Apr/25/19
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Dream a Little Dream of Me (Tab)

Dream a Little Dream of Me (Tab)

I wrote up the chords for this song more than a decade ago, so it’s high time I gave it the tabbing treatment.

Dream a Little Dream of Me was written in the 30s by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt and covered by all the greats including Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole. But it hit biggest in the 60s when the Mamas and the Papas released their cover. And it’s that version that I’ve mostly based my arrangement on. But I took a few cues from Doris Day version in the intro.

My favourite thing about this song is how it creates that feeling of slowly drifting off to sleep. It does this with a series of gentle, chromatic downward shifts in the chords. So C shifts to B7, Ab shifts to G and F shifts to Fm.

Links
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More jazz tabs and chords

Apr/24/19
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Georg Philipp Telemann – Siciliana and Allegro (Tab)

Georg Philipp Telemann – Siciliana and Allegro (Tab)

Herman Vandecauter has been uploading a long stream of excellent arrangements of classical music from ukulele and, the ukulele’s papai, the machete to his Bandcamp. And he was kind enough to allow me to post the tab for this piece by,German Baroque composer, Georg Philipp Telemann.

If classical music is your jam, I wrote a collection of classical pieces tabbed for ukulele.

Links

Buy it on Herman’s Bandcamp
Subscribe to Herman on YouTube

Apr/23/19
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Mountain Goats – No Children (Chords and Tab)

Mountain Goats – No Children (Chords)

My excitement for the new Mountain Goats album this Friday has spilled over into me writing up one of my favourite songs of theirs. No Children perfectly pulls of the Mountain Goats’ favourite mixture of humour, drama and pathos.

If you’re into analysis of Mountain Goats songs, I highly recommend the I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats podcast which includesAmanda Palmer’s ukulele version of The Mess Inside.

Suggested Strumming

You can use this strum most of the song:

d – d u d –

Intro, Midtro and Outro: Main strum twice per chord.

Verses: Main strum twice per chord again. Here’s how the verse strum sounds:


Verse Strum

Pre-Chorus Strum: If you want to ignore the passing chords (in brackets) you can just do the main strum four times each on C and Am. Then six on the F and two on the G. Then four times on the F that straddles the pre-chorus and chorus.

Here’s how that sounds:


Pre-Chorus Strum

Chorus: Four times per chord.

Twiddly Bits

Here’s an approximation of the piano part that plays in all the tros. Again with a capo on the first fret.

Links

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Apr/13/19
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UkeTube: Laura Currie, Tyto Grey

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
Laura Currie – Tetris Theme (Tab here)
Natasha Ghosh – Howls Moving Castle Theme
Tyto Grey – R u n a w a y
Digga Digga Duo – Hummin' to Myself
Arko Mukhaerjee and Nishaad Pandey – Aam Paka
Christopher Davis-Shannon featuring Hotsy Totsy – Kiss the Girl
Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer – I Can’t Be Arsed
Alma Cook – Object Heavy
Iris Wagner – Akatsuki

Apr/12/19
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Friday Links

A History of Gotoh tuners (thanks to @HermanVDC).

Following on from my list of most used ukulele chords in my posts, Uke Stuff have their graph of chord frequency.

New Releases
– Craig Robertson’s Stage and Circus Songs. A fantastic collection of songs from the last 16 years about various forms of entertainers including the absolutely essential The Hypnotist and Houdini Never Hung Around in Bars.
– Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer’s Dandinista continues the chap-hop in a political climate that has made the joke wear very thin.

Window Shopping
– Southern Ukulele Store lose their minds over Bird on a Wire ukuleles.
– Kiwaya 5K.
– Journey Instruments J-uke.
– Paul Stanley style Ibanez Iceman.
– KLOS guitar’s carbon fiber ukulele has passed its Kickstarter goal.

Housekeeping
– I’m going to be away from home and ukeless for a month. Posts should be going up as usual but if they aren’t then that’s why.
– You may or may not have noticed there was no Friday Links post last time around. From now on I’m just going to be posting them when there’s enough interesting stuff to post about.

Apr/11/19
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Thomas the Tank Engine Theme (Tab)

Thomas the Tank Engine Theme (Tab)

I don’t know what possessed the nabobs at the Thomas corporation to replace the fantastic original Thomas theme with a piece of detestable ear-dreck. The new one has nothing as tasty as that chord change from C to Ab, the chromatic runs and the syncopation.

I’m not being strict with the fingerpicking in this one. I’m mostly using thumb and two finger picking but switch to one finger per string picking where notes on the g- and C-strings are played together.

Links

Buy it on Amazon
More TV theme tunes

Apr/10/19
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Museum of Meme Music

A selection of short pieces that achieved internet fame.

If you like these short tabs, you can find lots more on my Instagram.

Baby Shark

Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up

Smash Mouth – All Star

All Star (Tab)

Darude – Sandstorm

Dr Dre – Next Episode

Epic Sax Guy

Apr/9/19
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Billie Eilish – 8 (Chords and Tab)

Billie Eilish – 8 (Chords)

I thought I was done with Billie Eilish for a while after tabbing up bury a friend and when the party’s over. But there’s some ukulele action and I love it when old musical tropes get adopted and reworked, so couldn’t resist taking on two examples from Eilish’s new album. bad guy (below) adapts some old blues ideas while 8 takes a classic 30s turnaround chord progression of C – E7 – Dm – G7.

Before you tackle this one, slap a capo on the third fret.

Suggested Strumming

You can do this strum twice for each chord all the way through (although on the original the chords do cut out now and then):

d – d u – u d u

Sometimes there’s a touch strum on the first down strum. That means you hit just the g-string when you strum. It doesn’t matter if you hit the C-string as well but aim for just the g.

Which sounds like this:


Strum

Twiddly Bits

There’s a dead simple solo. Be sure to give the strings a bit of vibrato to make the notes last as long as possible. I’ve tabbed this without a capo but there’s nothing below the third fret so you can keep the capo on with no problems.

Links

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More Billie Eilish tabs

Bonus: Billie Eilish – bad guy

Billie Eilish – bad guy (Riff Tab)

The bass in bad guy (played on a baritone here) uses a traditional 8 bar blues riff using the minor pentatonic scale. Later in the song it’s joined by a part (played on tenor in my version) that uses the blues scale. If you’re interesting in learning more about those things you can find much more info in my Blues Ukulele ebook.

Mar/30/19
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UkeTube: Professor Ogma, Bailey Rushlow

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
Professor Ogma – Gullywasher
Bailey Rushlow – You’re Still the One
Keston Cobblers Club – Eye to Eye
Feng E – Chandelier
Zoe Bestel & Tobias Elof – Hushabye Mountain
Eden Kai & Maiko – Dreams Come True
Herman Vandecauter – Meise Arboretum On machete
Mike Holland – The Windmills Of My Mind
Demetrius78G – Charlie Chaplin’s Music Ukulele Mashup

Mar/28/19
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Billie Eilish – when the party’s over (Tab)

Billie Eilish – when the party’s over (Tab)

As promised when I tabbed bury a friend, here’s a version of the slightly less creepy and more Bon Iver-y when the party’s over.

The song is mainly made up of vocal harmonies which means it works well with ukulele chords. There is a lot of space in the tune. So make sure you let it breath and don’t take it too fast.

I’ve used repeats in the tab, but there are a couple of small differences between the two verses. Firstly, I move the little run in bar 14 to bar 8. Then play this for the,, “Call me back”:

I pluck this firmly and very close to the bridge to replicate the jarring, distorted sound in the original.

The trickiest part of this arrangement is the, “Quiet when I’m coming home,” campanella run in bar 17. If you’re not into that, you can play it like this:

Links

Buy it on Amazon
More Billie Eilish tabs

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