Baby Elephant Walk – Solo

Baby Elephant Walk Solo Version (Tab)

A couple of weeks ago I tabbed out a version of this song for two ukuleles and I couldn’t resist the challenge of doing it on one.

I combined the two parts in the simplest way I could think of: by only playing the background riff when there were no melody notes. There are two tricky parts to getting this: keeping the groove and distinguishing the melody notes from the riff. There are parts where the melody cuts across the riff in awkward ways (such as in bars 7 and 8 ) and I need some practice before I could fall naturally back into the riff. I also found the phrasing in bar 20 a little unnatural. Counting the beats (1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &) and playing on the ‘1 &’ and the ‘4 &’ helped me sort it out.

I separated the melody from the riff by dampening the strings a little on the riff notes (i.e. resting the flabby bit at the bottom of my right hand against the strings very lightly) and giving the melody notes an extra bit of welly.

WS64 has done a great version of this tune. He incorporates more chord notes than I did. I particularly like his strummed sections. I like them so much I’m going to steal the idea.

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34 Comments

  1. Curt Sheller Publications » Blog Archive » Baby Elephant Walk - Solo August 17th, 2007 4:56 am

    […] Baby Elephant Walk – Solo: […]

  2. Uke Hunt » Outros: 5 Ways To End It August 29th, 2007 6:31 pm

    […] As used by Homer Simpson in the I’m Talking Springfield episode (you can download the mp3 on Simpson Crazy). Previously know as The ‘And Many More’ (at the end of the Happy Birthday song). I used this one to end my tab of Baby Elephant Walk. […]

  3. Rify September 24th, 2007 11:33 am

    realy nice! would love to have the chords.. please? ;)

  4. Woodshed September 24th, 2007 10:14 pm

    Thanks, Rify. There’s not very much to the chords – mostly it’s D, G and A.

    Here’s a version of the tab with the chord names written above the tab:

    Baby Elephant with chords

    The chord shapes are for D-tuning. But the chords fit just as well, if not better, in C-tuning.

  5. sven March 18th, 2009 6:12 pm

    Love it !

  6. Woodshed March 19th, 2009 8:59 pm

    Thanks, Sven.

  7. hillfield July 13th, 2009 4:38 pm

    simple / daft question – do you need to re-tuneif you’re playing it on your lonesome? I think I’m right in thinking it’s all a whole step sharper than standard uke tuning, so should still work with my regular tuning…

  8. Woodshed July 13th, 2009 7:12 pm

    hillfield: No, gCEA will be just fine. You’re right, everything will just be a whole step lower.

  9. Dan June 6th, 2010 1:40 am

    Ha! My brother is gonna hate me. Everytime he wants me to request a song its always BABY ELEPHANT WALK! HENRY MANCINI! Now I can play it on the ukulele. :)

  10. Woodshed June 6th, 2010 11:25 am

    Dan: Glad I could help you annoy your brother!

  11. Euan August 15th, 2010 3:05 pm

    Brilliant!
    I’ve only recently found your website, and you have some absolute classics tabbed out on here!
    I have found inspiration to play!
    Thanks :)

  12. Gordon January 12th, 2011 6:09 am

    Thanks , Much appreciate your sharing.

  13. Woodshed January 16th, 2011 10:56 am

    Gordon: You’re welcome.

  14. dang February 25th, 2011 4:53 am

    VERY VERY COOL woodshed. I’m relatively new to uke after tampering with guitar and bass for ages, and I’m finding I cant put the thing down. I’ve learned heaps in a short time from this website so thank you muchly. Cant wait to get the blues book and start improvising. Keep up the good work mate…

  15. Woodshed February 26th, 2011 5:35 pm

    dang: Thanks very much. Glad you like it.

  16. Astor May 15th, 2011 12:41 pm

    Very cool!

    I am from Sweden and 11 years old.
    I love to play ukulele.

  17. Woodshed May 18th, 2011 10:14 am

    Astor: Thanks! Glad to hear you’re enjoying your uke.

  18. Liluke August 24th, 2011 1:55 am

    I love this! It’s stuck in my head and the start sounds cute xD

  19. Woodshed August 24th, 2011 7:03 am

    Liluke: Thanks! Glad you like it.

  20. UkuLinho August 26th, 2011 2:28 pm

    Thanks for your great arrangement! It’s so fun to play!

    I’d suggest playing it Low-G. It makes the song a little harder to play, but the “base line” sounds even cooler! :-)

  21. Woodshed August 26th, 2011 11:45 pm

    UkuLinho: Thanks.

    I think this arrangement would lose of the melody with a low-G.

  22. UkuLinho August 27th, 2011 1:31 am

    Woodshed: Sorry for my misleading comment. Of course I had to adapt the melody-high-g-notes to one of the other strings. I really wanted to play this song but I play Low-G for many reasons.

    You’ve already seen my video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs2Z6jO6JZw) where you can hear it.

    Keep up your excellent work and thanks a lot for sharing the tabs!

  23. Woodshed August 27th, 2011 3:35 pm

    UkuLinho: Yeah, it’s definitely ripe for rearranging.

  24. maya September 11th, 2011 4:37 am

    Thxs a lot!! Very nice sound.
    It’s seem very difficult,but I’ll try and do the best as I can.
    Thxs again.

  25. Woodshed September 11th, 2011 11:01 am

    maya: Keep going. You’ll get it!

  26. Jay October 26th, 2011 7:08 pm

    Hi wondering what a few things are and what they mean in the tab (new to tab)s:
    1) The thing between the 6th and 7
    2)The thing 3/4 down the 11th bar
    3)Da coda?
    4)The squiggly line and the the 1/2 arrow?
    5) DC.al coda?
    6) Circle with horizontal and vertical lines through it
    7) The three bold Dash lines underneath the last notes.

    Any help would be appreciated!Thanks!

  27. Woodshed October 28th, 2011 3:34 pm

    Jay: There’s a guide to reading tab here.

  28. ckdwh January 16th, 2013 5:24 am

    Hi i`m korsa man. Where`s the score??
    I`m finding ukulele sheet music where is it??
    I did not speak English hehe……
    korean man evidence
    ?????The meaning of mean is hello

  29. Woodshed January 16th, 2013 8:39 am

    ckdwh: In the orange box underneath the video.

  30. Jeffers January 22nd, 2013 5:12 am

    Sweet! My sister and I are going to try to duet this. Also, Have you thought about tabbing out any Walk The Moon? That would be pretty sick man. Anyways, Thanks for the awesome tablature.

  31. Woodshed January 22nd, 2013 7:43 am

    Jeffers: Good luck with it! Sorry, don’t know the song.

  32. David February 9th, 2013 2:29 pm

    On this website-kala demo of KA-S uke, Mike Upton does a tab version of Take Me Out To The Ball Game. Could you figure out the tab an post it on this website-Spring training starts soon-GO RAYS

  33. TommMun January 23rd, 2014 9:03 pm

    Excellent job!

  34. Woodshed January 24th, 2014 8:41 am

    TommMun: Thanks!

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