Back when I spent entire days watching MTV, this song and More Than Words made up a good 30% of the airtime. I got heartily sick of it at the time. But I’ve mellowed on it.
The tune is very simple. Four chords and the melody doesn’t go higher than the third fret. The only slightly unusual part is on the “Yeah, yeah”s in bars 13, 15 and 17. If you want to make that super-simple, you can replace 5500 with 2000 and 543x with 003x and it won’t sound much different.
The original starts with an instrumental version of the chorus. But, since we’re playing that later, I came up with an intro based on the chords. Feel free to ditch it and come up with your own.
I had always assumed the first verse was mocking George Harrison’s Taxman. But it appears Sunny Afternoon was released a couple of months before Taxman. So phenomenally rich people moaning about taxes must have been the rage at the time. Thank god that’s over.
The tune starts off with a bit of a stretch but an otherwise simple descending riff. Be sure to release the pressure with your fretting hand shortly after playing to keep the notes short. The melody is reasonably straightforward as well.
The problems only start when you have to combine the descending run with the melody notes in bars 35 to 40. Here’s an easier version without the descending line if you prefer:
This Sega classic by Masato Nakamura starts off with the hardest bar in the entire arrangement. And it’s such an iconic run there’s not much scope to change it. Here’s an alternative arrangement. The upside is that it ends with your fingers in the right position for the following Em chord. The downside is that you have further to travel down the fretboard.
The good news is that this is followed by a very easy section of just Em, Dm and F chords. And the rest of the tune isn’t too tricky. The most difficult bit are the little runs in the Em parts (e.g. bars 11 and 13).
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.
