Batman Theme (Tab)

Batman Theme (Tab)

If you tried to get on to the blog earlier, you might have been turned away at the door. I was up to some back stage technically jiggery-pokery (if you notice any strange goings on, let me know). I didn’t break the entire internet, so it went better than expected. So well, I’ve decided to tempt fate and spruce up the front of house as well. That might mean the blog will be down occasionally over the next few days. Or it might mean I click the wrong thing and send Western capitalism spiraling into turmoil.

Anyhoo, on to this Sunday’s theme tune. The Batman theme is an absolute classic. It was a bit hit amongst the surf crowd and was covered by The Ventures and Link Wray along with many others.

When I decided to have a go at this tune, I was a bit surprised not to find any versions of it for uke. A YouTube search only came up with Jacob Borshard’s hilarious Bryan Adams parody. The tune fits nicely on the uke.

The basis of the song is a simple I – IV – V progression; G – C – D. Each bar starts with a fifth chord. Then the fifth note shifts down and back up again. The strumming is just up, down, up, down the whole way through.

There are a couple of tricky parts. Firstly, moving from G to D. Secondly, the high chord at the end. I wasn’t quite sure what to use for the final chord. In the end I just went with something high and fairly discordant. If you don’t want to mess with that, a G5 chord at the end works just fine.

This version is half a step lower than the original. So if you want to play it in the original key, use a capo on the first fret.

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18 Comments

  1. davoomac March 31st, 2008 10:35 am

    I got say, that batman theme is really cool. ^_^

  2. zymeck March 31st, 2008 1:56 pm

    excellent!!

    but you’ve missed out the lyrics ;)

  3. Woodshed March 31st, 2008 5:20 pm

    davoomac: 100% agreed. I think I’ll have to come up with a list of the best theme tunes of all time.

    zym: Nun na, nun na, nun na, nu…

  4. Iain March 31st, 2008 6:06 pm

    Have you seen the repeats on BBC4? I thought they played it straight, but the whole program is one enormous piss-take. Seriously funny. “Quick Robin…………….(enormous pause)……..lets race to the bat-cave”. Good theme song as well.

  5. Woodshed March 31st, 2008 9:45 pm

    Batman on BBC4? No, I haven’t. Talk about dumbing down.

  6. zym April 1st, 2008 12:24 am

    @woodshed

    Noooooo

    everyone knows its

    “Dinner, Dinner, Dinner, Dinner,
    Dinner, Dinner, Dinner, Dinner,
    Dinner, Dinner, Dinner, Dinner,
    BATMAN!!!! ”

    ;)

  7. Ian April 1st, 2008 12:36 am

    Your website… it… changed….

    looks good.

  8. Jeff April 1st, 2008 3:56 pm

    Cover page looks good

  9. Woodshed April 1st, 2008 5:06 pm

    Thanks Ian and Jeff.

  10. angryfrommanchester April 2nd, 2008 6:21 am

    site looks horrible with javascript disabled :(

  11. Woodshed April 2nd, 2008 6:34 am

    The front page certainly does, but the blog page and the individual post pages look exactly the same as they do without it.

  12. rogelio August 23rd, 2009 10:04 am

    Epic. Thank you so, so very much.

  13. Woodshed August 23rd, 2009 5:46 pm

    rogelio: You’re very welcome.

  14. JCstiggy July 9th, 2011 4:43 am

    My roommate is just starting out on the ukulele and I want to do a duet with this theme. Would anyone happen to know all the notes for the “Bat-man!” parts in the original theme so he could play those notes while I do the strumming?

  15. Woodshed July 9th, 2011 8:03 am

    JCsiggy: The melody notes are the ones that change in the bar. So in the first bar it’s the notes on the C string. In bar 5 it’s the notes on the E string.

  16. ukulogist August 30th, 2012 2:26 am

    Woah. Loved It. :)

  17. Woodshed September 1st, 2012 10:42 am

    ukulogist: Glad to hear it!

  18. judeau13 March 10th, 2016 4:02 pm

    This is fantastic, thanks so much for posting!! Any chance of a video/tab for the Batgirl ’67 theme? My daughter is massive Yvonne Craig/Batgirl fan and would freak out if I could play that. Love the site, keep up the wood work :)

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