It’s not often I break with my schedule but Nick Drake’s Horn popped into my ears this morning and I felt compelled to get my own up.

It also fits well with the real post today about pieces suitable for solo ukulele beginners. It’s the sparsest track on Drake’s sparsest album. For my version there’s just a droning open C-string (plucked with the thumb) and the slow melody mainly on the A-string (middle finger) and occasionally on the E-string (index finger).

The only downside is that it requires a ukulele with at least fifteen frets. If you don’t have one you can play this version in G:

This moves the drone to the g-string. Making it an octave higher (unless you’re using low-G tuning). So it doesn’t fit perfectly but it does still work.

Links

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More Nick Drake tabs

There’s a new 5 CD/50 song album from The Magnetic Fields on the way and the five tracks that have come out already have made me very excited for it. The standout track ’74 No is great for uke too. All beginner chords. The strumming is trickier than the chords.

The only slight change is I’ve included a version of the F chord with the A-string played at the third fret. That makes for a nice transition into the C chord. But it’s not mandatory. You can play the standard F and it’ll work perfectly.

Suggested Strumming

Intro and outro The bars in the intro and outro are divided unevenly. So in the first half of the first bar you strum d u d u – u on the Am and a down strum on the G. And in the second half (still G) do – u d u d – d u.

All together it looks like this:

Verses 1, 2 and 5 I use the same strum for these verses but they’ll divided up a little differently. So for the first two lines the C chord takes up the same strumming as Am and G in the intro strum. So it’s like this:

The third line goes back to four chords so you strum and change in the same places as the intro. And the final line is exactly the same as the intro.

Verses 3 and 4 Things get a lot more straight forward in the keyboardy verses. For those I just use this pattern twice for C and once each on F and G:

d – d – d u d u

Links

Buy it on iTunes
More Magnetic Fields/Stephin Merritt chords

Full Playlist

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It’s nearing the end of the year and the Ukulele 2016 Spotify playlist is taking shape. As always, there’s a wide variety of great music from world famous virtuosos to low-fi indie acts, novelty songs to slick Hawaiian standards. So whatever you’re into you should find something you like on there.

New Releases
– New record from Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer: There’s a Rumpus Going On
– Kamaka have collected the cream of Hawaii’s ukers for the double album Keep Strumming.
– Kyle Frazer’s It Was You has been out for a while in CD form but it’s now on Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-like basis.
– Formidible Vegetable Sound System’s Grow Do It

Ukes
– A striking KoAloha Black Label custom uke.
– New name to me Jim DeCava Maui Creek ukulele.
– 1920s Washburn Shrine with green binding.

Tattoo of “Play your ukulele,” in Circular Gallifreyan.

I wrote up the chords for Hallelujah way back in 2008. But, since it’s a huge hit with ukulelists, I wanted to do an instrumental version as a little tribute to Leonard Cohen. And a tribute to Jeff Buckley since the intro is completely ripped off from his incredible version.

I try to keep most of my tabs fairly disciplined and work them up fully beforehand. It’s easier for people to read and learn that way. But be warned: this one I played pretty freely then tabbed out what I played. So the fingerpicking is all over the place.

In the verse the melody is everything played on the A-string plus the third fret of the E-string. Everything else is backing so should be played a little more softly. The chorus is more strange since the melody notes are played on the g-, C- and E-strings. I’ve notated all the melody notes with an accent > above them.

Links

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If you’re looking for something festive to learn here’s a complete 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
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
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

2016 sure has been a ride. (The first draft had hopes of no more musicians dying here but between writing the post and it going up Leon Russell died.)

Being in the key of E, the chords for Suzanne are a bit tricky. You can make it easier by doing it in F like the version Sylvie Simmons (ukulelist and Leonard Cohen biographer) using these chords:

Suggested Strumming

You can just use this dead simple pattern all the way through:

d – d u

Picking Pattern

I’ve also moved the picking into the key of F as it makes it much easier. You can play along with the original by tuning down to Gb B Eb Ab. Or here’s a tab of the picking in E I did before giving up on it.

The tab goes from the intro through the first verse and you can use the same patterns throughout the song.

You pick the E-string with your index finger, A-string with the middle finger and your thumb for both other strings.

Links

Buy it on iTunes
Hallelujah chords

Full Playlist

Read the rest of this entry »

Robin Evans is attempting to break the world record for the longest time playing a ukulele by playing for 30 hours. If you’re in the London area on 26th – 27th November head to the Duke of Uke and give him some encouragement.

Ukulele Go’s top 5 ukulele books.

Martin ukulele sales 1915 – 1935.

Spooky New Releases
– The Bookshop Band are a great folk trio who write songs based on literature. Their latest is a collection of tunes inspired by spooky tales That Ghost Belongs to Me (Thanks to Ron Hale for turning me onto them.)
– New Ramonesish EP from Bloody Death Skull: The Haunting of….

Videos
– Dirby the dove pecks out a tune.
– Ukulele vs. hydraulic press.

Carrying on from The Joker, more of my favourite slide moments.

I wrote an ebook about playing slide ukulele. But the number one tip is: mute everything. Slide playing is noisey (which is part of its charm) so you need to mute the strings behind the string with your index and middle fingers. And use your picking hand to mute any strings you aren’t playing at that point.

Tunings

None of the tunes here are played in standard tuning. When you have to play all the strings at the same fret it’s useful to tune the strings so they make an open chord.

The tunings used:

Open C: gCEG Tune the A-string down to G.
Open F: fCFA Tune the g-string down to F and the E-string up to F.
Open G: gBDG Tune the C-string down to B, the E-string down to D and the A-string down to G.

Robert Johnson – Cross Road Blues

A video posted by @ukulelehunt on Sep 28, 2016 at 10:08am PDT

Tuning: Open C: gCEG, Capo 3rd fret.

Starting with the greatest slide guitarist of all time. The intro to Cross Road Blues is an absolute classic.

The intro mixes up slide and notes played with fingers. It’s all slide up to the triplet at the end of bar 2. Then it’s all fingers apart from the two notes at the seventh fret.

Buy on iTunes

Led Zeppelin – Traveling Riverside Blues

A video posted by @ukulelehunt on Sep 15, 2016 at 10:56am PDT

Tuning: Open C: gCEG

Another Robert Johnson tune. This time the Mighty Zeppelin’s cover of Traveling Riverside Blues. Again mixing up slide and fingers. All slide in bar 1 and all fingers in bar 2.

Buy on iTunes

George Thorogood – Bad to the Bone

A video posted by @ukulelehunt on Sep 30, 2016 at 9:44am PDT

Tuning: Open F: fCFA, Capo 2nd fret

Bad to the Bone is the iconic slide rock riff. All slide for this one. The tab alternates between the main riff and short licks. Feel free to improvise around these.

Buy on iTunes

White Stripes – Little Bird

A video posted by @ukulelehunt on Oct 3, 2016 at 11:10am PDT

Tuning: Open F: fCFA

A definite Bad to the Bone influence in this White Stripes riff. The tab starts with the riff that ends the verses and leads back into the main riff. The notes with simultaneous sixth and seventh frets are played with the fingers.

Buy on iTunes

Elmore James – The Sky is Crying

A video posted by @ukulelehunt on Oct 6, 2016 at 10:54am PDT

Tuning: Open G: gBDG

The Sky is Crying is one of the most covered blues songs. The most notable versions are those by SRV and Albert King. And the two of them together. Even George Thorogood had a go without quite so much success.

This one is all slide. And it’s a demonstration that the hardest part of playing slide isn’t the slide but the staccato notes.

Buy it on iTunes