Easy love songs for ukulele

For upcoming Valentine’s Day, which will fall on a Friday in 2020, I am introducing love songs that are easy to play on the ukulele. What constitutes easy?

The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” sounds easy to sing and play but the key Eb is hard to pick (the riff and melody) and strum (the chords). D major is easier though it includes the barre chord of B minor. C major is even easier though the song includes the barre chord of B flat.

While the ukulele is easy to learn and quick to use to strum chords to accompany yourself, it is never easy to do too many things at the same time. Assuming you already know the melody, the tempo, and how the song should sound, you still need to coordinate the different parts of yourself to read the song sheet and execute the following tasks:

• Eyes: read the chord name (or chord diagram) and translate for the left hand
• Left hand: finger the chords
• Eyes: read the lyrics and translate for the mouth to sing
• Right hand: strum or pluck to accompany oneself

To reduce the amount of multi-tasking, I get my students to practice common strum patterns on the right hand so that it feels automatic — there’s no need to look at the right hand.

Next, I introduce common chord progressions, which are sequences of chords used in a lot of songs. By playing these chord sequences over and over again, we eventually automate the left hand so that there’s no need to look at the left hand or constantly switch between the song sheet, chords, chord diagrams, and the fretboard.

By reducing the number of moving parts, e.g. keep the same tempo, same time signature (4/4 time), same key (using the same chords), same chord progression, the same strum pattern, we can cover a lot of songs of the same era and genre.

I list a few below.

C, G, Am, F:

• I’m Yours by Jason Mraz (Cynthia Lin) (Bytown Ukulele)
  interestingly, my piano class teamed up with my colleague’s ukulele class on Earth Day in 2015 to do this song. See video. My blogpost with arrangement for easy piano.
• Hey Soul Sister by Train (San Jose Ukulele Club) (Bytown Ukulele)
• Someone Like You by Adele (1-page but not so easy to read)
• No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley (ezstrummer) (ozbcoz)

Same four chords in different order:

• One Love by Bob Marley (Ukulele Cheats)
• …..

In fact, there are so many songs that you might as well check websites of common chord progressions like this one.

And don’t forget three chord songs like The Beatle’s “Love Me Do” and other sixties songs like “Bye Bye Love” — these two use the same kind of strum patterns.