Strum for real
Swipe down or up across the strings over the sound hole: each string rings as your finger crosses it, in the order of your gesture, just like a real strum. On a keyboard, Space and J strum down, K strums up.
Hawaii · Free · No account
Online ukulele - four strings and a strum
Pick a chord, swipe across the strings over the sound hole and hear it ring, or tap the space bar to strum. Every fingering shows on the fretboard. Then start a progression with the island strum and strum along, or let the chords change by themselves while you keep the rhythm.
4 STRINGS
16 CHORDS
12 FRETS
4 STRUM PATTERNS
0 INSTALL
What you get
The friendliest four strings
The ukulele is the quickest instrument to your first song. This page gets you strumming in seconds.
16 chords on the fretboard
Choose a chord and its fingering appears on the neck: yellow dots for the fretted notes, rings for the open strings. Touch any fret to change one note and hear it alone. Keys 1 to 0 pick the first ten chords.
Strum patterns
Down on the beat for your first song, down-up for drive, the island strum (down, down-up, up-down-up) for that ukulele bounce, and a waltz in three. The arrows show each eighth note as it goes by.
Progressions that play along
Strum along on C G Am F, the four chords behind countless pop songs, on C Am F G, on a minor sway or on a 12-bar blues. The chord changes on its own at each bar, so you can watch the fingerings go by.
Strum it yourself
Press My strum: a soft click keeps the beat and the chords change by themselves, while you strum the arrows. Each strum lights its eighth note, blue in time and in the right direction, red if not, with a counter.
High G or low G
Most ukuleles use a re-entrant tuning, with the G string higher than the C, which gives the bright, close voicings of the ukulele sound. Switch to low G for a deeper, guitar-like bottom.
Getting started
Your first song on the ukulele
Pick C
Click the C chord: just one finger, on the third fret of the A string.
Strum
Swipe down across the strings over the sound hole, or press Space.
Add three chords
Try G, Am and F: the four chords of the Pop four progression.
Strum along
Choose the island strum, press Strum along, then My strum to keep the rhythm yourself.
Specifications
The full sheet
| Type | Soprano ukulele, playable on this page, free |
|---|---|
| Tuning | G C E A with a high G (standard) or a low G |
| Chords | C, Cm, C7, D, Dm, D7, E7, Em, F, G, G7, Gm, A, Am, A7, B flat |
| Strumming | Swipe across the strings, Space or J (down), K (up); single notes on 12 frets |
| Patterns | Down on the beat, down-up, island strum, waltz (3/4); 60 to 160 BPM |
| Progressions | C G Am F, C Am F G, Am Dm E7 Am, 12-bar blues in C |
| Sound | Nylon-string samples from tonejs-instruments by Nicholas Brosowsky, CC BY 3.0, voiced as a ukulele (185 KB) |
| Requirements | Any modern browser with Web Audio - Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari |
Where the ukulele comes from
The ukulele was born in Hawaii in the 1880s, from the small guitars that immigrants from Madeira brought to the islands, such as the machete. Hawaiian makers adapted it, the royal court embraced it, and its name is often translated as "jumping flea". In the twentieth century it travelled across the United States and the world, from Tin Pan Alley to today's classrooms.
Sizes and tunings
Ukuleles come in four main sizes: soprano, concert, tenor and baritone. The first three share the G C E A tuning, usually with the G string tuned higher than the C, the re-entrant tuning that gives the ukulele its sparkle; some players prefer a low G. The baritone is tuned like the top four strings of a guitar, D G B E.
More strings to play
Move on to the six strings of the online guitar, try the steel drum for more island sounds, or the 21 strings of the kora, and find every instrument on the world music studio map.
Questions
Frequently asked
Is this online ukulele free?
Yes. The ukulele at the top of this page is free, with no account and nothing to install. It runs in your browser with the Web Audio API and loads one 185 KB sound file.
How do I strum on a computer?
Drag the mouse down or up across the strings over the sound hole, or press Space or J to strum down and K to strum up. Shift and Space also strum up.
What is the island strum?
A popular ukulele strumming pattern over one bar of eighth notes: down, down-up, up-down-up, with a pause on the third beat. It gives the bouncy feel of many ukulele songs.
What is the standard ukulele tuning?
G C E A from the string nearest your face to the one nearest the floor, with the G tuned above the C (re-entrant tuning). The low G option tunes that string an octave lower.
Where does the sound come from?
From nylon-string recordings made available by Nicholas Brosowsky in tonejs-instruments under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence, played in the ukulele range and shaped with a lighter body and a shorter ring.
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