Green Day – Basket Case (Tab)

Back to my era with a tab of Green Day’s Basket Case.

It’s a very simple song. Other than bars 27-28, it’s all first position beginner chords and a straightforward melody. The only thing that makes it difficult is the tempo. So be sure to practice slowly and gradually build up speed.

One slight oddity comes in bars 6 and 15. Here there’s a hammer-on on the C-string from a note way back in the previous bar. I do this to create a subtle change to the G chord in order to emphasise the much stronger second note in the bar.

Links

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Beastie Boys – Sure Shot

Outkast – So Fresh, So Clean

Would I Lie to You? Theme

Sublime – What I Got (Solo)

Blackpink – Pretty Savage

Miley Cyrus – Flowers (Tab)

Hold on to you hairpieces, I’m covering a song while it’s still popular: Miley Cyrus’s recent hit Flowers

Intro: Just picking out a Cmaj7 chord.

Verse: Nothing too difficult here. Mostly standard chords and a melody in the first position.

Chorus: Here’s where it gets tricky with a lot of movement up and down the neck.

Unusually, the chorus starts out with a rest. From there, it’s straight to the hardest bit of the piece with the hammer-on between bars 15 and 16 (I make a horlicks of it myself the second time around).

Next in bar 16 is octave slide which is a nod to the song’s bass line.

And another challenge in bar 22 with a hammer-on and pull-off run.

Bridge: A mercifully easy section to recover from the chorus.

Links

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Watch on YouTube

Tracklist

Max & Veronica – Dirty Mother For You
Andy Eastwood and Peter Moss – William Tell Overture
Uke Heads – The Night
Taimane – Phantom of the Opera
Jenifer Cabrera – Chega de saudade
Jake Shimabukuoro & Andrew Molina – Toastmaker's Revenge
Charming Disaster – Monsters
Danny Yau – Neurotica outro
MiG Martins – O Bem do Mar

Dooley Wilson – As Time Goes By (Tab)

As Time Goes By is most famous for its inclusion in Casablanca. But the song was written a decade earlier by Herman Hupfeld for the long forgotten musical Everybody’s Welcome.

Intro: A quick campanella intro. There are a million things you could do here.

Verse: The slow pace of the song make this fairly simple to play. Just a trip up the fretboard in bar 7 to deal with. Another opportunity for your own spin at the end of each verse. I went jazzy in the first verse and bluesy in the second.

Bridge: Bringing out the strums for the bridge.

Solo: The solo is based on the melody shifted up an octave. With a few passing notes, a pre-bend (i.e. bending the note before plucking it then releasing) and a descending-ascending run in bars 23-24.

Links

Buy the Dooley Wilson version
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Johnny Nash – I Can See Clearly Now (Tab)

Today it’s one of the rare cheerful songs I like: I Can See Clearly Now. I worked from the original Johnny Nash version but I’m more familiar with Jimmy Cliff version so a bit of that might have snuck in.

I’ve tried to keep the arrangement loose and breezy to match the song. So focus on the mood when you’re playing rather than nailing down every note exactly.

Links

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More soul tabs and chords
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Herman Vandecauter has an extensive examination of the Madeiran machete (the forerunner to the ukulele).

Nick Offerman has a new batch of ukuleles almost done (but you won’t be able to buy one unless you’re his buddy).

The unfortunate history of politicians and instruments in the uke family continues with Ed Milliband’s guitarlele.

Window Shopping

– Ortega HYDRA ZS double neck uke.
– RIGuitars‘ latest custom is a Pegasus Uke.
– Paul Gilbert demonstrates the electric RG Ibanez ukulele. I think it’s fair to say he’s better with an electric drill than he is with a ukulele.

Patreon

A massive thanks to all Uke Hunt’s Patreon backers for keeping the site up and running this month. And double thanks go to these legendary patrons of the arts:

– Arthur Foley
– Colleen Petticrew
– Dan
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Ivo
– Jameson Gagnepain
– Jeff K
– Jeff Otto
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Kie77
– Lisa Johnson
– Monika Kolodziejczyk
– Moses Kamai
– Nevylle Carroll
– Nick Parsons
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Robert
– Thorsten Neff
– Tina Knight

If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to all previous exclusive tabs including March’s:

Depeche Mode – Just Can’t Get Enough

De La Soul – Me Myself and I

Andrew WK – Party Hard

Laurie Anderson – From the Air

Tove Styrke – Same My Name

Burt Bacharach – I’ll Never Fall in Love Again (Tab)

Burt Bacharach is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. So I had to do a little tribute to him with I’ll Never Fall in Love Again. For this arrangement, I worked from the Elvis Costello version that cropped up in The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Even in an apparently simple pop tune like this, Bacharach snuck in interesting little moves. So in bar 15 there’s a B7 chord with the melody hitting Ab. Which is the minor third of F creating tension in the key is F major. And there’s a bar of 2/4 cutting the melody short in bar 17.

Links

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More 60s tabs and chords
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Kung Fu Master (Tab)

A recent nostalgia trip compelled me to knock up a version of Masato Ishizaki’s music from the 80s arcade game Kung-Fu Master.

The tune is very quick. Even slowed down, it’s still a challenge. In order to cut the finger movement to a minimum, it’s arranged campanella style so the work is done with the picking hand and fretting hand doesn’t have to move much.

Links

More Game Theme tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon