Beirut – Port of Call (Chords)
I’m working my way through this album from the outside in. I did the opening track here and here’s the album’s closer.
This song has many of the features you’d expect of a Beirut ukulele song: it’s in waltz time, there’s a hammer-on from a second to a major third (although it’s on a D chord rather than the usual F) and there’s plenty of incomprehensible mumbling.
Suggested Strumming
For a dead simple strum you could use this:
d – d u – u
Which – slowed down – sounds like this:
Use that twice for Em, once for each of the Cs. Then (if you’re not doing the twiddly Dsus2 passing chord) it’s twice for D.
For the G-Gsus4 bit, do the main strum for the G. Then one down strum each for Gsus4 – G – Gsus4.
For the rest, it’s four times each.
You can fancy it up a bit by using this two bar pattern:
d – d u – u d u d u – u
Which sounds like this:
Twiddly Bits
The little Dsus2 – D hammer-on is played like this:
So you play the Dsus2 chord and hammer-on the E-string at the second fret.
In the chord chart I’ve written it up in the intro only, but it’s played all the way through the song.
My thoughts:
1. I’d like to note that on the album recording, the Em is in root position on the ukulele at 0432
2. The Am’s are actually C/Am or Am/C because he does a release, then a hammer-on on the G string from open to an A somewhere during the chord
3. The C6 from the album recording sounds like it’s played 0430, and same goes for the Cadd9, with 0435
4. Somewhere during the strumming the D goes from 2220 to 2225 (about half way, listen to the song to get what i’m trying to say)
Overall really good and accurate though!