Like most Brits my age, Radiohead’s Burn the Witch gave me warm nostalgia for Trumpton and Camberwick Green. Although the Trumpton people are pissed off that it, “tarnished the brand”.
The Trumpton theme is ripe for a ukeing. The tune has an acoustic guitar backing with a high melody. I’ve mushed those two elements together but if, unlike me, you have a friend you can tease them apart and play them on separate instruments.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Prince’s favourite chord trick and it lead to an inevitable cavalcade of requests for Purple Rain. And why not? It has to be one of the best chord progressions ever written.
Here’s the slightly sparse strumming pattern I like to play:
d – – – d – d u
– u – – d u d u
You can use that everywhere except the few chords he strums once then brings a halt to the backing.
I’m not going to write up the whole solo but here’s the little repeating motif:
Towards the end of the song this little run is introduced at the end of the chord progression:
If you’re really adventurous you can play it with full chords. Here’s how it sounds (easy version then hard):
A primer for the uninitiated: Neko Atsume it a mobile game where you lure increasingly fancy cartoon cats to your yard. Until recently it was only in Japanese and inscrutable to non-Japanese speakers.
In short, it has all the ingredients to make it an inevitable massive hit. Including the most important: a smooth, lounge-jazz soundtrack (the favourite music of all cats). And Neko Atsume delivers with chilled major 7 and 9 chords just crying out for a ukulele cover.
I play this part on a standard C-tuned uke with a capo on the second fret (so it’s the same as D-tuning).
There are a few big jumps up and down the fretboard. It took me a good amount of practice to get them smooth. Also, when you’re leaping up the fretboard remember that the capo means that you actually play two frets higher than indicated (not a problem if you’re using D-tuning, of course).
If you just want to play the melody part, here’s a backing track for you:
If, on the other hand, you want to play the backing part (or you have a friend who does) you’re going to need a baritone ukulele and a mellow, cat-like outlook on life. I highly recommend stealing a few of these chord moves next time you’re looking for a laid-back jazz sound.
I did a tab for the intro of King of Spain a few years ago. But I love that song and had to extend it out into a full instrumental version of the song. The song can be played with mostly strums and barrels along at a good pace so it’s perfect for a ukeing.
I’m using open-F tuning to mimic the open-C version of the original. You get that by tuning the g-string down to F and the E string up to F.
The main chords used are F (0000 and 0003), Dm (0200), Bb (0201) and Cadd11 (0403).
In bar 5 there’s a chord played with 7th fret harmonics. If you’re having trouble hitting that cleanly try playing the harmonics at the 12th fret. There’s more room for error there and you get the same effect.
Other than that I’d recommend barrelling along with it and not worrying to much about the occasional flub (as demonstrated in my version).
Death with Dignity is a beautiful song by Sufjan Stevens about the death of his mother (a subject that clearly resonates with Kanye West). The song is heavy with grief backed with sparse, shimmering ukulele. And idiots will still tell you it’s impossible to be sad when playing a ukulele.
I think he’s using open C-tuning for this which is gCEG (i.e. tune your A-string down so it’s the same pitch as the g-string). Then capo at the fourth fret.
The picking uses one finger per string in an AMIP pattern (going down the strings).
This part is really quiet on the record so I’m making it up about half the time. Take that as a free pass to mess around with this part and play it how you feel it. I’m guessing it’s played on a classical guitar but it works perfectly well on baritone.
Here’s a ukulele version of the piano solo from the song. It’s played in standard tuning without a capo.
Happy St Patrick’s Day! To celebrate I arranged my favourite song by my second favourite Irish songwriter (can’t can The Van).
One of the things I love about arranging tunes is noticing little things that completely passed me by listening casually. I didn’t realise that the melody in the chorus shifts against the chords. The basic chords though the whole song are Am-F-C-G. The first, “Is that alright?” is on the Am and later it’s on the F chord. Of course, I completely ruin it by arranging them both exactly the same way.
Cartoon Network’s Over the Garden Wall has featured a bunch of old-timey musicians including Frank Fairfield, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton and ukulele chanteuse Janet Klein. I got had a request I couldn’t ignore for a song from the show so it was inevitable I went for Klein’s Langtree’s Lament.
Nothing too tricky in this arrangement. It’s almost all played with strums. There are some places when you’re not strumming all the strings e.g. bar 10. There the melody switches to the g-string so you need to emphasise that string. It’s not a big deal if you don’t hit exactly the strings tabbed so long as you’re holding the chord down (in that bar Bb7).
The notes I pick are the slides up to the fifth fret in bars 2 and 6, the one note in bar 7 and the campanella picking in bars 14 and 15. If you’re dead set against campanella you can also play it like this:
Over the Garden Wall on iTunes
JanetKlein.com
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