tUnE-yArDs – Powa (Tab)

You should be absolutely amazed that I’ve posted anything the last few days. This week has seen the two releases I’ve been looking forward to most this year: Portal 2 and the new tUnE-yArDs album. Both of which I’ve enjoyed even more than their predecessors.

Jonathan Coulton has written a new song for the game and if – like the first game – if it’s a ukulele song you can be sure it’ll turn up here. But I don’t want to ruin it by searching out the song before I finish the game, so here’s the standout ukulele-heavy track from W H O K I L L.

tUnInG-yArDs

She’s playing a tenor but actually has it tuned dGBE (like a baritone but with a high-D string).

rIfF 1

The song is mostly made up of two riffs. The first uses both fingerpicking and strums. For the picking use the thumb on the bottom two strings (d and G), index on the second string and middle on the first string.

rIfF 2

The second riff is all strums with a couple of slides thrown in:

sTaNdArD tUnInG

tUnE-yArDs – Powa (Standard tuning)(Tab)

The song transfers pretty well to standard tuning (whilst keeping it in the same key). The one note I’m not entirely happy with is the open A string in bar 3. It’s an octave above what’s being played in the original and I don’t think it’s quite right. One alternative would be to play the open C-string instead. Or, since she leaves out this note late in the song, don’t play anything at all.

Here’s how the standard tuning version sounds:


Standard Tuning Version

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