Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life
September 4, 2008 · Print This Article
Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life (Chords)
I don’t want to be mean, but you’re all playing First Day of My Life in a daft key. But whichever key you play it in, it’s a great song.
From all the darting eyes, I’m guessing that people are just reading the guitar chords and transferring them straight to uke. The trouble is Oberst plays this song with a capo at the fourth fret. That puts it close to uke territory. I’ve written the song up for a ukulele tuned one step down (so the chord shapes used are mostly those he uses), but kept the chord names the same as standard tuning to avoid confusion. It’s much easier to play this way, you avoid the dreaded E major.
My chords are a little different to the guitar ones floating around the net in a few other ways. Some of them are chords in the song that I think they’ve missed (the Bbadd9 in the intro and the C7 at the end of the verses) and some of them have been changed to make them work better on the uke (using a C as a passing chord rather than a B note, and the Gm at “But I realise that I need you…”).
The biggest problem area in the song is the F - ? - Dm progression at the end of what I’ve called the bridge section. The guitar chords use the same progression as the verse, F - A - Dm in our terms. But I don’t think that sounds right. I think he’s playing 021200 which would be Amaj7sus4 (1200) for us. It’s fairly discordant; the A and Ab are one fret apart rather than 13 and the A note doesn’t read as the root strongly enough. It does just about work in context, but I’ve written it up as Asus4 which is a little more pleasing to the ear. Those are your choices. Try them and see which you prefer.
If this is your first visit here, you can find the chords/tab in those posts by clicking on the song title in red.
Thanks for this! It’s an absolute joy compared to the off key one
lovely tune - it reminds me of one of my favourite bands - Kings of Convenience. Especially, this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm8f7fZMucI&feature=related
Thanks for doing a bright eyes tune! Im a huge fan and its pretty much impossible to find stuff for the uke by conor. That being said, if theres anymore Bright Eyes/Conor Oberst uke stuff floating around, please do tell! Thx!
This is such a great song. Thanks once again! This is the first time I’ve seen that video though, it’s disgustingly sweet.
the word i would use to describe the video is mawkish
zym, good taste kings of convience are so very lovely ^^,
this is also lovely, its got some great lyrics
Didn’t you already cover this one before?
http://ukulelehunt.com/2008/07/15/neutralmilkhotelhollandchords
It’s such a sweet song, and it sound beautiful on the uke. Thanks a bunch for posting it.
rob: Thanks.
amber and zym: Beneath my rugged, badass exterior, I’m a sentimental, rom-com watching moron. I really like the video. 100 cool points to anyone who can spot the ukulele player in the video.
binaurally: I might be tempted to see if I can get When the President Talks to God to work on the uke before the reign of terror is over.
cbf: I never got into KoC. I’ll have to give them another listen.
Chelsea: I remember someone asking how to play a couple of chords from the song, but I thought it deserved the full treatment.
Olivia: You’re very welcome.
Hey Woodshed, did you even click the link I posted?
Being a music snob, I feel compelled to say that a song from one of the best indie albums of all times ( http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/bestalbums/index.html ) is not remotely close to one of the few good songs from a band that is considered by most to be “emo”.
I always have to defend NMH. They’re the new classics.
Hey ,
If you want more bright eyes chords, go to
http://www.chordie.com and look up bright eyes .
Hey Amber:
My thoughts exactly. I’m pretty disgusted by Conor Oberst’s plagiarism of Jeff Mangum — at least one record of his has a few songs that directly rip off “O Comely” and “Two Headed Boy”, and it disappoints me that people refuse to see this. That was the point I was trying to make here.
Oh how I miss 1997, when only me and few others knew NMH.
And I don’t like bright eyes.
Now, I only came here to say that I’m currently obsessed with the wicker man ost so please please please please could you post “corn rigs” chords?
Any wicker man song would be great though.
P.S: pleaseeeee
Damn! my snob html tag joke failed miserably
Noob question here. This is the first time I’ve played with alt tuning and really liked the sound it gave. The handfull of songs I know on the uke also sound well with this tuning. I was wondering if there was anything that would goober up if I used this tuning primarily over my GCEA?
WOW ,
I have never seen Bright eyes as a NMH rip-off… I love both and don’t see why people are so pissed about Bright eyes, Just enjoy the music.
Chelsea: Yes I didn’t. But I didn’t really get what you were referring to.
Robert: That’s how the whole problem started in the first place. Auto generated uke chords have their place, but they’re often completely wrong or unhelpful. I’m completely biased, but there’s more of an art to arranging songs for uke than a computer can manage.
newbie: I might save that for Burns Night (if I remember).
Crookshankz: If you prefer it, go for it. Shouldn’t cause any problems.
Robert: Yeah, I don’t really get the comparison.
Is there a definite strumming pattern to follow?
I’m a beginner and find it quite hard to follow at the moment with no pattern to adjust myself to but it would be such a lovely song to play.
as a huuuuuuuuuuge Bright Eyes/Conor Oberst i have to say thanks a million for putting this up!! Tom :)))))))
Glad you liked it, Tom.
fan…i meant say huuuuuge conor oberst FAN..!! *slaps forehead*
i find it easier to just do the guitar version without a capo. even with a capo E major is possible. maybe i should uke it up.
okay…dont wanna sound too stupid…but WHERE ARE THE CHORDS??
dave: Where it says “Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life (Chords)” in big red letters.