Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi (Tab)

Here’s something to play at the Big Yellow Joint this weekend: Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi.

Intro: A cool strummy riff to start off with.

Verse: Like a lot of Joni’s songs, there are a lot of words crammed in. So you’ll need some quick alternate picking to fit them in. I have cropped out a few notes here and there to make it more playable.

Chorus: A rare case of a song getting softer at the start of a chorus. Tone it down for the first half of the chorus, then start blasting for the second.

In the second chorus at the end of the song, there’s a brief pause added on “gone” to look out for.

Outro: I love the goofy ending. She knocks it up an octave for “they paved paradise,” then drops below the original melody for the rest (sadly, not room for that on the uke).

Links

Buy the original
More 70s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Now you’ve got your lusty tram costume ready, here are some tunes you may wish to bone up on before the big night.

Addams Family Theme Tune
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Childish Gambino – Redbone (From Get Out)
Chopin – Funeral March
Jonathan Coulton – Re: Your Brains
The Cranberries – Zombie
Dance Macabre
The Decemberists – Shankill Butchers
The Doors – People Are Strange
The Fall – Mansion
The Gothic Archies – Freakshow
Halloween Theme
Harry Potter – Hedwig’s Theme
In Heaven (From Eraserhead
The Last of Us II – Through the Valley
London Bridge Is Falling Down (From Halloween)
The Misfits – Dig Up Her Bones
The Misfits – Halloween
My Chemical Romance – Welcome to the Black Parade
Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (from The Exorcist)
Nerf Herder – Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme
One Night Ultimate Werewolf – Fantasy Theme
Ray Parker Jr – Ghostbusters
The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil
Gustavo Santaolalla – Last of Us Theme
Skrillex – Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites
This is Halloween (From Nightmare Before Christmas)
Tom Waits – Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard
Twilight Zone Theme
Twin Peaks Theme
The Walking Dead Theme
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London
The White Stripes – Little Ghost

Five Halloween riffs/intros: Thriller, Devil Went Down to Georgia, Sweet Dreams, Don’t Fear the Reaper and Jump in the Line
Five More Halloween riffs: Voodoo Child (Slight Return), All the Good Girls Go To Hell, Suspiria Theme, Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, Evil Eye.

And a tutorial to spookify your playing:

Spooky Ukulele Sounds

Queen – Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon (Tab)

Queen’s Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon is a very short song but it packs in a whole lot of notes.

Intro: The hardest part of the whole song is the chromatic run between bars 3 and 4. I spread the notes between the strings to make it a bit easier to play but it’s still a big challenge.

Verse: Lots of jumps up and down the neck to deal with. Bars 9-12 are fun to play (once you’ve practiced it enough not to have to think about it).

Bridge: The tempo slows right down here which helps to make it easy to play.

Solo: Another section that’s difficult to play. But I mostly ditched the chords for this section so it’s just single notes.

Links

Buy the original
More rock tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

New Releases
– Jake Shimabukuro has a new guest-packed album out: Grateful.
– 4stringboy’s debut album Vejr is out now.
– Mark Stivvy has a new ep: 4/4 Freda.

On Video
– A group of ukers caused a ruckus at the Grand Canyon when they jumped a barrier for a precarious session.

Window Shopping

If you’re as into gawping at vintage instruments as I am, I highly recommend following luthier Jake Wildwood’s blog. Recent ukes include a 1920s Pacheco & Klemm Style 5 banjolele and an aeroplane-shaped Stromberg-Voisinet Aero uke.

There are loads of weird instruments on there too like the 1900s Strohviols Phonofiddle and the Bernie Lehmann 5-String vielle.

Patreon

A massive thanks to all Uke Hunt’s Patreon backers for keeping the site up and running this month. And double thanks go to these legendary patrons of the arts:

– Arthur Foley
– BigHempin
– Colleen Petticrew
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Ivo
– Jameson Gagnepain
– Jeff K
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Leia-lee Doran
– Lisa Johnson
– Loreena Humbert
– Mary
– Michael Lufkin
– Monika Kolodziejczyk
– Moses Kamai
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Robert
– shitzbleak
– Tina Knight
– Virtual Performing Arts Academy

If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to all previous exclusive tabs including September’s September by Earth, Wind and Fire.

Bob Dylan – You Belong to Me (Tab)

You Belong to Me was originally written by Price, King & Stewart in 1952. But I first heard the Bob Dylan cover on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. And it’s the Dylan version this arrangement is based on.

Intro: A very brief intro just to establish the key and feel. There’s plenty of room to expand this to the whole chord progression if you fancy stretching out.

Verse: There are a couple of jumps up and down the fretboard to deal with here. But the tempo is slow and it’s straightforward to play. I am very loose with the timing and phrasing in the video.

The second time around, there are a few extra twiddles to keep things interesting.

Solo: The solo is heavily based on the melody. It’s a very sentimental song, so I went a bit cheesy with it. You’re free to dirty it up in your own version.

Links

Buy the Bob Dylan version
More 50s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Bobby Darin – Beyond the Sea (Tab)

Beyond the Sea is an anglicized version of Charles Trenet’s La Mer and regularly crops up in film and TV (most notably the prison kitchen scene in Goodfellas).

Intro: Starting off with some big strums to emulate the brass in the original.

Verse: Nothing too difficult to play in the verse, but there are a ton of chord changes to keep track of.

Bridge: This section has three key changes (to A, to C and returning to the original key of F). Each time it uses the trick of leading into the change with the V7 chord of the new key. So you have E7 at the end of bar 18, setting up the key of A. And G7 at the end of bar 24, leading in the key of C. Finally, you have C7 in bar 30 to lead back to the original key of F.

Solo: The solo is based on different inversions of the chords in the verse with a few melodic elements added. Plenty of room here for your own ideas.

From there, it’s back to the verse and finishing with a simple chromatic lick.

Links

Buy the original
More 50s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
4stringboy – Rain
Jake Shimabukuro – Hualalai ft. Brother Noland – YouTube
Pomaika’i – Puamana
KimaMusic – The First Punch
Dingus Khan – My New Hat
CNN Mikey – Talk About It
Kenta Ebara – Somehow, Somehow
Moon Berries & Zaza – You’re A Sweet Little Headache
CTrietsch – Black or White
Jon’s Ukulele – Haste to the Wedding

Stephen Sanchez – Until I Found You (Tab)

In a rare case of being almost up to date, here’s a tab of Stephen Sanchez’s retro ballad and TikTok smash Until I Found You.

Intro: The retro touches start in the intro with a classic IV to minor iv chord change (C to Cm) in this case. Which shows up in a million Beatles songs as well as Creep and Wake Me Up When September Ends.

Verse: The verse starts with the unmistakeable interval from the Crazy melody. The verse melody has a very lazy, slurred timing to it. I’ve kept some of that but I have straightened it up a little.

Chorus: The chorus is more straight forward in terms of timing. The slide up to the seventh fret is the only bump.

Solo: A very simple solo. Just bashing out the chords and doing a little slide. But doing that accurately and quickly is challenging.

Links

Buy the original
More 2020s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel (Tab)

Old Crow Medicine Show’s Wagon Wheel is pretty much ubiquitous wherever ukuleles are strummed. Or any instrument is strummed. Even Kesha has had a go at it.

Part of the reason it’s so popular is its long gestation taking in Curtis Jone’s Roll Me Mama and Bob Dylan’s mumbled demo Rock Me Mama before OCMS’s Ketch Secor gave the song its current form. It’s not a coincidence that a song passing through so many hands would shape it into something so widely loved. Which is why the current music copyright insanity is so harmful.

Links

Buy the original
Wagon Wheel chords
More folk tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Ukulelists have been raising money to support those affected by the Maui wildfire with Eddie Vedder and Jack Johnson auctioning off ukes, and Taimane playing a benefit. Plus, Jake Shimabukuro is donating profits from his Hana Hou Festival to the fund. You can buy tickets to the online stream the event here.

On Video

– Marvin Tevaga performs Lahaina Luna after losing his home in the wildfire.
– Dick Van Dyke has started learning the ukulele at 97.
– Paragliding with a ukulele.
– The art of the protest song is not dead.

Patreon

A massive thanks to all Uke Hunt’s Patreon backers for keeping the site up and running this month. And double thanks go to these legendary patrons of the arts:

– AnonymousSynonymous8888
– Arthur Foley
– BigHempin
– Colleen Petticrew
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Ivo
– Jameson Gagnepain
– Jeff K
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Leia-lee Doran
– Lisa Johnson
– Loreena Humbert
– Mary
– Michael Lufkin
– Monika Kolodziejczyk
– Moses Kamai
– Nevylle Carroll
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Robert
– Thorsten Neff
– Tina Knight
– Virtual Performing Arts Academy

If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to all previous exclusive tabs including August’s: Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth