SoKo - I Will Never Love You More
April 22, 2008
Soko - I Will Never Love You More
When I mentioned Soko in my best of 2007 posts, I had no idea she was a ukulelist. Not long after that post, I Will Never Love You More cropped up on her MySpace. I decided right then I’d have to put up the chords, but it wasn’t until I saw the above video at La vidéo ukulélé du jour that I got my arse into gear.
The chords are very simple: just C and G in the verse with F and G7 for the other sections. It’s a bit trickier to recreate her strumming pattern. First she plucks the G string with her thumb, then strums up, down, up with her index finger.
If this is your first visit here, you can find the chords/tab in those posts by clicking on the song title in red.
Israel Kamakawiwo’ole/Jason Castro - Somewhere Over the Rainbow
April 9, 2008
Jason Castro/Israel Kamakawiwo’ole - Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Chords)
I never thought I’d be putting this song on the blog. But, when I realised even Simon Cowell isn’t too hard-hearted and cynical to be won over by a song’s charm, I reconsidered my position. Despite the obligatory American Idol warblings, I thought Jason Castro made a pretty good stab at the song.
His version of the chords are simpler than Brudda IZ’s - particularly since the intro is missed off - which makes it ideal for beginners. The strumming pattern varies throughout the song, but good starting place is:
Down, down (pause)
Up, down, up
Up, down, up
Up, down, up
All that for each chord.
To answer Julie’s question it’s an Oscar Schmidt ukulele. I’d guess it’s an Oscar Schmidt OU5. One thing it’s definitely not is a guitar. Bloody Paula Abdul.
A big thanks to Jeff for alerting me to this performance.
Joan Jett - Bad Reputation (from Freaks and Geeks)
March 23, 2008
Joan Jett - Bad Reputation (Chords)
It might just be me that remembers Freaks and Geeks, and I was mostly there for Linda Cardellini and the theme tune. As I understand it, the series didn’t even make it to the end in the US. But we got the whole thing here in the UK. Apparently, it’s now a cult hit. There are certainly plenty of people involved with it who went on to bigger things. Most notably, it was the first time actor Seth Rogen and director Judd Atapow worked together (going on to make The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad together).
The theme tune to Freaks and Geeks came from the days when even the punks wore shoulder pads and is fantastically catchy. And it has the best guitar solo shout out since, “Go, Nigel, go”: Pedal boys!
The tune is perfect for a bit of punk uke and would make a great uke club song (oh God, I’d love to hear GUGUG do this song). I’ve made the chords a little more uke club friendly by shifting them up from B to C. If you want it in the original key, you’ll have to shift everything down a fret (or tune down half a step).
For the first half of the song, the chords are C, F and G. Then there’s a key change to D and everything shifts up two frets (to D, G and A). The strumming shouldn’t trip you up either. Down, up, down, up should do you fine most of the way through the song.
Herman Dune - I Wish That I Could See You Soon
March 20, 2008
Herman Dune - I Wish That I Could See You Soon (Chords)
Slap my ass and call me Sally, I should have done this song a looooong time ago.
David Ivar Herman Dune (or Herman Düne for fans of unnecessary umlauts) is a ukulele hero and his Ya Ya
I Wish That I Could See You Soon doesn’t have a ukulele in it, but the fact he plays it on a guitar capoed at the fifth fret (putting it in the ukulele range) suggests he may well have written the song on the uke.
Strumming
When I strum this song, I like to use a bit of left hand damping. Leaving that aside for now, the strum is down, down, up, up, down. If you just want a simple strum, the song will sound perfectly good.
If you want something a bit more interesting, try it this way. Create a short chord on the first strum. You can do this by strumming down on the F chord as normal, then resting the ring finger of you right hand on the strings to stop the chord ringing (and relax your fretting fingers). Then you strum down again with the strings still dampened by your finger. After that, you can go back to your normal chord shape and strum up, up, down. Do this for each chord and it should sound something like this:
Ayano Tsuji - Kaze Ni Naru (The Cat Returns Theme)
March 2, 2008
Ayano Tsuji - Kaze Ni Naru (The Cat Returns Theme) (Chords)
Japanese singer, Ayano Tsuji (or Tsuji-Ayano as she seems to put it herself) has set herself up as the anti J-pop (the slick, fashionable pop music often sung in English) and playing the uke certainly sets her apart from the J-pop scene. Going against the grain didn’t do much for her career, but she did breakthrough when her song Kaze Ni Naru was used as the theme to the manga film The Cat Returns.
The version used in the film (and the one I’ve written up) is a more stripped down version. At least it is in comparison to the full version. The chords used in that version are, for the most part, the same. Just a few orchestral embellishments.
My Japanese isn’t quite good enough to provide a full chord sheet, so I’ve written up the chords (separated into bars). If you want to tackle the lyrics, you can find them here.
The chords are straightforward. They’re simple enough for a five year old to play. The strumming is fairly constant through the song. In the intro, it’s just one strum per chord. For the rest of the song, she’s strums down, down, up, up, down, up. When you’re strumming a pattern like this, try to keep your hand moving in a steady down, up motion and miss the strings where there is no strum. This makes sure that the tempo is nice and even.
The only place this pattern won’t work is in the bars that contain both F and G chords. Here, strumming each chord down twice will see you through.
Kate Nash - Foundations
February 21, 2008
Kate Nash - Foundations (Chords)
There’s no doubt about the highlight of last night’s Brit Awards; “You remember Kenzie? His little face beaming?” The Brit School love-in was getting a bit much. And it’s great to see one band willing to goad the powers that be into cutting their speech short.
Having said that, I don’t have anything against the Brit School. There are a few killer songs that have come out of it, which makes it worth putting up with The Feeling in my book. Foundations is one of the songs that makes it worth putting up with them (and maybe even The Kooks as well).
The chords are dead simple. The tricky part is working out how the hell the lyrics fit around them and adopting an unconvincing cockerney accent.
For the strumming at the start, you can just play each chord once. When it gets going, I like to use down, down, up, up, down. Which sounds like this slow:
And this up to speed:
Antsy Pants/Bear Creek - Vampire
February 17, 2008
Antsy Pants - Vampire (Chords)
I’m off to see Juno this week and even if it doesn’t live up to the hype it’ll be worth sticking with it to the end to hear Antsy Pant’s ukulele tune Vampire.
Antsy Pants started life as a collaboration between anti-folker and Moldy Peach Kimya Dawson and twelve year old ukelelist Leo Bear Creek. The project grew to include a whole raft youngsters.
Vampire is sung and uked by Leo and it’s a very cute song. The chords are dead simple.
From what I can make out, Leo plays the ukulele left handed but strung in the right hand way (so the strings are upside down). It got me thinking about it, and it actually makes more sense this way up. D chords and E chords (the bane of uke players) are much easier to play this way round and none of the other main chords are more difficult than the usual way.
Requested by Anika
The Troggs/Jimi Hendrix - Wild Thing
February 12, 2008
You wouldn’t believe how many people turn up at this blog after searching for ‘wild thing ukulele tabs’ and leave disappointed. Well, no more.
The song was written by Chip Taylor, later recorded by The Troggs but probably most famous in the guitar-burning Hendrix version. All three of those versions are in different keys (Taylor in E, Troggs in A and Hendrix in Ab) and, as luck would have it, none of those keys make for easy beginner chords on the ukulele.
About Transposing
For the most part, playing guitar chords on the ukulele isn’t a problem. The chords for guitar are the same as the chords for ukulele - if the chord is A for the guitar, it’s A for the ukulele as well. However, sometimes the guitar chords are awkward to play on the uke. If this is the situation, you can move the chords around to make them fit more comfortably on the uke. This is known as transposing.
The version of Wild Thing above shows the chords The Troggs used and is in the key of A (i.e. A is the chord where the song feels settled). It includes the E chord which uke players always hate. You can get round this by moving all the chords up or down the same number of frets so it’s in a new key. The most uke friendly keys are C, G and F.
For Wild Thing, the first version I wrote out is in A and this version is in G:
Since G is two frets lower than A, you have to move all the chords down two frets. So the D chord becomes a C chord, the E chord becomes a D chord and the G chord becomes an F chord.
There’s a very handy automatic chord transposing website that makes this easy. You just throw in the chord sheet, tell it what key you want the chords to be in and it’ll spit out the new chord sheet.
Colbie Caillat - Tied Down
February 5, 2008
Colbie Caillat - Tied Down (Chords)
With its laid back island vibes, it no surprise that Colbie Caillat’s summer hit Bubbly inspired plenty of ukulele covers, despite using the term ‘bubbly face’ as a compliment.
Her album also features a similarly laid back catchy tune played on uke: Tied Down. It’s also very simple to play. Most of the chords will be very familiar to you (F, Am, G, C). You might not recognise C6 but it’s just all the strings open.
The strumming pattern is also pretty simple. Strum up, down, up four times for each chord. After the second up strum, stop the strings ringing by bringing your picking hand down on the strings - or do a chnk.
Interestingly, the chords in the live version are slightly different. Instead of F and C6 in the verse, it’s F6 and C. Well, it’s interesting to a nerd like me.
Lightspeed Champion - Tell Me What It’s Worth
January 31, 2008
Lightspeed Champion - Tell Me What It’s Worth (Chords)
There are plenty of pictures of Lightspeed Champion with a ukulele but it’s not often you see him playing the ukulele. I was hoping there’d be a little uke on his new album, but no such luck. So, I’ve written up his latest single Tell Me What It’s Worth.
The only potential stumbling block with the chords is the Fmaj7. You can make it easier to get to in the chorus by fretting the C chord with your index finger rather than the ring finger. But that’s not going to help you in the middle section where it goes from G to Fmaj7. If you find it too big of a jump, play the standard F chord there (you can use the standard F chord in the chorus too, it’ll sound right).
The song’s guitar solo sounds really good on the uke if you use the re-entrant string and let the notes ring into each other like this:
This creates a cascading effect. Much more interesting than the boring guitar way of doing it:
Recent Comments