To celebratre St Patrick’s Day on Friday, I thought I’d cover a song written by an American about a place in England. But it has become thouroughly Irish-ised through versions by The Dubliners and the Pogues version. For this arrangement, I worked from The Pogues version.
Intro: A quick couple of bars then into the thumb-and-strum pattern which carries on through the song i.e. the thumb alternates between picking the g- and C-strings with a couple of strums in between.
Verse: The first verse is the most straightforward. The second and third have a couple of extra bits of filigree.
Solo: I like The Pogues version, this arrangement modulates to C for the solo. It’s heavily based on the melody with a few extra twiddles. I particularly like the campanella run in bar 48. As always, feel free to add your own ideas and adapt it to your own style.
“Here at Kickstarter headquarters, we maintain a stable of fresh four-string talent, sort of a ‘Wrecking Crew’ of ukulele players,” said Taylor. “We put the campaign videos onscreen in the recording studio and just let these cats cook. Last week one of our players slipped into a uke trance—we knocked out twenty videos in one afternoon. It was like watching Miles Davis in his prime if he were promoting a water bottle that connects to Wi-Fi.
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
Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist, Nick Zinner is one of my favourite guitar players. His playing is very minimal but he makes every note count. Never more so than on Maps. This arrangement is minimal too. With a few nods to the acoustic version which is a bit more fleshed out with the chords.
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.
