It’s Uke Hunt t-shirt season again! Most years around this time I do a run of t-shirts. This year you can buy them from either the US or the UK:

Pre-order now from US

Pre-order now from the UK

I’m using Teespring again. If you want one of the shirts they’ll only be available until 25th November.

The US Teespring has added a higher quality t-shirt since the last time. So I’ve upgraded to that one.

I’ve been using Teespring for many years now and it’s always worked well. My shirt came here (the UK) quickly and without any hassle. It’s nice quality. The one I have is six years old and it’s still in good shape.

Pre-order now from US

Pre-order now from the UK

For more information on the shirts and the system take a look at Teespring’s FAQ.

Warren Zevon – Keep Me in Your Heart (Tab)

Warren Zevon’s Keep Me in Your Heart is one of the emotional songs I know of. It was the final track on his final album The Wind released shortly before his death. It was used recently by Jimmy Carr to pay tribute to Sean Lock.

It’s a straight-forward one to play. Nothing too tricky and one finger per string picking all the way through.

Links

Buy the original
Don’t Let Us Get Sick tabs
Uke Hunt Patreon

Childish Gambino – Redbone (Tab)

I almost tried to pass off Childish Gambino’s Redbone as a Halloween song thanks to its inclusion in Get Out. Although Werewolf Bar Mitzvah will always be Donald Glover’s spookiest song.

Helpfully, Genius has a video of Redbone producer Ludwig Göransson breaking down all the parts in the song. Including a chord chart and sheet music. As well as being useful for learning the song, it’s interesting to see how the song grew. Well worth a watch.

One of the things he mentions in the video is the oddity of an extra bar in the second pre-chorus. To avoid making the tab unnecessarily long, I’ve tabbed the alternative bars next to each other. So first time around you play just bar 22 then skip to the chorus. And second time, you skip bar 22 and play bars 23 and 24 instead.

The picking in this is one-finger-per-string right up until the solo where I switch to strumming.

Links

Buy the original
More 2010s tabs
Uke Hunt Patreon

Nerf Herder – Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme (Tab)

Shamefully, I’ve never seen an episode of Buffy. I couldn’t even have hummed the theme tune before it was requested on the Patreon. Even so, it’s such a 90s-fest it gave me nostalgia.

And it’s dead simple. It’s mostly bashing out chords with a few single notes here and there.

Links

Buy the Buffy Theme
More Halloween tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

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