Arctic Monkeys – Mardy Bum (Chords and Tab)

Arctic Monkeys – Mardy Bum (Chords)

Rumours of a new Arctic Monkeys album this year don’t seem to have come to fruition. So I’m doing one of their old songs in an attempt to The Secret a new album into existence.

The chord that really makes this progression is the F# (the major III chord in theory terms). In the key of D you’d expect to hear and F#m (which also crops up the progression). The Bb note in the F# chord doesn’t fit in the D major key so in creates loads of tension until it becomes more settled in the G chord. It’s a classic chord trick. You can hear the same move (I – III – IV) in the chorus of Tennesee Waltz.

Mardy Strum

Intro, Verses, Break and Solo: The intro starts with all down strums (eight per chord). Then I switch to this pattern (which you can hear in the video below):

The xs indicated strums muted with the fretting hand. If you want a simpler strum that doesn’t use muting here’s one that takes the rhythm from the intro solo:

Which sounds like this:


Easy Strum

Chorus: The chorus is much more straightforward. It’s all down-strums. One each on all the Gs and As. Two on the D. And three on the Bm. The exception is the last chorus where it’s just one down-strum per chord (and don’t forget the lenthened Bm chord).

Middle: Eight fast down-strums per chord. Until the final F#-G-A move where you do two slower down-strums per chord.

Twiddly Bits

Mardy Bum (Intro Tab)

Two little twiddles from the song. Both use the D major pentatonic include C# from the standard major scale.

Mardy Bum (Solo Tab)


Solo

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More Arctic Monkeys tabs and chords

View Comments

Sorry, Comments Are Broken Right Now