Now you’ve got your perverted zither costume together, here are some tunes you may wish to bone up on before the big night.

Addams Family Theme Tune
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Chopin – Funeral March
Jonathan Coulton – Re: Your Brains
The Cranberries – Zombie
Dance Macabre
The Decemberists – Shankill Butchers
The Doors – People Are Strange
The Fall – Mansion
The Gothic Archies – Freakshow
Halloween Theme
Harry Potter – Hedwig’s Theme
In Heaven (From Eraserhead
The Last of Us II –
Through the Valley
London Bridge Is Falling Down (From Halloween)
The Misfits – Dig Up Her Bones
The Misfits – Halloween
My Chemical Romance – Welcome to the Black Parade
Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (from The Exorcist)
One Night Ultimate Werewolf – Fantasy Theme
Ray Parker Jr – Ghostbusters
The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil
Gustavo Santaolalla – Last of Us Theme
Skrillex – Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites
This is Halloween (From Nightmare Before Christmas)
Tom Waits – Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard
Twilight Zone Theme
Twin Peaks Theme
The Walking Dead Theme
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London
The White Stripes – Little Ghost

Five Halloween riffs/intros: Thriller, Devil Went Down to Georgia, Sweet Dreams, Don’t Fear the Reaper and Jump in the Line
Five More Halloween riffs: Voodoo Child (Slight Return), All the Good Girls Go To Hell, Suspiria Theme, Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, Evil Eye.

And a tutorial to spookify your playing:

Spooky Ukulele Sounds

The Cranberries – Zombie (Tab)

Zombie has had a strange journey from song about the troubles in Northern Ireland to a halloween staple. A change that some people might be happy to see. I remember the band Therapy? (who, unlike The Cranberries, are from Northern Ireland) attacking the song for its over-the-top imagery.

The chords for this arrangement are Em – C – G – D all the way through. Which is the same as the original (although the original is tuned slightly sharp).

The trickiest bit is recreating the vocal crack she does in the chorus in bar 28 then in bars 32-34. You can duplicate the vocal effect by stopping the strings ringing right after the hammer-on.

The solo is made up mostly of double stops on the E- and A-strings. That does create a few tricky sections (like 46) bit is more straightforward than most solos.

Links

Buy the original
More Irish tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
Remi Harris – All of Me
Keston Cobblers Club – Happy Hour
Duo Travessia – Tristeza do Jeca
Jonathan Lewis – Thunderstruck
The Bridge City Sinners – Devil Like You
Elisabeth Pfeiffer – Voyager III:II
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – Presto Tango
Dani Joy – Beautiful Strange World
Pam F. – Piccolo Rag Thanks to @ukeist
Norwegian Uke – Llorando se fue

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can’t Stop

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The Strokes – Last Nite (Solo)

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Linkin Park – In the End

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Sum 41 – Fat Lip

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Coheed and Cambria – Welcome Home

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Dolly Parton – Jolene (Tab)

Following on from I Will Always Love You with the song Dolly wrote on the same day. I don’t know how it’s possible to write two all-time classics in one day.

The arrangement starts out with a very basic version of the chorus. You could play the verse in this style and create a nice arrangement.

Next is an approximation of the intro riff from the original. The syncopated rhythm is tricky to get the hang of. Apparently, even the session musicians had trouble getting it down. I’ve made a close up video for just this section. If you want to play along to the original, you’ll have to tune down half a step to Gb B Eb Ab.

The verse and chorus are based on an alternating thumb picking pattern (moving between the C and g-strings) like the original. Unfortunately, the melody sometimes strays onto the C-string which complicates matters. I found it a little tricky to switch in and out of the alternating pattern. But after starting super-low and gradually increasing the speed, it started to feel almost on autopilot after a while.

Links

Buy the original
More Country tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Dolly Parton – I Will Always Love You (Tab)

I Will Always Love You is one of those songs where a cover version has completely obliterated the original. But Dolly’s version is still my favourite. Specifically, the 70s countrified version rather than the syrupy 80s version. So I used that one as the basis for this arrangement. Although some of the phrasing might be closer to the Whitney Houston version.

The intro is the trickiest part of the arrangement with a couple of bends and a bar of 2/4 to navigate.

The arrangement uses a lot of arpeggios. So you really need to emphasise the melody notes so it doesn’t just become a mush. But you can rely on most people being familiar with the melody, so they’ll do some of the work for you.

You do need to prepare a bit for the high vocal trills in bars 15 and 19. There are open strings either side of those to give you a bit more time to move.

Links

Buy the original
More Country tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

– Continuing in the tradition of Neil Armstrong, SpaceX launched a Martin ukulele into space along with a load of other junk.
– Jake Shimabukuro has announced a new album with a cavalcade of stars including Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffett and Bette Midler.
– The new Life is Strange game is out and ukulelist mxmtoon is the singing voice of the lead character and has a new EP of songs from the game out. I’ve done some LiS tabs and chords in the past and will probably do more once I play this game.
– And, if you’re sick of playing ukulele irl, you can play one in Awaceb’s upcoming game Tchia.
– LP tells Guitar World that the ukulele doesn’t have to be cutesy.

Patreon

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

– Arthur Foley
– Colleen Petticrew
– Dan
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Fiona Keane
– Jeff K
– Katherine Penney
– Kie77
– Leia-lee Doran
– Lisa Johnson
– Mr Daniel Barclay
– Nick Parsons
– Olga deSanctis
– Paulina Banach-Mazur
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Thorsten Neff

If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to a number of exclusive tabs including last month’s Nina Simone’s I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free and this month’s Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven.

Tenacious D – Fuck Her Gently (Tab)

Here’s my take on Jack Black and Kyle Gass’s lewd ode to soft loving. But if you don’t tell anyone what the title is, it functions nicely as a pleasant tune. The jump up the neck at the start of the chorus (bars 19 and 20) is particularly sweet.

And there are a few jumps up the neck to deal with. But the trickiest part is the rapid pull-on and hammer-on section in bar 26. If you struggling with that, you can replace the whole 10-12-10-8 with the A-string, 10th fret.

Links

Buy the original
More rock tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Peter Ivers & David Lynch – In Heaven (Tab)

If you’re ever in the mood for a strange but hilarious movie, I highly recommend Eraserhead. One of the film’s many joys is the Lady in the Radiator song. The song has had a life outside the movie as In Heaven becoming a Pixies live favourite and a jazz odyssey by Julian Lage.

I’ve arranged the tune in D minor for ease of playing. And with it being so slow and sparse, it’s a pretty simple one to play. The only oddity is Ab chord in bar 8. Ab isn’t a chord you expect to find in a song in D minor. So it adds a dissonant and unsettling edge to the song (to match the rest of the movie). I bend the notes on the E-string, 4th fret in that bar to accentuate the dissonant sound.

Links

Buy the original
More movie tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Frank and Nancy Sinatra – Something Stupid (Tab)

Something Stupid was made famous by Frank and Nancy Sinatra and written by C Carson Parks (who I just learned is brother of Van Dyke Parks). More recently, Lola Marsh recorded a ukulele version for Better Call Saul.

There’s plenty of scope for your own noodles if you want to take them. I stuck close to the original in the intro but you can let loose as much as you like here. After that, I’ve thrown in a lot of my own twiddles. Keeping them nice and cheesy to match the rest of the song. I using the C major scale and throw in a few chromatic notes.

Links

Buy the Sinatra version
More jazz tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon