend Bryan Tolentino is probably Hawaii’s best kept secret as a hired gun to make musicians sound amazing! He does what he refers to as “Fairy Dusting”. He makes great musicians sound even better by using chord voicings that elevate the music ...

Well here we are at the completion of our chord extensions journey! This lesson is short, but compounds on the previous two to help us learn where and why to use chord extensions. Again, I can’t stress enough about how not to use the extensions just for the sake of using extensions. Remember, sal...

So this week we’re learning how to use the extensions of the major chords. Remember that there is no right or wrong here, only flavors. Think of it as salt and pepper. Use to taste!

A while back, and I mean way back, we did a lesson on how to find the extensions to Major, Minor, and Dominant chords. We know these are long overdue, but in this lesson we go over where to use extensions to Dominant chords.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe that the greater majority of Ukulele enthusiasts probably never think in terms of chord functionality. I also believe that some of you may also be like me when I was learning - curious about why certain chords go where they do. If you’re that person, the diminished ...

Here’s a fun instrumental to get under your fingers! Kinda long lesson, but you have plenty of time to learn it by Christmas. Here’s the Nat King Cole Classic, the Christmas Song. There are a lot of versions out there, but I figured this would be a fun one for you folks!

Ever wondered how to make your solos sound more organized? How about more feel based? There are a lot of contributing factors to creating a great sounding solo. Here we examine a scalular approach. Using modes and Pentatonic scales we can steer our improvised solos in any direction we want. Again...

Here we expand on the idea that we began exploring last week. Using the I-IV-V chords, we play the major scale. This is the very beginnings of the idea of voice leading, which we will elaborate on in the future. If this lesson is hard to follow check out our lessons on theory and scales.

Becoming more familiar with the way the Fretboard is laid out is essential to growth on the ukulele. Not knowing where the notes are in relation to each other would be like trying to paint and not knowing colors. Here we look at the Fretboard in a way that will allow us to see the patterns that w...

Improvisation is my favorite way to play music. There's just something about the way it keeps you on your toes, forcing your creative juices to flow that make playing music fun. Here we take a deeper look at some of our foundational building blocks in music. Learning the intervals within the chor...

In this video we expand on the ideas presented in chord connections. Here we look at the common minor chord extensions used in popular music. There's a common misconception that minor chords sound sad or morose. Depending on the surrounding chords, minor chords can run the gamut of human emotions...

In this video we expand on the ideas presented in chord connections. Here we look at the common dominant and major chord extensions used in popular music. Remember that these should be used to taste, much like salt and pepper; there IS such a thing as too much! Enjoy, and happy strumming!

Here’s one for you folks that are already familiar with your Major and Minor scales. This is a Chord based approach to finding or “mapping out” your scale pictures. We’re calling this one an Intermediate to advanced lesson for the conceptual aspect of this lesson. Hope this adds to your understa...