A new tab from David Beckingham and a change from his usual jazzy tunes. This time it’s Johann Strauss II’s Blue Danube. Famous for being performed at Vienna’s New Year’s Eve concert. Which gives you about a week to master the tune, get to Austria and join the Vienna Philharmonic.
Wilfried Welti has a new ebook of classical ukulele tabs. It contains 15 pieces from Tielman Susato’s Danserye. Wilfried’s tabs are always great and at €5 you can’t go wrong.
The trailer itself provides another musically treat in the form of Ellie covering Through the Valley by Shawn James. The song is so perfect I assumed it had been written for the trailer.
I cobbled my version together quickly. I started as soon as I saw the trailer and recorded the video the next day. So it is a bit all over the place. The plan was to put the melody firmly up front and put the picking in softly between melody notes. And it mostly works that way. The notes on the g- and C-strings are played with the thumb, the index finger handles the E-string and the middle finger the A. The only exception is when all the strings are plucked at once.
Backing Picking Pattern
Through the Valley (Backing Tab)
If you want to sing the song, here’s a simple version of the picking and strumming you can use as backing. To play along put a capo on the first fret. It sounds like this:
Time for the annual Uke Hunt Christmas time-waster.
– Grab a pen and paper
– Display knowledge.
– There might be spoilers in the comments.
– Check the answers here (no peeking).
– Return in triumph or despair and share you score in the comments.
When I was thinking of a song to sum up 2016 the title of this one immediately popped into my head. It was first a hit for George Jones but I’ve written up is Elvis Costello’s cover.
The version above uses a capo at the second fret to make things easier. But if you have no fear of the E chord you can play it this way:
Good Year for the Roses (No Capo Chords)
If you want to play along with the George Jones version just capo two frets higher. There’s only one other difference at that comes in the strumming.
Suggested Strumming
For the main strum you can use this good old standby:
d – d u – u d u
Intro: Main strum four times.
Verses: In the first two lines do the main strum twice on G. Then d – d u on G again and d – d u on C before returning to the main strum on G twice. Here’s how that sounds:
On the second two lines do the main strum twice for each chord.
Chorus:
For the first two lines use the main strum once for the first two chords and twice for the last.
The third line is the same but inserts a 2/4 bar of d-d- on the second C chord. And the last line ends with a series of d-d- strums on the G-C-G-D. The last two lines sound like this:
What a great melody this is. And it’s matched with some juicy jazz chords. Making it perfect for a ukeing.
In case you’re not familiar with the repeat markings I use, you play up to “D.S. al Coda” go back to the squiggle in bar five, play up to “Da Coda” then skip to the target in bar 23.
As a companion to the “Songs with Chords You Know” post I thought I’d put together a list of posts for people just getting started learning fingerpicking, tabs and solo playing.
Tutorials for Tabs and Fingerpicking
I’ve written a nine part guide on how to read tab. But you don’t have to read them all before getting started. But I’d recommend being familiar with:
These are a good place to start reading tab and playing them. If you want to keep it simple you can pick them all with just your thumb. Or if you’re practicing your fingerpicking you can use the thumb and two finger picking method. Some of these contain both full arrangements and “one note at a time” versions so you might have to scroll down to find some of them.
These arrangements all combine chords and melody in one part. You do that by holding a chord shape then strumming your thumb down the strings up to the melody note.