In keeping with the theme of the song, Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon is a mish-mash. Including some country harmonic, funky bass, cheesy 80s keyboards and a catchy pop chorus.
Intro: A bit of everything here: the guitar riff, muted strums for the drums and a bit of harmonica.
Verse and Pre-Chorus: A fair bit of sliding up and down here but nothing too challenging.
Chorus: This is where it gets tricky. The melody notes here are very fast. You’ll need to use alternate picking to get them up to speed.
Bridge: I forgot this section existed before I relistened to the song!
Solo: A brief solo that I cobbled together based mostly on the chords.
A New England was originally by Billy Bragg and made more famous by by Kirsty MacColl. This arrangement starts with a riff inspired by Johnny Marr’s intro on Kirsty MacColl’s version. After that, it’s closer to the Billy Bragg version.
I’ve reduced the tempo for my recording. There are a lot of fast notes in it. With the most challenging run being bars 59-60. If you can play that at the tempo of the MacColl version, you’re a way better player than me.
Tempo-wise, this version is most similar to the Lil Green version. But I took inspiration from all three versions.
There are a heap of places in the song for little licks, and I’ve included a solo as well. As always, I recommend using the tab as inspiration for your own ideas rather than slavishly following each lick.
When soloing, I mostly thought in terms of the D blues scale (D – F – G – Ab – A – C – D). In addition to that, I threw in a few notes that crop up in the chords: Db and Bb. And a couple of chromatic runs (in bars 31-32 and the blues turnaround in bars 35-36).
I spend most of my time here posting angry, cynical songs. But I do occassionally deal with matters of the heart. So for Valentine’s Day, here’s a rundown of some of some of my favourite love song tabs. And for those of you celebrating St Skeletor’s Day on the 15th, there are some songs of rejection, scorn and infidelity for you to play between pushing couples holding hands into a puddles.
Valentine’s Day
The Beach Boys – God Only Knows
Definitely the best love song ever written and a strong contender for greatest song of all time.
Losing My Religion cropped up my favourite movie of last year, Aftersun, in an excruciating karaoke scene. Pro tip: when selecting a karaoke song, don’t go for one with an outro that’s just one note over and over at a crawling tempo.
You could make an argument for this being a twisted Valentine song. But I think its violent images of obsessive love make it a good one for St Skeletor’s Day.
Lizzo is leaning a bit too far into the positivity stuff these days for my taste. I prefer her songs that have a bit more “fuck you” mixed in with the self empowerment.
Because the song is just a verse repeated, I’ve arranged it slightly differently each time. First time is just a straight ahead melody and chords. Second time introduces harmony to the melody line. And third time is the harmonised melody with a bit of strumming.
There are a couple of bars of 6/4 in each verse that might trip you up. I found the one in bar 9 quite natural to play. But the one in bar 13 tripped me up much more.
Nirvana’s ever-present quiet-loud-quit-loud dynamics are in full effect on Heart-Shaped Box. So using fingerpicking for the quiet bits and strumming for the loud bits is a must in this arrangement.
All the picking is one-finger-per-string style. That means you’re picking consecutive notes on g- and C-strings (e.g. in bar 5). I’d usually avoid that as it’s less natural than using thumb then index finger. But it works out much better for the rest of the verse.
There are a whole bunch of bends in the song. The trickiest of them are in the chorus where you’re playing chords on the 2nd/3rd fret then bending at the 9th fret. You’re also bending whilst fretting the C-string for an extra challenge.
On the upside, the bends sound better if they’re a little out of tune so you don’t have to worry too much about that.
Intro and Verse: Based on a descending chord progression and a simple melody line. Nothing challenging here.
Chorus: Here’s where the challenge starts. There’s an ascending riff on the C-string going along side the busier melody. I’ve used a bit of campanella style playing to deal with the quick notes.
Solo: Heavily based on the verse with a few extra twiddles. A good place to play around with your own ideas.
