The World’s Easiest Ukulele Song

By Steven O. Sellers. If you are new to the fascinating instrument known as the ukulele, here is a song that will get you jamming with your friends in no time. All you need is one ukulele, one finger and one chord, plus access to You Tube. Go to You Tube and look for the song “Lime and the Coconut” by Harry Nilsson. That’s the one chord song you are about to learn.

Listen to the song and get the feel for it, then prepare to have fun. Grab your uke and put the index finger of your left hand on on the first fret of the first string, that’s the A string. Give it a strum and you are making the C7th chord, the only one you need to play “Lime and the Coconut”. Practice getting the rhythm down with just a straight ahead up and down stroke and you are on your way to learning a classic song from the 1970’s.

You and your buddies can jam for hours on “Lime and the Coconut” and have a great time, and it will be even more fun if you find ways to change up that C7 chord for a bit of musical variety. You might try rocking back and forth between the C Major Chord (first string,third finger, third fret) and the C7th chord in rhythm to the tune. 

For a bit more variety, practice some finger picking instead of just straight strums. You will see that the song lends itself to some simple finger picking very nicely. One other tip to spice up your playing on this one chord song: Grab your chord book and find ways to play C7th up the fingerboard. My favorite is playing the C7th on the 7th fret of the uke. To do that, just play the standard G7th open chord, and move it up to the 7th fret and there you have a nice substitute for the standard open C7th chord.

One thing I hope you will take away from this tutorial is that it’s fun to start with a simple song and find ways to make it sound better by putting your own mark on it with varied strums and chord substitutions…a pretty nifty way to learn!
ABOUT Steven O. Sellers.