There are loads of less common chords in the song. And a fair amount of hopping around the fretboard. But the tempo is very slow and there’s plenty of room for changing the phrasing of the melody. So this one is fairly straightforward to play.
Intro: Usually, you’re free to play around with the intro. Not in this case. Robertson’s intro is iconic and doing anything other than playing it as close to the original as possible is sacrilege.
Verses: The melody in the verses is a little fiddly, but it’s the third verse that’s most challenging. There’s an extra campanella bit in bar 37 (“Waitin’ on Judgement Day”) and a trickier ending to the verse.
Chorus: I haven’t tried to cram in all the vocal lines in the chorus in order to keep things clear. Most obviously, the arrangement doesn’t include the overlapping “you put the load…” lines (bar 46).
Placebo’s Pure Morning is hilariously unsuited the ukulele. But it’s always fun to have a go at those. You can decide for yourself whether it actually works because I’m not sure.
There’s no chord progression at all in the song. It’s just an E drone the whole way through (Eb in the original). To emphasise that, I’m playing an E on both the open E-string and on the C-string 4th fret whenever I get the chance.
As the song builds, the arrangement moves up the neck and uses some octaves. If you don’t have a 14th fret, you can always just mute the A-string. Or playing it open will work.
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Intro 1: The album version of the track starts with Martin Quittenton’s (completely out of place) little contrapuntal piece in 3/4 time. I almost skipped it but it’s a fun tune that’s worth learning by itself.
Intro 2: The second intro is much more in keeping with the song’s melancholy mood.
Verses: The verses are fairly straightforward. It’s mostly strummed with a few notes picked out here and there.
Solo: Loosely based on the original with lots of sliding around the fretboard. As always, throw some ideas of your own in here.
Intro: It’s a fun riff to noodle away on. I recommend learning this bit even if you don’t learn the whole song. (Put a capo on the first fret to play along with the original.)
Verse: The intro and verse are all fingerpicked with thumb on the C-string, index on the E and middle on the A. The verses are very repetitive, so I cut the second verse down to half. You might want to do the same with the first verse too.
Chorus: Like every Nirvana song, there’s a quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamic going on. So switch to strumming and bash out the chorus.
Outro: The riff again. This time played with a bit more abandon and hitting the open C-string any time you feel like. Then a dead simple ending.
Sunday Morning is the poppiest song The Velvet Underground’s debut album. It has a laid back, easy going vibe. And you have two days to learn it so get to work. Watish!
Intro: Played high up the neck to give a music box feel. But if it’s too cramped up there or your uke doesn’t have enough frets, you can play the same picking pattern with any inversion of F and Bb and it’ll work.
Verse: Switching from thumb and two finger picking in the intro to one finger per string for the start of the verse. It’s tricky to bring out the melody in bars 13-16 with the melody switching from the A-string down to the C. So emphasise those as much as you can while keeping the chill vibe.
Back to thumb and two finger picking from the Fmaj7 in bar 17 to bring out the descending low notes.
Chorus: Bringing in a few strums in the chorus for contrast.
Solo: The original solo has a bunch of hammer-ons, pull-offs and double stops. So I’ve used that concept for this solo rather than recreating it note for note.
Outro: Similar to the first bars of the verse. But here there’s a slide up to the fifth fret instead of the open A-string. I toyed with playing it this way in the verse and decided to hold it back for the outro. But give it a go in the verse and see how you feel about it.
