The Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight (Tabs and Chords)
A song to support the embattled ukulele brother Billy Corgan. I think he was remarkably restrained. I would have Axled the guy.
Besides that, it’s an incredible song. And a complicated one. No two verses, chorus or bridges are the same. Getting it to sound right on uke takes some finangling. So the pdf is a bit messy and it’ll require some explanation.
Tuning
Even the tuning isn’t straight forward. It’s tuned down, but not quite half a step. Here are some tuning notes.
Intro
For the intro I’ve written it up as the full guitar part – with the occasional added C note on both the G and Em chords. If you’re playing along with the song, you can just play straight G and Em chords. Which is what I’ve written up when this section pops up later in the song.
Main Riff
A fun little fingerpicking riff to play. I’m picking with thumb covering g and C; index finger on E string and middle finger on the A string.
This is Riff 2 in the tab. Riff 1 is just the first two bars of this.
Bridge
Not too much to worry about here. But watch out for the final C chord. In the first bridge it lasts two bars, in the second it lasts one bar.
Chorus
In the chorus I’ve thrown in the string part as well. It is slightly tricky to play. If you want to avoid it, Am would seem like the obvious choice. But, and I can’t explain why, G sounds like the best chord to me.
And I think that covers it.
Wow, this is phenomenal. It sounds truly beautiful. Great work my friend.
How much would I love to see and hear these ukulele arrangements in a complete cover.