Ukulele Chords: Learn To Play Amazing Grace With Tablature

You will learn to sing Amazing Grace with your own ukulele accompaniment in the key of C-major. We will use tabs so you will not need to know sheet music notation.

First you will have to take a look at the way you have tuned your ukulele. Some people don't care how they tune their ukulele as long as the strings are tuned together. It's okey as long as you are not playing together with another instrument.

But, in order to play the chords in C-major we presupposes that the you first string is tuned to an A. If you can find middle C on a piano you can play the notes up to A. C D E F G A. Right, there it is!

We will first take a look at the C-major chord. With the tab notation we will use it will look like this:

C-major: 0/4 0/3 0/2 3/1

Now you will learn to interpret this notation. The digit before the slash indicates the fret to press down. The digit after the slash shows you which string to play.

3/1 means, press down the third fret on string one. To play the chords to the first line of lyrics you will have to learn one more chord. Here is F-major:

F-major: 2/4 0/3 1/2 0/1

With these two chords we can play the first line of lyrics:

A-(C)mazing Grace, how (F)sweet the (C)sound

The chords to play are written before the syllable in the text where you are to strum it. Another way to notate the chord progression to play will look like this:

C / / C / / F / / C / /

Strum once on every chord name and once more on the same chord for every following slash.

For the next line we need a third chord. Here is G7:

G7: 0/4 2/3 1/2 2/1

Time for the next line:

That (C)saved a wretch like (G7)me

or written like a chord progression:

C / / C / / G7 / / G7 / /

We will take the two last lines together as you now know how to read the chords:

I (C)once was lost, but (F)now am (C)found
Was (C)blind, but (G7)now I (C)see

And in ordinary chord notation:

C / / C / / F / / C / /

C / / G7 / / C / / C / /

To make music of the song with ukulele accompaniment it is important to be able to change between chords smoothly. I suggest that you work on the art of changing from one chord to another by choosing for exampel C and F.

Strum once on every chord and change to the next one until your fingers obey your command. To change from C to G7 I suppose that you play the C chord with your left hand ring finger. To get to G7 you can slide your ring finger to fret two on the first string.

After that you only have to place your left hand middle finger on the third string and your index on your second string.