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.

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 pick up all three for the price of 2 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
Winter Wonderland
Year End Letter – Garfunkel and Oates
You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch

Tabs

Away in a Manger
Carol of the Bells
Christmastime Is Here (from Charlie Brown)
German Christmas Carols
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Instrumental)
Jingle Bell Rock
Jingle Bells
Little Drummer Boy
Mele Kalikimaka
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
O Christmas Tree (Single Note Version)
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
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

St Vincent – New York (Tab)

I’m mostly into St Vincent for the wild guitar playing and shuffle dancing. But this beautiful, straightforward ballad immediately struck me as prime for a ukeing. And other than a few big pinkie-stretches it works very neatly.

I’m mostly playing this very loosely without any strict pattern. In the first and third verses I throw in a lot of index-finger flicks where – rather than picking the note – I’ll flick my index finger upwards to catch the melody note and one or two other strings. This helps fill in the sound a little. In the second verse I switch to full strumming to get an even larger sound.

The only part that requires strict one finger per string picking is the rapid picking in bar 7 which is extended in the coda. Other than that you can play it however you feel it.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More indie tabs and chords

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
Cera Impala – Roll a joint
Guido Heistek – I Can’t Give You Anything But Love Via @ukeist
Mel Muñiz – Melodrama
Paula Fuga – Parachute
Paul Mansell – Fallin’ Coconuts
Herman Vandecauter – Theme & Variations Luigi Sagrini on rajao
Bartt Warburton – Somebody to Love
dodie – HUMAN

Jake Shimabukuro has revealed the secret to his virtuosity.

A piece by David Farrier (the documentarian behind Dark Tourist and Tickled) on a guy who went viral after being snapped playing ukulele for his humping dogs turns completely insane.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra are worried that ukuleles are so popular that no one will play other instruments.

New Releases
– Professor Ogma has an excellent instrumental debut EP on his website or on Spotify. (If you’ve been paying very close attention you might know him as Matthew Brian Kirkland.)
– New Craig Robertson album: CROOKED.
– New rajao tracks from Herman Vandecauter.

Window Shopping
– Aaron Keim master grade myrtle tenor.
– Ka’alla soprano KU 25S.
– 40s Martin 3M.
– Emerald harp ukulele.

The Beatles – Hey Jude (Tab)

Technically, I shouldn’t be posting this on White Album week. But it was recorded during the White Album sessions and it is one of the best (possibly the best) Beatles song. If you’re dying for a White Album song have a go at the Blackbird tab.

I’ve kept the arrangement as simple as possible. It has such a strong (and well known) melody it doesn’t need much to back it up. I’m not following any strict pattern for the fingerpicking. For the most part the thumb plays the lowest string in the bar then letting the fingers fall on a string each from there.

In the repeat of the chorus I play a slight variation on the, “And don’t you knowwwwww…” in bars 15 and 16.

After all that I switch to strumming and the occasional finger flick for the boisterous sh-outro. I bash out a couple of adornments in this section. You don’t need to do anything complicated with these so long as you use the appropriate amount of gusto. Both mine are just based on the C7 chord.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More Beatles tabs and chords

Continuing this week’s selection of tracks from The Beatles White Album with five of the best musical moments from the album.

Back in the USSR: Solo

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A great solo using the A minor pentatonic scale over a blues shuffle between the major and 6 chords (both of which I cover in depth in the Blues Ukulele ebook). I’ve also included the chorus riff at the end of the solo.

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While My Guitar Gently Weeps: Intro

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Way back in the early days of the blog I wrote up the bare bones of this tune to encourage people to come up with their own take on the tune rather than aping Jake’s version. That was a dismal failure.

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Piggies: Harpsichord Solo

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A rapid-fire harpsichord solo presumably used to represent the hifalutin piggies. I was expecting this to be impossible to do on uke but add a capo at the third fret and it’s tricky but doable.

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Birthday: Riff

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A simple 12 bar blues riff played on a low-G ukulele.

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Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey: Solo

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Everybody’s Got… (Tab)

I’m using two ukes here. One playing the chord stabs (top line) and one taking the lead part (bottom line).

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The Beatles – Honey Pie (Chords)

It’s the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ White Album this month. So I thought I’d completely trash my no-Beatles rule with a week of songs from that era. Starting with the 1920s pastiche of Honey Pie that was made to played on uke.

The intro is a typical piece of genius. I’ve tried to capture the spirit of it without over-complicating it in the chord chart. But there’s a tab version below with all the twiddly bits.

Suggested Strumming

You can use this as a main strum:

d – d – d u d u

Intro: One down-strum per chord.

Chorus and Outro: Two of the main strum on the G. Then one for every chord after that until the Eb7 – D7 at the end. There split the strum into two so you’re playing d-d- on the Eb and dudu on the D7.

Verse and Solo: Same as the chorus including splitting the final bar between F# and F. Speaking of which, if you’re struggling with the quick switch to F# you can just slide the G chord down a fret and mute the g-string with your thumb.

Bridge: Main strum on everything until the D7 at the end. The do du-u to match the “tee tee tee”s.

Twiddly Bits

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No 20s pastiche would be complete without a solo, meandering, minor section at the beginning.

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Apparently this little solo was played by John. Which explains why it’s not as clean an precise as most of George’s solos. But it does pack in some nice ideas.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More Beatles tabs and chords

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
Vincent Cortese – Charleston
Vinícius Vivas – Tico-tico no Fubá
Amine x Einer Bankz – Reel it In
Ukulelezaza & his Sweet Hollywaiians – Love Songs Of The Nile
Faith Ako – E Nihi Ka Hele
Feng E – Smooth Criminal
Hein Overbeek & Anne van der Wal – Swing Gitane
Corrie Shelley – The Pattern Thanks to Humble Bartionics
Motion Ocean – Octopath Traveler – Battle Theme II
Manitoba Hal – Blessed By Love

New Releases
– Choan Gálvez’s new album of laid-back instruments Lullabies for Astronauts is out now. The album includes uke tab for all tracks and you can get a taster from his guest post here and on Ukulele Go!.
– If you’ve been enjoying João Tostes’s free album naturæ you be glad to here a tab book of the album is now available on Amazon. And you can read it free if you have Kindle Unlimited (at least in the UK).
– Brisbane ukers The Pockets have released their swoonful debut album. The record does feature familiar faces of the brains behind Tyrone & Lesley with Samuel Vincent on UBass and David Megarrity providing songwriting. You can read David’s thoughts on the album here.

On Video
– Aquila’s Mimmo Peruffo demonstrates the 16th century way of making gut strings.
– Willie K completely reimagines the Star Spangled Banner for a University of Hawaii game.

Window Shopping
– Murray Kuun ukulele.
– 1920s Lange-made Avalon Resonator Banjo Ukulele.
– Kanile’a Cannarea Diamond Super Tenor.
– Canopus UK-CS.

Al Bowlly and Ray Noble – Midnight, the Stars and You

For Halloween, a song from the greatest horror film ever made. It’s so densely packed with detail, unforgettable images and jarring juxtapositions. Which has spawned an entire industry of fan theories from the undeniable to the entirely ridiculous to the disturbing and plausible (and if that theory is true it recontextualizes this song in an entirely alarming way).

Midnight, the Stars and You was originally perfromed by Al Bowlly and Ray Noble and released in 1934. Making it out of time for the 1921 photo. The song also cropped up in Snowpiercer and was recently unexpectedly covered by Deerhoof.

The tune gives plenty of room for some jazzy noodling. For the first half of the arrangement I use those gaps to play around with the chords. In bars 7-8 and 11-12 I add in chromatic descending notes. And in bars 19-20 I throw in diminished and augmented chords.

In the second half of the verse I throw in a couple of licks in bars 23 and 27-28. In those licks I’m using the F Mixolydian scale. Which sounds fancy but is just an F major scale with a flatted 7th (i.e. an Eb instead of an E). I picked that up from the Eb used so effectively in the descending run at the end of the original version.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More Halloween tabs and chords