Avett Brothers – I and Love and You (Chords)

The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You (Chords)

Saying, “I love you,” might be hard but saying, “I love this song certainly isn’t.” Makes for a pretty easy transfer from piano to ukulele as well – which isn’t always the case.

Suggested Strumming

A good main strumming pattern would be:

d – d u

In the verses and choruses use that twice for D, once for G, four times for D. That sounds like this:

Strumming Pattern

You can do just a down strum for the Bm and A at the end of the verse before heading back to the main pattern for G. Watch out for the end of verse 4. There you add a down strum for G and back to the main strum on D.

In the bridge section, do the main strum once for each chord.

Then the tricky bit. Play just single notes for the ones in brackets (so that’s E-string open then E-string at the second fret) then you’re back to G for a down strum. It’s a bit tricky to play the usual G chord. I prefer to use a barre across the second fret (which you can put in place to play the F#). Or you could just play a single G note. After that, two down strums on A.

All together that goes like this:

Bridge

Twiddly Bits

You can recreate the piano part on uke fairly convincingly with this picking:

Use your thumb on the C, index on the E and middle on the A. Which sounds like this:

Picking Pattern

More Avetts

Murder in the City

View Comments

13 Comments

  1. bwachter70 June 21st, 2011 8:39 pm

    Thanks for the strumming bit. Sounds better then the d-u-d I was using.

  2. Ryanvt June 22nd, 2011 4:46 am

    The Avetts are some of the best songwriters and musicians of our time! Thanks for putting this up. I find their songs to be alot of fun on the uke.

  3. Logan June 22nd, 2011 6:13 am

    I hadn’t been turned on to these guys until they recently played here (Portland, Maine, USA) a few weeks ago. Great song choice!

  4. krabbers June 22nd, 2011 10:14 am

    superb song cheers Al , krabbers

  5. RobNY June 22nd, 2011 1:03 pm

    What a beautiful song!

  6. alec June 22nd, 2011 3:35 pm

    Thanks! Love these guys. See them live. It’s a mindscramble.

    Woodshed, have you thought about a campanella version of the Game of Thrones theme? Sounds good for it, kinda like that Pearly Shells (I think that’s what it’s called) from the John King book.

  7. mikeplaysukulele June 22nd, 2011 4:29 pm

    I like it. Converting regular songs to songs on the uke is a hobby of mine.

  8. ukuleletim June 22nd, 2011 11:46 pm

    I worked this up on guitar a while back then converted it to uke shortly thereafter. Like them Avett bros

  9. Ry June 23rd, 2011 10:14 am

    great strumming and twiddlies

  10. Woodshed July 1st, 2011 8:58 am

    bwatcher: You’re welcome!

    Ryanvt: They are pretty fantastic.

    Logan: I wish they’d tour over here a bit more.

    krabbers: Thanks!

    Rob: Certainly is.

    alec: I’m not familiar with it. I’ll go listen… Hmmm, I think if I did it, it wouldn’t be campanella style.

    mikeplaysukulele: Thanks.

    ukuleletim: Yeah, excellent band.

    Ry: Glad you like.

  11. kma July 27th, 2011 3:37 pm

    This is great!

    Have you ever heard of sleeping at last?

    They have some pretty awesome ukulele in their storyboards album!

  12. Rodrigo October 20th, 2013 11:39 pm

    The video link is broken :-(

  13. London July 14th, 2014 1:42 am

    Thanks for this, it’s really great!
    Only problem I have is with the strumming pattern, I think it needs something either slower to match the piano in the original or more complicated for a different sound. The pattern you have an example of is channeling a bit too much “Do-Wah-Diddy” by the Exciters.

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