The chords for Lips Are Unhappy fit nicely on the ukulele. In the chord chart I’ve written the C chord as the Bb chord shape (but 2 frets higher). I think this inversion sounds better and it means you can slide up to it from the Bb. But you can use the standard C shape if you prefer.
One thing to notice about the chords is the C6 that crops up. It’s in brackets in the intro because it’s a passing chord – you only strum it once. It’s only there briefly but, since all the strings are strummed open, it’s not difficult to play.
When the fingering of a certain passage is important, tab will give a guide as to which fingers should be used both for fretting and picking.
Fretting Hand
The fretting hand (the left hand for right-handed players) is indicated by numbers in circles underneath the tab.
The index finger is 1, middle finger 2 etc. When strings are played open, no finger is indicated.
Picking Hand
The tab for the picking hand is less intuitive.
T = Thumb
I = Index Finger
M = Middle Finger
A = Ring Finger
The finger names come, apparently, from Latin (indice, medius, annular).
These letters appear under the tab also.
Repeats
There are a number of ways that repeats are shown in tabs. The main way is with a set of double bar lines (one thick and one thin) and two dots.
When you come across a set of these with the dots facing right, you skip straight past them. When the dots are facing left, you go back to the first set (where the dots are facing right) and play through again. The second time you reach the repeat sign, play straight through it unless it indicates otherwise (by say x3, x4 etc.).
In this example, you play bar one and bar two, then bar two again.
If there is no first set of repeat signs, go back to the beginning and play through again.
Sometimes you’ll see sections at the end of each repeat blocked off like this:
Here you play the bar underneath the 1 section the first time round, follow the repeat sign as normal, then second time round you skip that bar and play the bar underneath the 2 instead.
So, you’d play bars:
1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 5
The section under the 1 can be any number of bars – the idea remains the same.
You can also have any number of alternate bars. If the section is repeated 4 times, there may be 4 different endings written. You just play these in sequence the same way..
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Read the rest of the series here: How to Read Ukulele Tab.
It probably won’t come as a huge shock to you that I enjoyed Beirut’s Flying Club Cup. Ukuleles, brass bands, pretentiousness; what’s not to love? Better still, it came with a website full of videos of the band performing tracks in various rundown areas.
St Apollonia is structured in quite a strange way. The song starts out with a C major chord, then shifts to C minor for the first and only verse. For the instrumental section, the chords over the verse are shuffled about.
During the song, there are some rapid strums. Because they’re using those horrible rhino’s toenails, they have no option but to strum really fast. If you use your fingers, it’s easier to get this effect using a roll – rasgueado if you want to get Spanish about it. These are produced by flicking downwards with each finger individually. You can watch a good explanation of the rasgueadoes technique for guitar here.
It takes a fair bit of gumption to invited comparison to one of the heroes of the ukulele. Luckily for me, Mike was willing to send me a CD so I could check it out.
Mike’s been playing ukulele for 35 years and had a knack for it from the start. As a lad, he toured with J. Chalmers Doane – the man responsible for Canada’s peerless ukulele program which produced James Hill – as part of the Halifax Adult Ukulele Ensemble (read more about them here). He’s been strumming away since, but has only just put out his debut solo album.
The album is bookended with a couple of rollockin’ ukulele instrumental kicking off with Molly Brown Medley (featuring Freight Train and 12th Street Rag) and ending with Homesick Medley (which you can hear in the above video). In between Mike turns in vocal performances of songs such as Crocodile Rock, Leaning On a Lamppost and I’ll See You In My Dreams along with plenty instrumental versions of popular songs.
The Good Stuff
– The Playing: Mike is an incredibly accomplished ukulelist. He produces a crystal clear sound and manages to keep his playing articulately even at great speed. His picking and strumming on a spirited version of, the bossa nova tune, Brazil is breathtaking. If you want you ukulele playing to sound fluid and natural, you need to listen to this track and pay close attention.
– Singin’ In the Rain: Mike’s version of this song is insanely infectious. As soon as it can on I had to grab my uke and play this along to it.
The Not So Good Stuff
– Song Choices: I’d love to hear Mike make more adventurous song choices. Some of the songs on the CD (Over the Rainbow, Aloha Oe, Yesterday) have been done to death and these are my least favourite songs on the album.
– Production: Nothing wrong with the production if you like crisp and clean, but I prefer a bit of grit occasionally. It’d be great to hear what he can do when he really lets loose.
Overall
There’s some exceptional playing on this CD and any ukulele player would be well advised to sit up and take notice. You can buy the CD at CD Baby or individual tracks for download at PayPlay. Whichever option you chose, your life is not complete without these…
Essential tracks: Molly Brown Medley, Brazil, Polka Medley, Singin’ In the Rain, Homesick Medley.
If you’ve been following Uke Hunt a while, you’ll know I have a loveofthemetunes. I’ve also had quite a few requests for theme tunes. So, for the near future at least, Sunday is going to be theme tune day (TV, movies, games).
First off is a theme tune I’ve done already. It was pointed out to me that my first attempt at The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was a steaming pile of Federline, and I have to agree. It was early days.
Anyhoo, the new version is much better. You can grab it up there and read more about it and get a variation on the original post.
Vote for your favourite using this form (if you’re reading this via email or a feed you’ll have to come to the site). You only get one vote – use it wisely. Voting closes midnight Friday 18th January (Hawaii time). The winners gets fame, glory and absolutely no prizes with any monetary value whatsoever.
If you’ve tried to sign up for the mailing list in the last couple of weeks and encountered problems, it should all be back up and working. If you’re still having problems, let me know and I’ll cry some more then try to sort them out.
<tangent>I haven’t been entirely happy with the people I’m using to deliver the list, so I tried out Aweber. I’ve had nothing but problems since I started with them. I’m tempted to go on a rant, but I won’t bore with that. I’ll just say: if you’re ever setting up an email list and want the benefit of my experience, avoid Aweber.</tangent>
If your new year’s resolutions included both getting fit and improving your ukulele playing then this is the way to do it. And make sure you check out the rest of his videos (once you’re in a fit state to carry on).
Clarks shoes will always be associated in my mind with the ugly school shoes I was stuck with while all my cooler friends were wearing DMs. In an attempt to change this, they hooked up with Tokyo Ukulele Afternoon and gave away their version of Tequila to London’s hipnoscenti. You can take a listen yourself at Innersounds and grab some more mp3s here. I’m still not going to voluntarily wear the shoes. (Via Ukulele & All That Jazz)
Sometimes you choose a job, and sometimes a job chooses you. I’m guessing when it came time for the BBC to get a correspondent to follow Greenpeace’s attempts to stop Japanese whale hunting – Jonah found himself in the latter position.
Whether or not their name came from a biblical mix-up, Noah and the Whale are part of the ultra-hip London folk scene and compatriots like Laura Marling (who crops up in this video) and Emmy the Great float in and out of the line-up.
Noah and the Whale’s Five Years Time wins the 2007 ZZ Top Award for Best Three Chord song. It’s dead simple to play. It’s just C – F – G – F all the way through.
By the looks of the Wes Anderson inspired video, they play the G-chord in a slightly more difficult way:
But there’s nothing wrong with playing it the easier way.
Tabs vary with how much information they give about rhythm. Some tab you’ll see won’t have any rhythm indicated at all and will expect you to get the rhythm by listening to a recording. Some will have a vague indication of rhythm given by the distance between notes. Some will have tab and standard notation with the standard notation giving the rhythm. And some will have rhythm lines on the tab.
Rhythm in Standard Notation
Quite often you’ll see ukulele tab accompanied by standard notation. In these, cases the rhythm will be shown on the standard notation.
When you listen to a piece of music, you’ll feel the pulse of the music. Clap along with any song and you’ll be clapping out its beat. Each of these beats is known as a ‘crotchet‘ or ‘quarter note‘ and is written like this:
Example 1
The lines going up in this example can also go down. It makes no difference to how the note is played.
In the examples, there is a click in the background for each beat (quarter note). You can count along with these in your head (or out loud) as 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.
Half notes (or minims) last twice as long as and are shown as a line with a hollow circle at the bottom (the first half of the example 2). When you’re counting these, only play every other number. In this example you’d play on the 1 and the 3 (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4).
Whole notes (or semibreves) last twice as long as half notes. They are indicated by a hollow circle without any lines at all (the second half of Example 2). These notes are only played on the 1 ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4)
Example 2
Going in the other direction, notes that are shorter than half notes look like this:
Example 3
The first part of example 3 is quarter notes.
This is followed by a set of eighth notes (or quavers). These last half as long as quarter notes and look like two eighth notes connected by a horizontal line. These are usually counted ‘1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and’.
Eighth notes aren’t always in pairs and you’ll see single eighth notes singly where they are shown like this:
The final set of notes in example 3 shows sixteenth notes (or semi-quavers). These last half as long as eighth notes and are shown with a double horizontal line. These are usually counted ‘1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a’.
Again, these can be shown singly like this:
If you listen to the last example, you’ll hear a click for each quarter note. There are two eighth notes for each quarter note and four sixteenth notes per quarter note. Get used to counting out the eighth and sixteenth notes in your head or tapping out the rhythm before you try to play them.
You can keep halving the length of notes (adding an extra horizontal line each time) but it’s rare you’ll see anything shorter than a sixteenth note in ukulele tab.
Rhythm in Tab
Sometimes standard notation isn’t shown along with the tab. In these cases, the rhythm is usually indicated on the tab itself. This method isn’t quite so standardised. The system shown here is the one I use on Uke Hunt. Other systems may differ but will probably have similarities.
In tab, quarter notes are indicated by a line going down from the bottom. Example 1 would look like this when written in tab.
Half notes are shown with a shorter line under the tab and whole notes are shown with no line at all. Example 2 looks like this when written in tab.
Eighth and sixteenth notes are written in a very similar way as they are in standard notation. Example 3 would be written like this.
Bars/Measures
You might have noticed in that vertical lines (known as bar lines) in the tabs dividing the music into sections. Each of these sections is called a bar or measure. This makes it easier to follow and easier to reference a particular part of the tab.
The length of the bars is determined by the two numbers at the beginning of the tab (known as the time signature). In every case so far, this has been 4/4. That means there is the equivalent of four quarter notes in each bar. This could mean a half note and four eighth notes; or a quarter note, four sixteenth notes and four eighth notes; or any combination that adds up to four quarter notes.
Another common signature is 3/4 – known as waltz time. This means there are three quarter notes in each bar. It’s very rare that you’ll come across a time signature other than these..
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Read the rest of the series here: How to Read Ukulele Tab.
James Hill and J Chalmers Doane‘s Ukulele in the Classroom should be out any day now. UPDATE: It’s now up and running.
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