The theme is mostly just chords with a few notes picked out. The tricky bit comes right at the end (bars 8-9) that goes way up the fretboard. You can safely chop it short and end the run at the first 12th fret.
After that, I’ve added in the little theme that plays at the start of the tasks.
Amazingly, Our Town was the first song that Iris Dement wrote and she came up with the lyrics from beginning to end with no editing. Another fact I learned researching this song: The Goo Goo Doll’s Iris was named after her.
This arrangement is based on the original. But the first time I ever heard this song was Kate Rusby’s cover. So some of that version will have slipped in.
The backbone of the song is baby’s first chord progression: C – F – C – G7. That runs all the way through the song. The melody is also straightforward. It’s all contained in the first few frets. Plus, I’m playing it loosely and throwing in strums wherever it feels right. So there’s nothing too challenging here.
But if you want to stretch out, there’s plenty of room to do solo in the solos. The solos in my arrangement are of my own invention. So you’re welcome to ditch them and come up with your own. If you keep track of the chord changes and use the C major scale, you can’t go wrong.
I would recommend approaching each solo with an idea or a plan to explore. So I based the intro solo on the melody and kept it within the first four frets. For the second solo (bars 21-24) I start off with a country bend, then focus on holding the chord shapes and adding notes onto those. And the final solo (bars 49-52) I wanted to use campanella style playing (so the notes are spread across the strings).
Demand for ukuleles on Amazon rose more than any other instrument at the start of the pandemic according to Pattern.
A new album from Uke Hunt favourite Phredd, Quarantine Tunes, is a collection of performances he’s done for kids’ clubs, libraries and uke festivals over the last year.
Another long-time favourite, Howlin’ Hobbit has started selling video and document lessons starting with Mack the Knife.
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
– David Burt
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Fiona Keane
– Jeff K.
– Katherine Penney
– Kie77
– Leia-lee Doran
– Lisa Johnson
– Mr Daniel Barclay
– Nick Parsons
– Olga deSanctis
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Sandi Clement
– shitzbleak
– Thorsten Neff
– Trevor Mccravy
I first started working on this song three years ago. But while I was putting it together Morrissey went on one of his rants and I lost interest. But his recent fued with The Simpsons has motivated me to resurrect it.
The chords could not be simpler. Just Gm and Eb with a capo on the second fret (or Am and F without).
The riffs predate the song itself. They were first featured in Johnny Panic’s Not Bitter But Bored. The song was rewritten by Morrissey’s songwriting partner Alain Whyte who correctly thought it deserved wider attention.
The two choruses are slightly different. With the second chorus having the Gm minor lasting twice as long and capping off with an ascending riff. The chorus riff also acts as the outro but with the Gm riff repeating at the end.
The song starts with a direct copy of the the There Is A Light chord move: strumming d u d u – on F then u d – on G. From then on you can use this strum twice each for C and Fmaj7:
d – d – d u d u
And just one strum per chord on the rest.
To cap things off there’s a very simple New Order style solo.
I’ve been getting into classical music much more over the pandemic. I’ve occasionally got the over-ambitious impulse to try something on the ukulele. And the first part of Robert Schumann’s Five Pieces in a Folk Style is the only one to have made it through to this stage.
The piece is written for piano and cello. But this arrangement is almost entirely the cello part. The only time I dip into the piano part is bars 90 and 92.
There are plenty of challenging sections in the piece, but the part that took the most practice was the C section (not it’s official name). There’s also a very rapid section in bars 49-56 but that doesn’t require any scooting up and down the fretboard.
Phil Collins has one, “I will never forgive you for cheating,” song and one, “please forgive me for cheating,” song per marriage (he has a lot of these songs). This is the former.
I’ve cut the intro way down from the original version. You’re welcome to use any picking pattern and any inversion of the chords here.
The chorus is brilliant. It manages to pull of the trick of being both bleak and catchy.
The verses are angry and even more sparse than the chorus. In a case of do as I say not do as I do, let the verse breath and try not to rush the melody.
Finally, the legendary drum Phil (bar 60). I’ve gone with a descending run based on the D blues scale with the last four notes played chromatically.
For this arrangement I worked from the Cat Stevens version. But a few bits of the version I sang in primary school might have slipped in.
The two main sections of this song are wildly different in terms of difficulty. The verses are very straightforward. It’s a gentle melody with easy chords and a few supporting notes.
The section where he’s hammering away on the piano is much trickier. As well as the fast picking, the chord changes are more challenging. In the original, he speeds up considerably in these parts. I haven’t sped up anywhere near as much. And you could slow the tempo even further without spoiling the sound.
