I thought I’d keep the Britpop theme going with my favourite of the Britpop bands: Pulp. I couldn’t decided on just one song so there are two posts today. And there’s every chance of more in the future. They were a great band.
Disco 2000 is prime ukulele group fodder. It’s a got a big singalong chorus, simple chords and some fancy bits for the show offs.
For the folks who are keeping it simple in the chord sheet I’ve just referred to the main F and C chords (other than in the intro). You can play that and it’ll fit great. Or you can play the riff which switches in sus4 chords (a very common move in Pulp songs) like this:
You can use the same two bar pattern as the riff almost all the way through the song. So just the strumming goes like this:
d u d – x u – u
– u – u d u d –
Use that all through the verses and for the first two lines of the chorus. Then do d – d – d u d u on the Cm and two down strums each on the Fsus4 and F. Together that sounds like this:
They’ve been updated with a sleek new look more in line with the site. Plus more info, new arrangements and videos.
If You’ve Already Bought Them
Firstly, I’m insanely grateful. It means so much to me that people are willing to lay down a bit of their hard-earned money for my stuff. I couldn’t run the site without that support and after nearly 7 years of doing this it’s still amazing to me that it’s my job to write about ukuleles.
As a little thanks for that support if you bought the first edition of any of these books you get the second edition free. You should have had an email from me with a link to a new download last week. If you haven’t just send me a message with the ebook you bought and the email you used when you bought it and I’ll fix you up.
How to Play Ukulele Strums
The biggest problem I see new ukers having is with strumming patterns.
You can pretty easily find chords online for most songs but you’re usually left on your own to sort out a strumming pattern.
With this ebook I’m fixing that two ways:
– Providing a whole bunch of strumming patterns. There are 49 in the book covering different time signatures, genres and occasions. All with video and audio examples.
– Understanding how a strumming pattern fits into a song. I think this is the biggest barrier for new folks. After reading this book you should be able to listen to a song and have a much better idea of what strumming pattern to use and how it fits in with the song.
This is my most straight-ahead fun ebook. Before starting work on it I felt a bit in a rut with my playing. Like I was playing the same thing every day. So I started playing around with a slide and it got me really excited again.
In the short term it was exciting to have a new toy and new sounds to play around with.
Even more importantly in the long term it made me appreciate how restrictions can open up new ideas and new avenues. With a slide being less flexible than fingers I had to delve into new tunings and harmonics much more deeply than I had before.
And that’s what I hope people will get from reading this ebook. It’s definitely not a book for beginners. But if you’ve been playing a while and are feeling slightly jaded then I’d highly recommend playing around with a slide.
For the update I’ve made the anthems much easier to play. And I’ve added duet versions with easy to play, single-note melody and backing chords.
The ebook has:
– Easy to play solo ukulele arrangements of 7 national anthems.
– Even easier to play duet version with a single note melody and chords for backing.
– Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the UK, the USA (and a mystery bonus solo tab – which is less of a mystery if you’ve got good flag knowledge).
There’s some sort of amorphous Britpop 20th Anniversary going on at the moment with people celebrating and denigrating it.
Added to that, Damon Albarn has just released a ukulele song about an orphaned elephant. So I didn’t have any choice other than to write it up.
Alert: There are large swathes of this song where I’m not sure what’s happening in the lyrics so don’t trust those.
Suggested Strumming
This strumming pattern is a bit involved. Here it is:
You can do the exact same strum for the D – F – C bit.
Make sure you stop the strings from ringing on the rests (by releasing the pressure on your fretting hand and muting the strings with your strumming hand).
I’ve included the little descending bit at the end of the C chord. But if you find it too fiddly you can just play a straight C chord there.
Here’s the ukulele solo played in the live Kimmel version. It’s similar to the keyboard solo on the record. But different enough to screw you up if you try to play along with it.
Hot on the heels of Cincinnati Flow Rag, here’s another Reverend Gary Davis tune from David Beckingham. David retains Rev’s alternated picking with lots of thumb and two finger picking in his arrangement.
When I’m analysing a chord progression I like to think of it in terms of a story. With each chord being a new mood and scene and pushing the story forward.
For example, play a simple chord progression like C – F – G7 – C.
The C chord is the family at home all safe and settled. The F chord moves somewhere unfamiliar with the kids wandering off into the woods and finding a gingerbread house.
Then the G7 chord is pivotal. It’s the part that has you on the edge of your seat waiting for what comes next. If you stop a progression on the G7 it’s ending the story, “Then the witch grabbed the annoying kid and marched him towards the oven. The End.” There’s a tension that you need to resolve.
That propels the progression back to C. Taking you back home where you can feel safe and settled.
A good chord is one that tells its part of the story. You can read a whole lot more about this in the book I wrote about chords. But here are my favourites. Let me know yours in the comments.
Dm
The saddest of all the chords. I don’t know why but it makes people weep instantly.
C is the most common chord so it’s good to spice it up sometimes. For this inversion of the chord (which I’ll refer to as C/e) you just move your finger up from the 3rd fret to the 7th fret.
The high E gives it a bit of sweetness at the top end. And makes it sound less final than the usual C chord. So it’s a good place to start a chord progression which heads towards the final C.
Fmaj7 gets overlooked a lot. Probably because it’s usually rendered in chord books as 2413 (presumably by either people who’ve never played the chord or shadow puppet masters). The vastly easier way of playing it is 5500.
I find Fmaj7 a very hard chord to pin down. It’s relaxed but it has a melancholy edge to it. It has the sweetness of a standard F chord. But it also has the tension between E and F notes. Hold down the chord and play the C and E strings together and you’ll hear how dissonant it is.
My favourite property of diminished chords is that all the chord inversions up the neck have the same shape. For example the Cdim7 (or Co7) has these inversions:
So all these chords have the same notes. Just in a different order. The notes on the first chord (going from the g-string to the A-string) are: A – Eb – F# – C. On the second chord it’s: C – F# – A – Eb. On the third: Eb – A – C – F#. And finally: F# – C – Eb – A.
Same notes, different order. Try this with any other chord shape and you’ll get completely different notes.
I regard it as the ‘girl tied to the train tracks’ chord. It’s a nervous chord. Full of peril.
In a Progression
Here I’m just playing the inversions of Cdim7 going up the neck in sequence.
This is what I went with for my favourite chord. It’s just C7 with the G moved up one fret. You can also play it like this.
It has a double dose of tension with the 7th note and the raised fifth. If I play it I can’t get on with my day until I play an F chord afterwards. That makes it a great chord to add to the end of a progression to propel you back to the home chord.
In a Progression
Here’s an 8 bar blues with the Caug7 at the end moving you back to the start of the progression.
Let me know your favourite chord (or chords) in the comments. Especially if there’s one you think I’ve overlooked. I enjoyed putting this post together and might well do a follow up in future.
I’m still enjoying She & Him Volume 3. Definitely their best so far. I did I Could’ve Been Your Girl when it came out. And since then I’ve had a few requests for Turn to White. The album’s ukulele track. Which I’m more than happy to do. Unlike that song she did with Prince which I’m not going to do no matter how many requests I get.
To play along with the record you’ll need to tune down a step to F# – B – Eb – G#. But if you can just play it exactly the same in standard tuning if you can’t be arsed retuning.
Picking
If you want to play it picking style use the thumb and two finger method. With the thumb covering the g- and C-strings. You can just use this pattern with all the chords in the song.
I’ve started accepting Bitcoin as payment for my ebooks. I made my first sale the other day and I’m excited to get into it. Right now the ebooks are 50% off when you buy with bitcoins. Partly because transaction fees are lower, partly because I’m interested in the possibilities and partly because I haven’t got an automated system for email delivery (but I spend all my time either asleep or on the internet so it shouldn’t be long. You can buy with Bitcoin here.
New Releases
– Leeds ukulele troubadour, Look Yonder’s self titled EP.
– Tony Penultimate (aka Peter Brooke Turner aka the tall one off of the UOGB) has a new album out this weekend Adventures in Gibberish. It’ll be available on CD Baby and The Ukes’ website. UPDATE: The release date has been pushed back a little to Wednesday 16th. I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait.
– Arhoolie’s reissue of Papa Lemon Nash.
