Learn to play the rather brilliant Lava on ukulele from Pixar’s 2014 short movie of the same name. It’s a beautiful song and really easy to learn. Read on for help with the strumming pattern, chords and song structure.
Lava is a 7 minute computer animated short movie released by Pixar in 2014. It tells the story of a lonely volcano named Uku. That’s as much as I’ll say as I don’t want to spoil it for you if you haven’t already seen it. It features a beautiful song (also called Lava), if you haven’t heard it check out this video…
3 Chord Trick
There are just 3 chords in the song Lava and they should all be pretty familiar if you ever picked up a ukulele before. Those chords are C, F and G7.
The beauty of Lava is that it’s a very easy song to play, the chords are simple and the strumming is fairly relaxed. Kuana Torres Kahele and Napua Greig do a great job on the vocals – if only I could sing like that!
Lava Strumming Pattern
You’ll see a lot of tutorials telling you the strumming pattern for Lava is D DU UDU which misses out the 3rd down strum. They’re wrong, you can clearly hear the 3rd down strum when you listen. The actual pattern is D DUDUDU but the dynamics that are used soften some of the those strums so it doesn’t sound quite so rigid.
Here’s what that pattern looks like…
It’s a really simple song but when you listen to it you’ll notice some subtleties in the dynamics that stop it sounding too one-dimensional. It’s a great example of what can be done with a very simple song. Once you get comfortable playing it through spend some time on getting those subtleties in your version too.
Lava Song Structure
There are only 2 real sections to get to grips with. The intro/verse and the chorus. There’s nothing too tricky going on with them but here’s the structure.
Intro/Verse
C C G7 G7 F F C G7 G7
Which sounds something like…
Chorus
F F C C G7 G7 C C F F C C F G7 C C
Which sounds like…
Essentially you’re playing 2 measures of each chord with the exception of the 3rd C in the intro/verse and the 5th F in the chorus.
Half way through the song the tempo slows down but you’re still playing the same chords and the same strumming pattern.
That’s pretty much it!
If you really want to progress your strumming at a rapid rate then I’d highly recommend taking a look at Al Wood’s downloadable ebook How To Play Ukulele Strums. For just $12 you get an in-depth guide showing you how to play 49 different strums with supporting videos and MP3 files. There’s also a really useful section that focuses on counting strums the easy way (something I wish I had when I was learning to play).
View Comments (39)
Very good lesson! Cool song, too!
Thanks David!
Awesome! Thanks so much for this. I've shared it with my ukulele friends and family.
That's a great song and lesson. Thank you!
Took a wile to get right but it went great!!
I already knew how to play the uke, just wanted to try something new, like a new song other than "somewhere over the rainbow"
Well Bob, I hope you enjoyed learning this one!
Awesome! Thanks!
No problem Evelyn
I want to learn fingerpicking for this song! Please (:
Thanks for the tutorial!
Does it matter what sort of ukulele is used to play this song? Tenor/ soprano?
The only issue you'd have is if you were playing baritone. The chord boxes would be different, but the actual chords themselves would be the same. Hope that helps!
OK, I see. Thank you.
I thought perhaps the difference in sound and tone on the varying sizes would matter much.
This tutorial is so much better and more thorough than all the other ones! Thank you for making it :)
I play this at school xxxxxxx
Good stuff Georgia