Ukulele Dm7 chord - tips and alternatives

courtesy of ukulele-chords.com

That pesky Dm7 chord shows up in a lot of ukulele tunes.  It's especially prevalent in songs in the key of C.  It can be hard to transition to this chord due to the crowded space.

From everything I've seen, the suggested fingering method for the Dm7 is to place your middle finger on the G string (2nd fret), your ring finger on the C string (2nd fret), your index finger on the E string (1st fret), and your pinky on the A string (3rd fret).

However, a lot of people (myself included) have learned to play this troublesome chord with that same structure, only with the placement of the middle and ring fingers reversed (so that the ring finger takes the lead on the G string 2nd fret).  Really, it all comes down to how you've learned to finger the Dm chord, which is the same placement minus the pinky finger (the A string is open - 2210).  Coming

Ukulele E chord tips and tricks

Does this chord look familiar?  Perhaps it's because it shows up in your nightmares....the terrible terrible E chord.
Coming from a guitar playing background, this chord type wasn't all that uncommon to me when I started to play the uke...but just like with the guitar, it was and continues to be very unpleasant to play for me.  Not impossible, just difficult and unpleasant.  It's best to keep practicing with this chord and train your fingers to form it...but in case you're a bit more impatient like me, here are some ideas on how you can produce this chord and avoid this exact structure.

You can try reproducing it by playing 1-4-0-2 (that's from the G string to the A string).  With this you'll be producing the notes Ab, E, E, B.  This has a neat chorus type of effect since you are producing that same middle E with