I wanted to do a song that’s heavy on power chords and see what it sounded like on the uke so where better to turn than Green Day?
The good news is that it converts pretty well, which surprised me. I’ve gone with a pretty simple chord progression and then played with the strumming a little to try and mimic the original.
The Chords
The chord progression is G, D, Em, C – all really simple chords on the ukulele and it’s just half a bar of each. Initially I’d recommend just getting comfortable playing 2 down strums on each chord and getting your chord changes nice and fast before we move on to a more complicated strumming pattern.
The Rhythm/Strumming Pattern
This is my own take on a strumming pattern that I think works pretty well for this song (I do tend to vary how I play this a bit and there’s no real substitute for listening and copying). Remembering that we’re just playing half a bar of each this is loosely strumming pattern that I’m playing…
D-D-D-DUD-D-D-DUDUXUD-DU