Today’s post is a guest tab from Herman Vandecauter.
Verdi’s Triumphal March is one of those ubiquitous tunes you’ll know even if you don’t think you do. And Herman’s minimal and highly effective arrangement draws out those elements.
You can listen to and buy (on a pay-what-you-like basis)
Herman’s arrangement on Bandcamp. And you can follow him on YouTube.
A little tribute Stephen Sondheim who passed away last week.
Like the original, the arrangement is sparse. Which lets the melody shine all the more. It also makes it fairly simple to play. There’s a stretch with the pinkie finger in bars 13 and 29. But otherwise not much to trip you up.
Tracklist
Hal Brolund – A Hundred and Ten in the Shade
Bears In Trees – Great Heights
Raiatea Helm – Punahou
Laura Anglade – You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To
UkuleleJarmo. – Canarios
Ukulayers – It's the Middle of the Night
Irene Diaz – Push
Dave Beckingham – Hot Moments With You, Dear
Martina DaSilva – Complications of a Broken Heart (On tenor guitar)
If you’re looking to entertain over the festive season, it’s time to start polishing up your holiday tunes and learning a few new ones. Here’s a rundown of everything Christmassy and seasonal on the site.
I’ve written 3 collections of easy Christmas tabs: How to Play Christmas Ukulele, Christmas Ukulele 2 and Christmas Ukulele 3.
You can pick up all three for the price of 2 by buying the whole Christmas Trilogy at once.
12 Days of Christmas
2000 Miles – The Pretenders
A Christmas Duel – The Hives and Cyndi Lauper
All I Want for Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey
Chiron Beta Prime – Jonathan Coulton
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love
Christmas for Cowboys – John Denver/Ballard C Boyd
Christmas in July – Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick
Cold Outside – Julia Nunes & Wade Johnson
Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
Fuck Christmas – Eric Idle
Give the Jew Girl Toys – Sarah Silverman
I Wish it Was Christmas Today – SNL/Julian Casablancas
It’s Cliched to be Cynical At Christmas – Half Man Half Biscuit
iPod X-mas – Hello Saferide
Let It Snow
Lumberjack Christmas/Christmases Past – Sufjan Stevens
Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight) – The Ramones
Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade
No Christmas – Zee Avi
Present Face – Garfunkel and Oates
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Run, Run Rudolph – Chuck Berry
Santa Baby
Santa Will Find You – Mindy Smith/Tripping Lily
Silver Bells – She & Him
Somewhere Only We Know – Keane/Lily Allen
Space Christmas – Allo Darlin
Suddenly it’s Christmas – Loudon Wainwright III
The Christmas Song – Weezer
The Christmas Song Song – Rocky and Balls
White Christmas
White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
Winter Wonderland
Year End Letter – Garfunkel and Oates
You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch
All I Want for Christmas is You – Mariah Carey
Away in a Manger
Carol of the Bells
Christmas for Cowboys – John Denver
Christmastime Is Here (from Charlie Brown)
German Christmas Carols
Happy Xmas (War is Over) – John Lennon
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Instrumental)
Jingle Bell Rock
Jingle Bells
Little Drummer Boy
Mele Kalikimaka
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence – David Bowie
O Christmas Tree (Single Note Version)
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa Baby
Silent Night (Harmonics Version)
Silent Night (Single Note Version)
Sleigh Ride – U900 / The Ventures
Various – Wilfried Welti’s Musikalisches Naschwerk für Solo Ukulele
We Three Kings
White Christmas
Winter Wonderland
RHCP’s I Could Have Lied was written by Anthony Kiedis after Sinead O’Connor broke up with him. Who would have thought that relationship wouldn’t last?
Blood Sugar Sex Magik is packed with great riffs and this one is no exception. It works nicely on the uke too. Well worth learning it even if you’re not learning the whole song.
The intro and the verse are all played with thumb and two finger picking. With the exception of the rapid notes on the E-string, 3rd fret in bar 10 where I’m using alternate picking to keep up the speed. The part I struggled with here is the pull-off between bars 10 and 11. It involves holding a note on the C-string while pulling off on the A-string. For an easier version, you can skip the note on the C-string.
The chorus is fairly straightforward with most of it being chord strums apart from the riff.
The solo uses a few elements from the original. But I’ve changed it up to suit my own playing and I suggest you do the same.
Andy Griffith never made it to this side of the Atlantic, but I was still very familiar with the Andy Griffith Show theme tune somehow.
The bouncy tune and chord stabs make this one a lot of fun to play. Although it’s tricky to play up to speed. Definitely one to play very slowly until you’ve got it under your fingers.
Buy the original
More TV Theme tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon
– Two sad losses for the ukulele world: Tin Pan Alley and uke enthusiast Fred Fallin and ukulelist and boogie board inventor Tom Morey.
– Uke Hunt favourite, Lil Rev is launching a new ukulele book called Blue Arpeggios. You can back find out more and back the project on GoFundMe.
– LP tells Guitar World the ukulele doesn’t have to be cutesy.
– Some interesting new additions to the Ukulele 2021 Spotify playlist including the return of Beirut, Mac Miller and Young Thug, and the write and record and album in a day project from YouTubers Rob Scallon and Andrew Huang.
Window Shopping
– Amazing looking Kanile’a 2021 Platinum.
– Maori artist, Samuel Mangakahia’s carved ukuleles and guitars.
– In case you don’t know which instrument you want to play.
– Ibanez’s oddly shaped Iceman uke.
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
– Fi Keane
– Jeff K
– Katherine Penney
– Kie77
– Leia-lee Doran
– Lisa Johnson
– Mr Daniel Barclay
– Nick Parsons
– Olga deSanctis
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– QN
– Robert
– TAUDY Stark
– Thorsten Neff
If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to all previous exclusive tabs including October’s: Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins.
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:
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.
For more information on the shirts and the system take a look at Teespring’s FAQ.
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.
Buy the original
Don’t Let Us Get Sick tabs
Uke Hunt Patreon
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.
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