A massive thanks once again to the generosity of Uke Hunt’s Patreon backers for keeping the site up and running this month.
And extra thanks to September Tenor level backers:
– Arthur Foley
– Brian
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Ely Fletcher
– Ivo
– Jeff K
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Leia-lee Doran
– Mary
– Nevylle Carroll
– Noah
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Rick Wurster
– Robert
– Steven Pituch
Today’s tab is Nena’s 99 Red Balloons. Originally 99 Luftballons. I worked from the English version for this arrangement, but there’s not a lot of difference between them.
Intro/Outro: The song closes with a slow, fingerpicked version of the melody. Nothing troubling to tackle here. It’s all basic chords in the first position. The g-string does some of the melody work, so make sure those notes are prominent.
Bridge: The song speeds up for the riff section. I’m fingerpicking the notes here with muted strums (plus a muted note on the g-string that’s picked with the thumb). Keep this section staccato to match the original.
Verse: The increased tempo and use of strums makes this section trickier than the first. But, as compensation, it’s more repetitive so it’s simple once you get it under your fingers.
Solo: The keyboard solo doesn’t seem any trickier than the verse, but I found it much more of a challenge.
Here’s my take on the most 90s song there is: STP’s Plush.
Intro: Starting off with a simple chord riff with chromatically descending notes on the C and A-strings.
Verse: Nothing too tricky in the verse. The transition between bars 7 and 8 was the bit I needed to practice most. Once you get to the, “And I feeeeeeel it,” section, you can just blast it out.
Pre-Chorus: More of challenge. It’s all barre chords until the last few notes. And so is the chorus, so you’ll need some finger stamina to get through it. There are also some big stretches in bars 19 and 21.
Chorus: The trickiest part. There’s some quick moving around the neck. I’ve included a fingering suggestion in bar 23 to make the transition easier.
This arrangement of Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good. The chords are simple but effective. The move from Gm to Cm6 (a Cm chord with an open A-string) to D has such a melancholic and resigned feel to it.
Nothing goes above the fourth fret (and even that is only in the solo), so there’s not much movement to deal with.
The only challenging technique is the use of grace notes. A grace note is a quick note you play just before the main note. For example, in bar 8 you play the open A-string then immediately hammer-on at the first fret. This gives the melody more of human touch.
When grace notes happen inside a chord, they’re written before the chord in the tab, but you play them as part of the chord itself. For example, in bar 2 you play 021X, then immediately hammer-on the third fret of the E-string.
Inevitably, I’ve trimmed this one down from its 8 1/2 minute runtime. This arrangement includes the opening slow verse, then speeds up for the first chorus, then speeds up again for the second verse and chorus.
There’s nothing too tricky to play until the second half of the second verse. As well as the increased tempo, there’s a lot of jumping up and down the neck to handle.
But the hardest part for me was memorising the verses. The chorus has a very catchy melody and a clear chord structure. But the verses are meandering and wordy. The chord progression never settles into a pattern. And even changes slightly between the two verses.
A massive thanks once again to the generosity of Uke Hunt’s Patreon backers for keeping the site up and running this month.
And extra thanks to August’s Tenor level backers:
– Arthur Foley
– Brian
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Ely Fletcher
– Ivo
– Jeff K
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Leia-lee Doran
– Mary
– Nevylle Carroll
– Noah
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Rick Wurster
– Robert
– Steven Pituch
I hadn’t thought about Eagle-Eye Cherry’s Save Tonight since the Cretaceous period until it was requested on Patreon. But the chorus is still buried in the back of my brain.
Intro: Just strumming out the chords with a few hammer-ons. Don’t feel you have to slavishly follow the tab here. So long as you keep the feel of the original
Verse: A few challenges here. There’s a lot of movement up to the fifth fret and back, some quick chord changes and some pull-offs to deal with.
Chorus: The chorus is much easier to get in a groove with. Be sure to keep the strums on the second and fourth beats of each bar percussive. I’m almost moving into the range of them being chnks.
Solo: I kept the solo short and strummy. If you want to stretch out, you can double the number of bars (to make it the same length as the original) and introduce your own ideas.
Intro: I tried a few different ways to play this horn riff. And three of them crop up in this arrangement.
The version in the intro is by far the trickiest but also the truest to the original. If you’d rather avoid playing it (and that’s the sensible choice), you can replace the first four bars with bars 69-72. Or, if you have the chops of Rabbi Vole, you can make the opposite substitution.
Verse: The verses are much simpler. The third verse is especially simple, as it’s just the melody without chords.
Chorus: The chorus starts with just blasting out the strums with the melody alternating between B and C on the A-string.
The chorus ends with the horn riff transposed to Bb.
Middle: The trickiest section of the whole song. You have to deal with the melody whilst the chords alternate between G and C. I highly recommend slowing this section right down when you’re learning it before attempting it anywhere near full speed.
Bridge: A nice, simple section to recover after the middle.
Solo: A very easy solo too. It starts off mirroring the verse melody then descends from there. The bass has much more room to descend than the uke, so I had to cheat it a little.
Outro: Another variation on the horn riff. This time heading up the neck for the crescendo.
Nirvana’s In Bloom is a nice, easy one. It’s almost all strumming. There’s just a bit of fingerpicking in the first half of the verses. The rest is just blasting out chords with a few extra notes here and there.
The only challenging part is the second half of bar 2 (repeated in bar 30). There’s a quick walk-up on the g-string that’s played with all down strums. If you’re finding that too hard, you can switch to just strumming out the Bb chord.
