How to play the A# (A sharp) or Bb (B flat) chord on the ukulele.

Let’s make this easy. A# (A sharp) and Bb (said B flat, not ‘bee bee’) are exactly the same thing. You do the same thing with your fingers for both chords. They are “enharmonic”. In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note, interval, chord or key signature that is equivalent to some other note, interval, chord or key signature but “spelled”, or named differently. In some keys, you might call it A# but in others, you might call it Bb but as far as your fingers (and now your brain) are concerned, they are exactly the same thing. Now we’ve got that out of the way, I want to share how I play this when it is half barre chord. (That means that one finger covers 2 strings. If it were a full barre, you’d cover all 4 strings with 1 finger.) Back to the tips:

I find it easiest to play Bb by twisting my index finger towards the headstock. You need the index finger to press down on both the E and the A strings in the first fret, whilst your middle finger is on its tip on the C string in the second fret and the ring finger is on the G string in the third fret. I find this tricky to do if all your fingers go straight on, as when you put the second and third fingers down, the index lifts up. See the video at the bottom to help.

There are a lot of songs with Bb in them in the Ukulele Wednesdays Songbook. Give some of these songs a try to help you practice:

A Little Respect
All My Loving
Is This The Way To Amarillo (in the key change)
Angels
Brimful of Asha
Build Me Up Buttercup
California Dreaming
City of New Orleans
Complicated
Crazy
Dizzy
Do You Love Me
Don’t Stop Me Now
Ever Fallen In Love
Free Bird
Happy Together
I Predict a Riot
I Think We’re Alone Now
I’m into Something Good
Karma Chameleon
Keep The Faith
King of the Road
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Little Lion Man
Maybe Tomorrow
(Lookin’ Back) Over My Shoulder
Price Tag
Somebody That I Used To Know
Something
SOS
Summer of ’69
Sweet Child o’ Mine
Take Your Mama
Teenage Dirtbag
The Rainbow Connection
Toxic
True Faith
We Are Young

Here’s a video to show you how I play Bb:

More blogs to help you:

How to play the G chord, here.

How to play the E chord, on the ukulele here.

Get a free ukulele chord chart (and help with how to read it) from here.

Do you want 6 basic strum patterns to get you going? See more here.

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