Christmas Tabs and Chords 2023

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.

Christmas eBooks

I’ve written 3 collections of easy Christmas tabs: How to Play Christmas Ukulele, Christmas Ukulele 2 and Christmas Ukulele 3.

You can currently pick up all three on sale for $12 by buying the whole Christmas Trilogy at once.

Chords

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

Tabs

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
Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade
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

Stephen Sondheim – Send in the Clowns (Tabs)

Stephen Sondheim – Send in the Clowns (Tab)

Here’s my take on Send in the Clowns in a belated tribute to Stephen Sondheim. The most well known versions are the song are by Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra and, of course, Krusty the Clown. Although my favourite is by, occasional ukers, The Tiger Lillies.

Intro: I couldn’t resist referencing Entry of the Gladiators for this intro. Feel free to replace it with something more sensible.

Verses: The verses switch between 12/8 and 9/8. But it all flows nicely, so it’s not tricky to keep track of.

There is a brief pause in bar 5 where the tune hangs in mid-air (indicated by the frown with a dimple over the tab). That pause gives you a chance for that slide up to the seventh fret. When this bar happens a second time (bar 11) without a pause, it’s played on the A-string, 2nd fret so you don’t need to jump down to the C-string, 2nd fret.

Chorus: My favourite part of this song is the long descending line in bars 18 and 19. With the run starting at the E-string, 3rd fret and going almost chromatically to the open C.

Links

Buy the Sinatra version
More 70s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Friday Links

The Uke Hunt Black Friday sale is up and running with up to 70% off tab ebooks.

James Hill and Anne Janelle have a new Christmas record on the way: Midnight Clear.

Madonna’s ukulele sells for $300K after she kissed and licked it.

Ukulele magicians attempt to fool Penn and Teller.

Window Shopping
– The Ukulele Site is auctioning three incredible looking ukuleles to benefit Maui.
1920s California style banjo uke
A Frankensteined banjo and tenor banjolele.
John Melville Kelly art print. (Thanks to HermanVDC)

Patreon

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
– BigHempin
– Colleen Petticrew
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Ivo
– Jameson Gagnepain
– Jeff K
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Kevin finn
– Leia-lee Doran
– Margit Stadlmann
– Mary
– Michael Lufkin
– Moses Kamai
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Robert
– Tina Knight

If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to all previous exclusive tabs including November’s: Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden

Phil Phillips/Cat Power – Sea of Love (Tabs)

Phil Phillips/Cat Power – Sea of Love (Tab)

I first heard Sea of Love by Phil Phillips The Twilights when Cat Power covered it. I worked from the Phil Phillips version for this arrangement, but I’m sure some of the Cat Power snuck in.

Intro: I’ve shortened the intro and thrown in a few twiddles. There’s plenty you can do in this section to make it your own.

Verse: The verse melody is sparse but very effective. I didn’t want to add too much and dilute it. But it is on the scant side on the ukulele.

Chorus: In the chorus, the melody goes from scant to barely existing. Cat Power ditches it entirely in her version. Which is a way you can go in your version. It only crops up once in this arrangement.

Solo: I love the chord progression in this song, and I wanted the solo to emphasise it. So the solo mostly just uses notes from the chords. As always, don’t feel you have to copy this version.

Links

Buy the original
More 50s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Foo Fighters – Learn to Fly (Tabs)

Foo Fighters – Learn to Fly (Tab)

As you expect from the Foos, Learn to Fly is a straightforward rocker. So a lot of strumming and nothing too intricate.

The trickiest part comes in some of the quick switches from G to Dm. One of these shows up for the first time in bar 5. Here there’s an open-G used as part of the melody to give you a little extra time to change chords. The second comes in the chorus (at the end of bar 13). Here you strum all the strings open and hammer-on an entire Dm chord.

Links

Buy the original
My Hero tabs
More Rock tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

UkeTube: Pure Heart, Amelia Coburn, 4stringboy

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
Pure Heart – Tokada
Dingus Khan- Hihuwahaya
Amelia Coburn – See Saw
4stringboy – Fog
Eddy Kenzo & Daniel Ho – Ukulele Essanyu
Walea – Ko`olau Waltz
Lola Mari – Ces p’tits je t’aime
Uklectic Fred – Never Going Back Again
Sage Harrington and Zaza – There Will Come Soft Rains

Pixies – Here Comes Your Man (Tabs)

Pixies – Here Comes Your Man (Tab)

Intro: The classic Here Comes Your Man riff. Played with a few extra supporting notes to beef it up.

Verse: Nothing too challenging here. Just open chords until the build up into the pre-chorus.

Pre-Chorus: Bars 24-25 are the trickiest part of the song. There’s a big leap up to a bend at the tenth fret for the, “so long, so long,” backing vocals. That makes for an easier transition into bar 25. But you might prefer the way I originally arranged it:

Chorus: Back to the riff mixed in with the melody. There’s plenty of jumping up and down here but I find this section fun to play.

First Solo: A nice little melody for the transition back to the verse.

Second Solo: Much less melodic. The original is mostly bashing out chords with a few bends. For this take, I’ve shortened it down but there’s still a lot of bashing.

Links

Buy the original
Where Is My Mind? tab
More 90s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

7 Second Ukulele Lessons: Tame Impala, Stone Roses, Rolling Stones

Stone Roses – Fools Gold

Rolling Stones – Paint It Black

Tame Impala – The Less I Know the Better

Hundred Reasons – Silver

C418 – Subwoofer Lullaby (From Minecraft)

Slaves/Soft Play – The Hunter

Justin Hurwitz – Voodoo Mama (From Babylon)

Bill Withers – Grandma’s Hands (Tabs)

Bill Withers – Grandma’s Hands (Tab)

Grandma’s Hands by Bill Withers. You might recognise the riff as the sample in Blackstreet’s fantastic No Diggity. Or maybe James Corden’s terrible England song.

This arrangement is very simple and the tempo is slow, so this is a very approachable tab to take on.

Intro: I hadn’t realised until starting on this arrangement that the No Diggity riff isn’t a straight sample of the original. In his version, Bill Withers has an Esus4 chord missing from that version. I went with the No Diggity version for this arrangement (and so did Gregory Porter’s guitarist).

If you want a more authentic version, you could play it like this:

Verse: A couple fingerings to help with the chord changes here. At the end of bar 5, play the A-string, 2nd fret with your index finger barred over all the strings. That’ll set you up for the B7 chord in the next bar.

In bars 10 and 11 (and in the repeats), play the A-string, 2nd fret with your middle finger so you have your index and ring fingers ready for the A7 chord.

Outro: A little minor pentatonic lick to finish things off.

Links

Buy the original
More 70s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Friday Links

Australian ukulele group banned by the council.

Attempting to spell ukulele

BoyWithUke has revealed his face to promote his latest album.

Window Shopping
4stringboy’s signature Flight uke.
Pelem nano uke.
There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
Custom Mya Moe resonator.

Patreon

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
– BigHempin
– Colleen Petticrew
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Ivo
– Jameson Gagnepain
– Jeff K
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Kevin finn
– Leia-lee Doran
– Loreena Humbert
– Margit Stadlmann
– Mary
– Michael Lufkin
– Monika Kolodziejczyk
– Moses Kamai
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Robert
– Tina Knight
– Virtual Performing Arts Academy

If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to all previous exclusive tabs including October’s: This is Halloween by Danny Elfman from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

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