Rilo Kiley - Ripchord

Rilo Kiley - Ripchord (Chords)

There’s no ukulele on the album version of Rilo Kiley’s Ripchord but, judging by the clips on YouTube, it’s become a ukulele mainstay in their live show with their guitarist Blake Sennett taking on uke and vocal duties. It seems that guitarists playing the uke move up and down the neck much more often than born ukulele players. You can see it songs like this and Panic at the Disco’s Friends in Holy Spaces.

A couple of things to look out for in the chord chart. First, There’s a chord I’ve labeled A5. It’s not strictly an A5 chord but an A chord. I’ve called it this to distinguish it from the other A chord in the song.

The second, and the trickiest part of the song, is the A6 chord in the intro. It’s a big stretch and he fluffs it a little himself. It’s such a big stretch I couldn’t fit in all on the chord diagram. The diagram shows the note on the eight fret of the A string. It actually needs to be on the ninth.

This would be a simpler way of playing it.

Midi

Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945

Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 (Chords)

This song is the latest colloboration between Uke Hunt and Ukulala. So here’s Laz’s video tutorial:

Eddie Vedder - Rise

Eddie Vedder - Rise (Complicated Chords)

Eddie Vedder - Rise (Basic Chords)

I was all ready to write up Pearl Jam’s ukulele song Soon Forget, until I started getting harassed for Rise from the soundtrack of Into the Wild. And why not? It’s a magnificent song.

Rise is played on the mandolin. The mandolin is tuned in fifths (GDAE) which makes it quite tricky to transfer to the uke, so I’ve done two versions of the chords. One of them is just the very basic chords (G, C and D).

In the other I’ve done my best to recreate what he’s playing on the mandolin and make it a bit more uke friendly. The basic chords remain the same but there are notes added on to give it extra flavour (and also to match the melody in parts).

The best thing to do is take a look at both versions and come up with your own favourite way to play it. I think using the Cadd9 is pretty much essential (and easy) and the C C-5 C5 C6 rising bit sounds great.

Uke Gal Carol has done an excellent version of Rise which you can listen to here.

Requested by Andrew, Rilrod and Whitney

Bishop Allen - Butterfly Nets

Bishop Allen - Butterfly Nets (Chords)

There are a couple of great ukulele tunes on Bishop Allen’s The Broken String album: Click, Click, Click, Click (which you can download on their website) and Butterfly Net.

Of the two, Butterfly Nets is by far the easiest to play - all baby’s first ukulele chords.

The version in the record is slightly different from the one in the video. As well as being longer, the album version is tuned slightly sharp and includes this little fingerpicking bit in the intro:

Strumming

A good, basic strumming pattern for this song would be down, down, up, up, down, up. Like this:

Suggested by Sam

The Beatles - Girl

The Beatles - Girl (Chords)

When Amber requested this one, my first thought was, “More Beatles ukulele? There must be chords up for this somewhere.” I had a search around and didn’t much much like what I found. Besides, who could say no to that face?

It might be a little redundant to say, but The Beatles really knew how to write a chord progression. That Ab between the Fm in the middle section and the Eb in the chorus is just perfect. Ab is in the Fm chord (C is in both chords also) and Eb is in the Ab chord, so it creates a bridge between Fm and Eb which don’t have any notes in common at all.

You might notice I’ve used a slightly different version of G7 to the standard one. It really needs that high D note in there and the ‘…going to listen…’ parts. But feel free to use the standard G7 for the ‘…stay‘ bits.

I couldn’t resist tabbing out the little instrumental break for two ukes as well:

With the exception of one note, it is possible to play this on one uke with a bit of fiddling around.

The Wire Theme: Way Down in the Hole

For those of you like the me of a few months ago who haven’t seen The Wire, each series has its own version of the Tom Waits song Way Down in the Hole.

Season 1: Blind Boys of Alabama

The first series’ theme was performed by The Blind Boys of Alabama. The album that this song comes from, Spirit of the Century, is absolutely fantastic. The highlight is the blues on the oud number Soldier.

Blind Boys of Alabama - Way Down in the Hole (Chords)

I’ve written up the chords as they appear in the theme tune, but there’s nothing in the full song that isn’t in this version.

At the end of each line there’s little little lick.

With this at the end of the verse.

Season 2: Tom Waits

The original Tom Waits version is one fret higher than the BBoA at Bm.

Season 3: The Neville Brothers

The Neville Brothers’ version is in the key of Am - which makes it the most suitable for the ukulele. My favourite way of playing the song is to use the key of Am and the bass lead in from this version and combine it with the lead parts from the Blind Boys’ version to get this:

Season 4: DoMaJe (Baltimore Boys Choir)

Back to the BBoA key of Bbm. I have to say, this is my least favourite version by a long way. For the fuzzy solo, bust out the Bb minor pentatonic scale.

Season 5: Steve Earle

As well as providing the theme for the final season and appearing in the show, Steve Earle’s Feel Alright was used for the end of season 2 montage (listen here if you don’t want any spoilers). It’s a great song. I was going to write it up for the uke, but it’s one of those rare songs that sounds better on the guitar.

Earle’s version of Way Down in the Hole is in Gm.

Priscilla Ahn - Find My Way Back Home

Priscilla Ahn - Find My Way Back Home (Chords)

A while back I was knocked out by a video of Priscilla Ahn playing a ukulele song. But there wasn’t any indication of what it’s called. I begged for more information but didn’t get any. Luckily for all of us, the song has cropped up on her new album A Good Day and I couldn’t resist working it out.

She’s tuned down half a step for the studio and the live versions (but I’ve kept the chord names in C tuning to save confusion). The song uses some slightly unusual chords (C6, G9, F6). There are also two versions of the C6 chord (one with all the strings open and one in the third position). She seems to use these interchangeably on the live versions, but I’ve tabbed out the version on the record.

There’s an interesting move on the ‘Bubbles…’ part where she cycles through the diminished chords. All these chords are the same shape yet have notes in them (A, Eb, F# and C). Check if you don’t believe me (and have absolutely nothing going on in your life).

After that there’s a little single note run which goes something like this:

For the final run part of the song, she stops strumming and starts picking. The picking pattern goes like this:

If you need more information on picking patterns, sign up for the How to Play Ukulele mailing list.

Guacamole Ukulele Song (Chords)

Lauren and Lena - Guacamole Ukulele Song (Chords)

YouTube’s little ukulele video feature made me reassess this song. I’d skipped over it fairly quickly the first time round - there are a lot of ukulele videos to watch - but I shouldn’t have, it’s a damn fine song (no such change of heart over Where Your Scar Is though) and it’s already inspired its own ukulele tribute parody.

For this song Lauren and Lena are tuned to DGBE: baritone/guitar tuning - five frets lower than the standard ukulele tuning. Other than that, the chords are pretty easy. Much easier than they make them look.

Buy stuff at Lauren Fairweather’s MySpace.

Sesame Street

Sesame Street (Chords)

Where can I go without my ukulele? In tribute to the classic broken ukulele sketch, here are the chords to the Sesame Street theme tune.

The tune starts off with a bit of blues shuffle which goes like this:

All the strums are down strums apart from the next to last one in the second and fourth bars.

I prefer to make it more hardcore and bluesy like this:

For the “…tell me how to get…” part you can just play F7 and G. But I like to double the melody like this:

Requested by Artifus.

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly/Justice - D.A.N.C.E.

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly’s recent ukulele session for Le Soir featured a cover of Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. and it was a bit of a cracker. The requests came in and here it is.

The first thing you’ll have to do to play this is to start attacking the tuning pegs. He’s in a tuning that I’ve never come across before: A, B, F#, B. That’s a D-tuning with the D string tuned down three frets to B giving an open B7 tuning. But even that’s not exactly right as he’s tuned a little flat as well.

Once you’ve got that done, the intro goes like this:

The chords for the verse are a simplified version of the intro. It’s very sparse, just the two B strings open with a descending note on the F# string.

The chorus opens up the sound a little by adding a note on top of those chords.

Note the five at the side of the first chord. That means that the chord diagram starts at the fifth fret (so you are fretting at the fifth and seventh frets).

When you’re strumming these, keep a steady up down rhythm going. You can create a funky, syncopated effect by muting some of the strums (covering the strings with you left hand fingers so that the strings just produce a click when you play them).

If you don’t want to mess with the tuning too much, you could just tune the C-string down three frets to A and capo at the second fret (or just play it in the key of A).

If you are desperate to keep the ukulele in C tuning, you could play the intro like this:

Requested by Cardboardfrog and ukulellama.

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