Chords are made up of 3 or more notes, played together to produce a variety of harmonious sounds and can be found within major scales from specified formulas
Let’s stick to the C Major scale for now. If you take the 1st, 3rd and 5th note of the major scale (C, E & G) this will give you a C Major Chord.
There are tonnes of chords formulas that come from each scale, and some of them flatten various notes to get their value. For example, to get a C Minor chord, you would need to flatten the 3rd note of the scale by a semitone, which becomes Eb:
Learning the formulas for each chord is a mammoth task so I have compiled a chart for the variations on how to work out the first 5 chords from the key of C, what they are called and what notes they contain. The scale degree formula can be applied to find chord types and notes in any scale:
Here is what each of them look like as 1st position chords on the ukulele:
Have a go at playing them and really listen to the way they sound in relation to each other and watch the video below for correct fingering and and explanation of the chord notes.