I don’t think any ukulele player has had a bigger year than Billie Eilish. She’s been all over the shop and her debut album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? and 2017 EP don’t smile at me have both been selling by the bucket-hat load. I’ve already done a few tracks from the album, so today I’m doing one from the EP.
I’m using one finger per string picking all the way through this arrangement. There are many chnks in the song which can make it difficult to get your fingers back in position. I’d recommend not doing a standard chnk and instead muting the strings with your fretting hand and bringing each finger down on the string it’s plucking. That should leave them in the right position for picking.
The tab is pretty long thanks to the second verse and second chorus being slightly different to the first. Both are a little trickier second time around. I don’t think anyone would notice if you just played them the same both times.
We’re about a month out from Christmas so time to start polishing up the festive tunes and learning a few new ones. Here’s a rundown of everything Christmassy on the site.
I think White Winter Hymnal would make for a great ukulele group song. It’s got very easy chords (if you capo at the second fret), some sweet vocal harmonies and a solo for the show-offs. Plus lots of winter imagery that turns a little disturbing.
This song was covered by Pentatonix (which seems to be the more popular version). If you want to play along with that one, you can use the same chords but without a capo.
Suggested Strumming Pattern
I just do down-up strums through the whole song. But emphasise every second down-strum. Like this:
Over the last 35 years They Might Be Giants have but out some of the funnest and nerdiest music around (and found some time to paint cat ukuleles). So I collected together some of their best known songs along with some of my favourites.
Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Starts off with a short solo using the F harmonic minor scale. Which is like the more common F natural minor scale but with the Eb replaced by an E (A-string, 7th fret). The melody for the chorus is made up solely of notes in the Fm chord then the C7 chord. So hold down these notes as long as possible to build the chords behind the melody.
Birdhouse in Your Soul: I wrote up tab for the entire song here. This is just the intro transposed to the key of F.
Dr Worm: A quick version of Rabbi Vole’s guitar solo.
Boss of Me: AKA the Malcolm in the Middle theme. The chorus for this part is dead simple. It’s mostly just switching between the open A-string and A-string, 3rd fret while the chords change underneath.
Older: While the rest of the songs after Istanbul are in F, this one is in its equivalent minor: D minor.
Dog on Fire: AKA The Daily Show theme. From the original version before Timberland chopped it up.
Seven Days of the Week: From their third album of children’s songs Here Come the 1,2,3s. Although there only seems to be the most marginal difference between their children’s records and the rest of their oeuvre.
Today’s post comes from Jonathan Lewis who has a new tab ebook out: Morris Tunes for Campanella Ukulele which you can pick up from free on Gumroad.
I’m grateful for Al for agreeing to share this arrangement of a popular Morris tune.
There are two sections which are played AABB. The A section is pretty much all campanella picking, while the B section has some chords and harmonies. The chords used are F, Bb, C and Gm.
In bars 15 and 16 you’ll need to change from the Bb chord, barred on the 5th fret (7565) to an F5 in the same position (5588). The tricky part is playing the note E on the first string with your little finger while holding the Bb chord, then quickly moving to that F5 where you’ll need to use your little finger to cover both first and second strings on the 8th fret, keeping the bar on the 5th fret.
As always, it’s best to figure out for yourself which fingerings work best for you, and to simplify (or complicate) according to level.
Is there a cooler ukulele player ever than Joe Strummer? Not that I can think of. And The Clash are certainly the greatest punk band of all time. So with the 40th anniversary of London Calling coming up, I thought I’d write up my favourite from the record.
I’ve gone with a capo on the 4th fret for the chords. It’s higher than I’d usually like but it makes the chords simple and means you can combine the chords and the intro riff very easily. If you want to play just the riff it goes like this in the intro:
And slightly differently in the middle of the song when the intro is reprised:
Suggested Strumming Pattern
I use this as the main pattern:
d – d – d u d u
Intro: Main strum once on F. Then halving the pattern so you do d-d- on Dsus2 and dudu on F. Then main strum once for everything else.
Verse: Similar to the intro except here you’re halving the strum from Dm-Am and doing it once for everything else. Here’s how that sounds:
Chorus, Bridge and Outro: You can just carry on with the strum as you have been halving all the bars for Dm-Am. Or you can follow the guitar and do this once for each Dm and Am:
Finishing off cartoon week with an exceptionally catchy tune that set the standard for yelling “woo hoo!” (it’s a Duck-Blur indeed). And it’s particularly relevant to give it a ukeing now that the rejiggered series features Uke Hunt favourite Kate Micucci.
The song includes a subtle key change with the chorus being a whole step higher the second time around. To keep things easy to memorise, I’ve arranged it so it’s played exactly the same but two frets higher second time around.
Window Shopping
