Core Chords - The Big Six - Building a Solid Chord Foundation

Core Chords is a series of UkuleleLessons for building your core 4-part, aka “jazz” chords. These chords commonly called “jazz” chords, are really just 4-part chords that are used in a wide range of musical styles.

These lessons present a highly organized and efficient approach to the mysterious subject of advanced chords. Chord dictionaries are not the answer. Even chord theory does not offer any insight into unraveling the complexity of Ukulele chord voicings.

Building Your Core Chord Foundation

Sometimes called a “Dominant 7th” chord, the 7th chord provides a great foundation for building your core chords.

From the following four 7th chords you can build a set of chords which include: Seventh (7), Major Seventh (maj7), Minor Seventh (m7), Half Diminished Seventh (ø7) or Minor Seven Flat Five (m7b5), Diminished Seventh (°7) and Augmented Seventh (+7). These six chords form a core set of chords.

Beyond Basic Open Position Chords , Basic Movable Form Chords and Core Set Of 4-part Contemporary Chords there are just too many chords shapes too memorize. Learning the principles of how chords are constructed and the ukulele fingerboard are the way to go. Then you can create more advanced chords like 9#11, 7#5-9, 13b5, 7+9 on the fly as needed.

Seventh chords are the chords that have the most possible variations. 9th, 11th, 13th, b5, #5, b9, #9. And, combinations of the same.

From four F7 chord voicings or shapes, your can build your massive 4-part, a.k.a., “jazz” chord vocabulary.

Click on any one of the individual F7 chords above to start the lesson for that particular voicing or shape.

Why this F7?

Why this F7? Why not a C7, E7, G7 - the other open position seventh chords that these core chords are based on?

This F7 is based on the E7 and the only one of the E7, C7, A7 and G7 open position chords that the Big Six Core Seventh chords, in their first position, first fret (1) transposable versions are a natural letter chord name. That way you don't have to worry about Enharmonic Equivalents such as C#7/Db7, A#7/Bb7, or G#7/Ab7. An yes I know that there is E# - however that is very rare.