Diminished and Augmented Chords

Diminished and augmented chords on the ‘ukulele can be hard to remember because 1) they don’t get used much and 2) they repeat themselves (the same shape works for more than one chord). By the time you realize you are supposed to be playing one of these chords in a song, odds are it’s gone already. What you need is a fast way to figure these chords out, and here it is:

I’ll start with Diminished chords. There is only one Diminished chord shape, and it looks like this:

This shape repeats every three frets. So you can play all the diminished chords you will ever need in the first three frets with one shape. How do you remember what one is what though? Simple. Just slide the shape so that it has the chord name note within it. Cdim is the only diminished chord with a C note, Fdim is the only chord with an F note, etc… This works anywhere on the fretboard. Since the dim shape repeats, you can slide it up 3 frets at a time and get the next voicing for that same chord. And again and again, until you run out of frets. You can play one strum on each voicing as you slide up and sound really slick.

Augmented chords work on the same principles. The only difference is that aug chords repeat every four frets instead of three and there are two shapes. You will probably use augmented chords less than diminished chords, but the same “chord name note” idea still applies. Ether of those shapes can be moved up four frets to find the next voicing. You will find that the other shape fits between those four frets.