My favourite aspect of this song is the dichotomy between the beautiful piano playing and Waits’s raspy voice. He continues that split in the outro where pretty chords knock-up against dissonant notes. I’ve reworked the outro but kept that same idea. I’d definitely recommend coming up with your own outro. When you’re using dissonance, there are no wrong notes.
Most of the piece is played on a banjo roll style arpeggio involving three fingers. Accentuate the first two notes in every bar to create a sense of ethereal melody. You can even add some dramatism by slowing the beat just a little on the start of the measure.
Grips are fixed for the full measure in almost every bar, and position shifts are minimal. Maybe you’ll need some practice to achieve a smooth transition into bar 6, otherwise, I’d call this one a quite feasible piece.”
About the project:
I’m publishing a collection of 50 short pieces for ukulele solo I’ve title 50 Miniature Studies for Ukulele, at a rate of two videos per week. Videos are released every Wednesday and Friday each week and can be found on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. The tabs, performance notes and other goodies are accessible for patrons through Choan’s Patreon page.
Verse, Solo, Bridge: I like to use a two bar strumming pattern here. The first bar goes like this:
d – d u d u d u
And the second:
d u d u – u d –
In the first two lines you play the first bar on G then the second bar on D then both on G. After that it’s one bar per chord with an added down-strum on the D7 at the end of the verse.
The solo is just the first two lines of the verse and the bridge is just the second half of the verse. So you can use the same strumming there.
Chorus and Outro: For the rapid G-C changes I just do two down-strums per chord. The one long down-strum each chord on the last two lines.
The intro combines the organ stabs and the guitar riff (which pops up again at the end of the chorus). If you want to make it easier to play you can switch the opening chords with 021x and 0003.
I first stumbled across Billie Eilish with her ukulele song party favor. I enjoyed it enough to stick it on my Ukulele 2017 Spotify playlist but wasn’t entirely blown away. Something must have happened since then because she’s released four outstandingly good songs in a row.
The song is split between melodic sections like the People are Strange-like intro and the “Debt I owe…” section and the more mood-based sections. To emphasise that I’m playing the melodic sections using fingerpicking and the moody sections with strums (including plenty of muting for strings that aren’t being played).
I’ve decided to loosen up on my schedule of what gets posted on what days. Partly because I’m sure no one cares. And partly because I’ve been promising this tab and getting requests for it for a long time and it keeps getting bumped for something more timely.
On a Good Day is a very atypical Joanna Newsom song. It’s far more emotionally, lyrically and musically direct than anything else she’s done. To match that, I’ve kept the arrangement super-simple and beginner-friendly. Although I’m using fingerpicking, you can play the whole thing with just your thumb.
Among the many crimes of Maroon 5’s Super Bowl show was the teased but not delivered tribute to, SpongeBob SquarePants creator, Stephen Hillenburg in the form of Sweet Victory. But I refuse to suck as much as Maroon 5 do and will deliver.
Suggested Strumming
The strumming in this one gets pretty involved. I go with this as the main strum:
d – d – d u d u
Intro: One down-strum per chord.
Verses: Main strum once per chord.
Pre-Chorus: Main strum once per chord until the Bb. On that I use chnks and do this four times:
d x x x
Then on the Eb:
d – d u d –
And two quick down-strums on the Bb-Eb move.
Chorus and Solo: Main strum once per chord except:
– Two down-strums each on Dm-Am.
– Two down-strums on the Bb then a short down on the Bb and an up on the C.
– On the Gm use the chnk strum from the pre-chorus three times. Then one strum per chord for the rest of that line.
– In the first chorus the last line is one main strum per chord.
– In the second chorus the last line is two main strums per chord on G# and Eb. The rest is down-up eight times switch to C on the very last up strum.
– The last line of the last verse is just one down-strum per chord.
Twiddly Bits
80s hair metal twiddling isn’t the most uke-suitable thing out there. But I’ve picked out two suitable bits and one entirely unsuitable bit for tabbing.
Masterful Hawaiian slack key guitarist Cyril Pahinui has died. In his time at the forefront of Hawaiian music he played with ukulele greats like IZ and Peter Moon.
