Shane MacGowan was one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He’s most famous for Fairytale of New York but his back catalogue is full of incredible songs. Many of which I’ve covered in the past.
To commemorate his passing, I’ve chosen the typically riotous Sally MacLennane to tab. I slowed it down a fair amount from the original but it’s still very challenging.
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Just enough time before the big day to work up a version of Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas. Later recorded by the whole of Emerson, Lake and Palmer as well as U2, Mark Kozelek and many others. But it’s the original I worked from for this arrangement.
Intro: The trickiest part of the song. There are a few switches in the picking pattern which can get you in a jumble. The best way to get these down is to practice them very slowly (slow enough you don’t make any mistakes). So when you speed up, you can just play them on auto-pilot.
There’s also a bar of 2/4 (bar 8) followed by a big jump up the fretboard. Give yourself a little extra time by not holding the 23 notes and moving up during the open g-string.
Verse and Chorus: Much simpler. All done with basic chord shapes and a melody that fits in the first three frets.
Solo: The solo is adapted from Prokofiev’s Troika. It’s a nice, little Christmas ditty that fits well on the uke. Worth learning this section even if you’re not bothered about the rest of the song.
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Tracklist
Sweet Hollywiians – Rocking the Uke
Tomotaka Matsui – Take the A Train
Roxane Arnal et Michel Ghuzel – Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright)
Aline Kelly – Blackbird
Jim Beloff ft. Conservatorio A. Vivaldi String Quartet – Uke Can’t Be Serious
George Elmes – Funkulele!
Phil & Romeo – Ukulele Funk Jam
KimaMusic – Fake As Hell
Aly Peeler – Broken
U2’s song against violence and occupation, Sunday Bloody Sunday, is depressingly relevant again. So time for a tab.
Intro: The perfect example of how simple but effective The Edge’s riffs can be. It’s the easiest bit of the song and worth learning even if you’re not tackling the rest of the song.
Verse: The song has an odd structure at the beginning. There’s just half a verse before it dives into the bridge. This short verse is just fingerpicking. Whereas later verses are fuller with more strums.
Bridge: The first bridge starts out fingerpicked before switching to strums at the end of bar 12. Second time around, the whole bridge uses strums.
Chorus: The first chorus features a Bb chord, which you wouldn’t expect in the key of E minor. That short section (bars 30-33) provides a brief respite before the militaristic muted strums come back in.
Solo: A typically jingle-jangle Edge solo. The first half of the solo in this arrangement is faithful to the original. But the second half is faithful to the spirit rather than the exact notes. So long as you keep all the strings rattling, there’s plenty of scope for your own ideas here.
If you’re looking to entertain over the festive season, it’s time to start polishing up your holiday tunes and learning a few new ones. Here’s a rundown of everything Christmassy and seasonal on the site.
I’ve written 3 collections of easy Christmas tabs: How to Play Christmas Ukulele, Christmas Ukulele 2 and Christmas Ukulele 3.
You can currently pick up all three on sale for $12 by buying the whole Christmas Trilogy at once.
12 Days of Christmas
2000 Miles – The Pretenders
A Christmas Duel – The Hives and Cyndi Lauper
All I Want for Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey
Chiron Beta Prime – Jonathan Coulton
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love
Christmas for Cowboys – John Denver/Ballard C Boyd
Christmas in July – Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick
Cold Outside – Julia Nunes & Wade Johnson
Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
Fuck Christmas – Eric Idle
Give the Jew Girl Toys – Sarah Silverman
I Wish it Was Christmas Today – SNL/Julian Casablancas
It’s Cliched to be Cynical At Christmas – Half Man Half Biscuit
iPod X-mas – Hello Saferide
Let It Snow
Lumberjack Christmas/Christmases Past – Sufjan Stevens
Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight) – The Ramones
Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade
No Christmas – Zee Avi
Present Face – Garfunkel and Oates
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Run, Run Rudolph – Chuck Berry
Santa Baby
Santa Will Find You – Mindy Smith/Tripping Lily
Silver Bells – She & Him
Somewhere Only We Know – Keane/Lily Allen
Space Christmas – Allo Darlin
Suddenly it’s Christmas – Loudon Wainwright III
The Christmas Song – Weezer
The Christmas Song Song – Rocky and Balls
White Christmas
White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
Winter Wonderland
Year End Letter – Garfunkel and Oates
You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch
All I Want for Christmas is You – Mariah Carey
Away in a Manger
Carol of the Bells
Christmas for Cowboys – John Denver
Christmastime Is Here (from Charlie Brown)
German Christmas Carols
Happy Xmas (War is Over) – John Lennon
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Instrumental)
Jingle Bell Rock
Jingle Bells
Little Drummer Boy
Mele Kalikimaka
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence – David Bowie
Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade
O Christmas Tree (Single Note Version)
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa Baby
Silent Night (Harmonics Version)
Silent Night (Single Note Version)
Sleigh Ride – U900 / The Ventures
Various – Wilfried Welti’s Musikalisches Naschwerk für Solo Ukulele
We Three Kings
White Christmas
Winter Wonderland
Here’s my take on Send in the Clowns in a belated tribute to Stephen Sondheim. The most well known versions are the song are by Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra and, of course, Krusty the Clown. Although my favourite is by, occasional ukers, The Tiger Lillies.
Intro: I couldn’t resist referencing Entry of the Gladiators for this intro. Feel free to replace it with something more sensible.
Verses: The verses switch between 12/8 and 9/8. But it all flows nicely, so it’s not tricky to keep track of.
There is a brief pause in bar 5 where the tune hangs in mid-air (indicated by the frown with a dimple over the tab). That pause gives you a chance for that slide up to the seventh fret. When this bar happens a second time (bar 11) without a pause, it’s played on the A-string, 2nd fret so you don’t need to jump down to the C-string, 2nd fret.
Chorus: My favourite part of this song is the long descending line in bars 18 and 19. With the run starting at the E-string, 3rd fret and going almost chromatically to the open C.
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The Uke Hunt Black Friday sale is up and running with up to 70% off tab ebooks.
James Hill and Anne Janelle have a new Christmas record on the way: Midnight Clear.
Madonna’s ukulele sells for $300K after she kissed and licked it.
Ukulele magicians attempt to fool Penn and Teller.
Window Shopping
– The Ukulele Site is auctioning three incredible looking ukuleles to benefit Maui.
– 1920s California style banjo uke
– A Frankensteined banjo and tenor banjolele.
– John Melville Kelly art print. (Thanks to HermanVDC)
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
– BigHempin
– Colleen Petticrew
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Ivo
– Jameson Gagnepain
– Jeff K
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Kevin finn
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– Margit Stadlmann
– Mary
– Michael Lufkin
– Moses Kamai
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Robert
– Tina Knight
If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to all previous exclusive tabs including November’s: Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden
I first heard Sea of Love by Phil Phillips The Twilights when Cat Power covered it. I worked from the Phil Phillips version for this arrangement, but I’m sure some of the Cat Power snuck in.
Intro: I’ve shortened the intro and thrown in a few twiddles. There’s plenty you can do in this section to make it your own.
Verse: The verse melody is sparse but very effective. I didn’t want to add too much and dilute it. But it is on the scant side on the ukulele.
Chorus: In the chorus, the melody goes from scant to barely existing. Cat Power ditches it entirely in her version. Which is a way you can go in your version. It only crops up once in this arrangement.
Solo: I love the chord progression in this song, and I wanted the solo to emphasise it. So the solo mostly just uses notes from the chords. As always, don’t feel you have to copy this version.
As you expect from the Foos, Learn to Fly is a straightforward rocker. So a lot of strumming and nothing too intricate.
The trickiest part comes in some of the quick switches from G to Dm. One of these shows up for the first time in bar 5. Here there’s an open-G used as part of the melody to give you a little extra time to change chords. The second comes in the chorus (at the end of bar 13). Here you strum all the strings open and hammer-on an entire Dm chord.
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