I had to do this tab to celebrate the finale of the first series of Serial. The plinkiness of it was just dying to be uked. To keep it extra-plinky it’s played right up the neck.
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While I’m on podcast themes, here’s my favourite. The twee as fuck theme tune to Jordan, Jesse, Go! by The Free Design.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this tune. Several hundred I expect. But not once did it occur to me that there might be a reason he’s going on about tossed salads and scrambled eggs. Frasier writer, Ken Levine asked the tune’s composer Bruce Miller who explained, “these were things that were “mixed up” like Frasier Crane’s patients”.
And it’s not just the patients. The theme is a mixed up, mouse painting, moon howling kinda song. For a tune that only lasts 36 seconds this really packs in a lot of different notes. My advice is to throw yourself into it an not worry much about any mistakes.
The Little Drummer Boy is (supposed to be) based on an old Czech folk melody. But it only became well known when rearranged and given lyrics in the 1950s for the Harry Simeone Chorale version.
This arrangement is designed to be played solo. It can all be played with your thumb on your picking hand. When you play more than one string just strum your thumb down until you hit the last note in the chord.
The notes in brackets here are backing notes. They’re not part of the melody so play them softly.
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Have to admit, I’ve never actually seen Unforgiven. It’s a western with Clint Eastwood and that’s about all I know. But I got a request for Claudia’s Theme, gave it a listen and loved it. Plus it seems ideal for the uke.
The original starts in the key of E before switching to F. But I stuck to the more uke-friendly F for my arrangement.
The intro and outro are very sparse. If you catch me nodding my head in those sections that’s me trying to keep time. It’s very tempting to rush these bits. But I’d recommend trying as hard as you can to hold it back.
Way back in 2007 the second ever chord post I did was Despair in the Departure Lounge. Since then there’s been a steady stream of request for more Monkeys which I’d always replied to with, “I’ll do another Monkeys tab when they go back to making good records.” Johnny called me out on that promise correctly pointing out that the new album is awesome.
So here’s a medley of most of the songs on the album:
One for the Road/Do I Wanna Know?/Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?/Arabella/Knee Socks/I Want It All/R U Mine?
The trickiest bits for the fretting are the two big leaps on the fretboard. There’s the big slide up in R U Mine? where it isn’t such a big deal if you don’t hit it exactly. The really hard one is the 8th fret in bar 5. Cut that 1st fret note before it really short to give yourself some time to get up.
The trickiest bits for the strumming hand are the palm muting (i.e. lightly resting the underside of your hand on the string at the bridge to muffle the strings). In One for the Road and Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? I’m muting all the strings. In Do I Wanna Know? I’m trying my best to mute the C-string while letting the E- and A-strings ring. As you can hear in the video I don’t always pull it off. It’s hard to get right so there’s nothing wrong with playing this section without any muting at all.
With all the intricate and dexterous actions that evolution has equipped our hands for it’s left us woefully unprepared to play an Fmaj7 chord on the ukulele. It’s made plenty of chord changes a pain in the arse too.
Laziness to the rescue! You can change the fingering of a chord or use a different inversion to make changes much more straightforward.
Here are a few tricky chord changes that can be simplified with a bit of rejiggering.
Here’s an obvious refingering. If you use your second, third and fourth fingers to play it you can keep your first finger tucked behind.
In chord charts the B7 is almost always shown played with a barre. But it doesn’t have to be. Switch the notes on the g and A strings and you get the Em chord shape with everything moved across one string.
Another B7. This one doesn’t actually have a B in it. But thanks to crazy ear-shenanigans your brain fills in the B for you (here’s Vi Hart explaining it as well as why chords and scales are as they are).
If anyone tells you to play Fmaj7 the 2413 way throw your ukulele at them and run away. They are not your friend. In the first take of my trying to play the chord you can actually hear my wrist cracking as I attempt it.
Like the B7, this version of D7 doesn’t actually have a D. But it is way easier to play. This version is often called the ‘Hawaiian D7′ for reasons that elude me.
There are a bunch of nice ukulele tunes on the Rayman Legends Soundtrack.
I got a request for this one and went with it because the whole thing is done with chords. That means you don’t have to be able to read tab to play this one. I’ve included all the chord charts you need above the tab.
Feel free to vary the strumming in the piece. That happens in the original and in my version.
To counteract yesterday’s gloomfest I decided to do a version of the most cheerful song of the summer. Plus I was feeling like a room without a roof so this is the smiliest I have looked in any video ever.
For the most part I’m playing the verses and the middle picking and the chorus with strums.
In the chorus I’m using a triplet technique (although I’m not actually playing triplets) by strumming down with my index finger, then flicking my index finger up, then my middle finger up. But that’s very much optional. You can strum it however seems appropriate to you.
In the middle section I’m recreating the soul-claps by playing muted notes on the g-string.
The muted notes in the middle section are very tricky. So you can just drop those in that section and play it with just the sparse melody.
I love Lana Del Rey’s first couple of singles. But after Paradise and the baby seal beatings I’d given up on her. But I absolutely love her new album, Ultraviolence,. With some help from Dan ‘Black Keys’ Auerbach she’s gone full on Bond. So I felt compelled to do a version of the Bondiest track on the album.
Buy the original on iTunes
Lana Del Rey – Video Games (Instrumental Tab)
I just love Zeppelin so this song has been on my to-do pile for a long time. It had stayed there because I was a bit intimidated by how much there is going on. But once I got stuck into it the tune transferred to the ukulele surprisingly smoothly. I didn’t even have to change the key and I think I crammed the most important parts in.
My version is shortened but most of the important sections are in there once.
My favourite technique in the tune is the long, drawn out up strums. I’m doing a slow up strum with my index finger there. Definitely worth incorporating into your playing arsenal.
I found sliding down the 3323 chord really tricky. You can simplify out without losing anything much by muting the g-string and just sliding down the G7 chord shape i.e. from x323 to x212.