After a bit of a break to concentrate on full tabs, I’m back posting riffs and whatnot on Instagram. Here’s a roundup of recent tabs.
Here’s a tab for how it’s originally played with the uke tuned to g-Bb-Db-F:
And here’s a version adapted for standard tuning:
Merry Christmas, Chanukah Sameach, Io Saturnalia, Feliz Natal and Happy Holidays! (If you can be arsed with it this year.)
That’s it from me for this year (other than the ebook for new ukers). I’ll be back at the end of January 2021 (year of the Daug7 chord, nice).
If you’re after some Christmas music and you’re as Spotify user here’s my Christmas Ukulele playlist. Or, if you’re sick of Christmas music, my playlist of ukulele selections from 2020.
If you can’t stand to be without a steady stream of uke, I’ll be posting on Instagram, on Twitter and Patreon. Speaking of which…
I’ve been blown away by the amount of support I’ve received since starting the Uke Hunt Patreon in February. The amount of support has far exceeded my expectations and I’m overwhelmingly grateful to everyone who has supported the site.
All that support means I’ve been able to up the amount of tabs I’m putting out. By my count, I added 59 full tabs to the site this year compared to 34 last year. And that’s not including the monthly Patreon-only tabs.
And extra thanks to December’s Tenor backers:
– Alina Morosanu.
– Arthur Foley.
– Colleen Petticrew.
– Dan.
– Douglas.
– Elizabeth Beardsley.
– Fiona Keane.
– Joseph Freeman.
– Katherine Penney.
– Kie77.
– Leia-lee Doran.
– Lisa Johnson.
– Mr Daniel Barclay.
– Nick Parsons.
– Olga deSanctis.
– Pat Weikle.
– Pauline LeBlanc.
– Sandi Clement.
– Thorsten Neff.
– Trevor Mccravy.
Last month’s Patreon-only tab for concert level backers and up was November Rain by Guns N’ Roses.
I like to keep a list of songs that use just the most common ukulele chords. Arranged by the order people usually learn them in. And with people panic buying ukuleles, I thought it was about time for an update.
If you prefer, you can use G7 in the place of G or vice versa for any of these songs.
Happy Birthday to You
The Bobby McGee’s – A Dog At All Things
Folk Uke – Motherfucker Got Fucked Up
Mungo Jerry – In the Summertime
The Lancashire Hotpots – He’s Turned Emo
NeverShoutNever! – Your Biggest Fan/Did It Hurt?
Noah and the Whale – Five Years Time
Paolo Nutini – High Hopes
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
SoKo – I Will Never Love You More
The Tiger Lillies – Start A Fire
Tom Waits – I Hope that I Don’t Fall in Love with You
Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra/Kings of Leon – The Bucket
Addams Family Theme Tune
Alton Ellis – Rock Steady
Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend to Dance With You
Blondie/Imelda May – Dreaming
Billy Bragg – Between the Wars
Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Darren Hanlon – All These Things
Electrelane – Cut and Run
Florence and the Machine – Dog Days Are Over
Foals – Spanish Sahara
Luis Fonsi – Despacito
Garfunkel and Oates – Me, You and Steve
GUGUG – California Sun
INXS – Never Tear Us Apart
Israel Kamakawiwoíole/Jason Castro – Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Julien Dore – Cet Air-La
Kate Nash – Foundations
Kate Micucci/The Gooch – Mr Moon
Kelli Rae Powell
Last Shadow Puppets – Standing Next to Me
Lewis Capaldi – Someone You Loved
LP – Into the Wild
The Lumineers – Ho Hey
Phosphorescent – Wolves
She & Him – Sentimental Heart
Allo Darlin’ – Tallulah
Allo Darlin’ – Space Christmas
Amanda Palmer – In My Mind
Antsy Pants/Bear Creek – Vampire
Belle and Sebastian – The Boy with the Arab Strap
Elvis Costello – Good Year for the Roses
Daniel Johnston – Living Life
Damon Albarn – Mr Tembo
The Dubliners and The Pogues – The Irish Rover
Garfunkel and Oates – The Fade Away (you can use D instead of D7)
Gothic Archies – Shipwrecked
GUGUG/The Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop
Woody Guthrie – All You Fascists Bound to Lose
Keston Cobblers’ Club – You-Go
The Libertines – Don’t Look Back into the Sun
The Little Ones – Tangerine Visions
The Monkees – I’m a Believer (Use D where it says D7).
Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel
Phredd – Elmer’s Electric Tricycle
The Pogues – Fiesta
The Pogues – Waxies Dargle
The Pretenders – 2000 Miles
Skinny Lister – Colours
Vampire Weekend – Oxford Comma
Velvet Underground and Nico – I’ll be Your Mirror
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London
Camera Obscura – Cock Up Your Beaver
Eagles of Death Metal – I Want You So Hard
The Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go
Florence & the Machine – Kiss With A Fist (don’t panic, you can use E7 instead of E in this song)
The Pogues – Sally McLennane
Joan Jett – Bad Reputation
Junior Brown – Better Call Saul
Kate Micucci & Ted (Scrubs) – Screw You
Paolo Nutini – Pencil Full of Lead
The Pogues – Streams of Whiskey
Twenty One Pilots – Cut My Lip
The Weavers – Pay Me My Money Down
The White Stripes – Little Ghost
James Bay – Hold Back the River
Beirut – A Candle’s Fire
Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know (You can use C instead of C5)
Ingrid Michaelson – Be OK
Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
Lorde/Walk off the Earth – Royals
Lorde/WIOU – Team
Mumford and Sons – The Cave
Nevershoutnever – First Dance
Neutral Milk Hotel – King of Carrot Flowers
Noah and the Whale – Jealous Kind of Love
Sufjan Stevens – Lumberjack Christmas
The Tokens – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Everly Brothers – Bowling Green
Etta James – I’d Rather Go Blind
The Pogues – When the Ship Comes In
Mastered all those? Tackle more:
Shinyribs’ excellent ukulele version of The Wind Cries Mary inspired me to fix the lack of Hendrix chordings on Uke Hunt (unless you count Wild Thing).
The song is based around an Eb-E-F motif. In the original that’s played with two different inversions. Which is how I’ve written it up (the apostrophes in the chord name indicate the inversion: the more apostrophes the higher up the neck). But Shinyribs goes with the same inversion each time. Both work.
Intro: One down-strum per chord followed by a chnk.
Verses: For something simple, you can use this as the main strum:
d – d – d u d u
Once for all the C, Bb and G chords. Twice on the Fs. Then the same as the intro on the Eb-E-F moves.
Solo: Same as the verses for C-Bb-F. Then twice each for G, Bb and C#. Then four times on F.
You can either play the straight chords in the intro or throw in a few hammer-ons to match the original version.
The solo is very tight and restrained for a Hendrix solo. Which means it transfers very nicely to ukulele. It’s mostly based on double-stops on the E- and A-strings. With just one big of pentatonic widdling in bar 9.
A slightly unusual choice this week chorded at the behest of, America’s radio sweetheart, Jesse Thorn and done with some help of the man, the legend Jim Boggia.
The song is a Sinatra pastiche with some nice jazzy moves. A few of the chords might be unfamiliar to you but they’re all very easy to play. With a capo on the third fret at least. If you want to tackle it in the more challenging original key the chords are:
It’s much trickier to play this way but I do enjoy having the moving notes on the Eb being at the bottom rather than the top (as they are on the capoed version).
I keep the strumming dead simple and just do this once per chord:
d – d u
The lick in the intro is so deliciously cheesy. I absolutely intend to steal it at some point.
The above version is without a capo. The capoed version can be played like this:
I’m very glad Fontaines D.C. came along and showed that rock music isn’t dead quite yet. Boys in the Better Land sticks to the old rock formula of “three chords and the truth” and makes it sound exciting and vital again.
There are two versions of the song. The original version is the much slower “Darklands version”. Which really threw me off for the balls-to-the-wall version on their album Dogrel. And it’s the album version I’ve written. In terms of chords, they’re the same. But the arrangement of the Darklands version is slightly different with the solo coming after the first chorus and missing out the repeat of the second verse and the pre-chorus and chorus that follow it.
The song is in the key of E. If you don’t fancy using any of the variations of the E chord, you can always slap a capo on the second fret and play the E – D – A chords as D – C – G respectively.
For everything but the chorus, you can use this for the E chord:
d – d – d u d u
On the D:
d – d –
And on the A:
d u d u
Together it sounds like this:
The only exception is the repeat of the second verse. There you play three lots of this on the first E:
d u d u d u d u
And in the chorus, play this on the E three times.
d u d u d u d u
Then the same as the verse strum for the D and A.
Here’s a version of the riff the lead guitar part that first blasts in at bar 9 of the intro. It crops up throughout the song. Sometimes in a reduced form where it’s just switching from -45- to -44- every two bars.
And, finally, a version of the solo that I play using a pick. Those two thick black lines on each stem indicate that it’s tremolo picked in constant sixteenth notes. Or, if you’re anything like me, as close to constant as you can manage. If you prefer, you can just pick each note once without losing too much.
Even by the standards of 1968, Dr John’s debut album Gris Gris is a trip into the strange and unnerving. With I Walk on Guilded Splinters being a masterpiece. But I’ve gone with something more uke-suitable to celebrate his life: Such a Night (not to be confused – as Wikipedia does – with the Drifters/Elvis song of the same name.
You can keep the strumming very simple. Either follow the guitar part and do down-strums on the off-beats. Or the organ and do down-strums on every beat. But I like to add a little variety and use this two bar pattern in the verse and chorus:
d – d – d – d –
d – d – d u d u
And then use two down-strums per chord in the middle until the little walk-up at the end where it’s one strum per chord.
This tab combines the chords with the short organ riff at the end of the lines.
Buy it on Amazon
More 70s tabs and chords
More than fifty years after its release and Lesley Gore’s impassioned demand for female self-ownership is still depressingly relevant.
You Don’t Own Me is a masterclass is using music to convey the meaning of the song. The depressed verses are played in a minor key while the forthright choruses switch to major. The song also shifts up half a step three times. Each time making her sound more strident and forceful.
As effective as the key changers are, they do make this song tricky to play. A chunk of the tune is in G#. A key that is uke unfriendly and odd in terms of musical theory. For reasons I might go into at a later date, the Fm chord in the middle should really be referred to as an E#m. I went with Fm though to avoid confusion.
In researching this post, I found out a recent cover of this by Grace managed to stack up a quarter of a billion views without me knowing it existed.
I like to count this tune in 6/8 time as 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3.
For the main strum use this three beat long pattern:
d – d u d –
Intro: You can do just six down-strums per bar for four bars. Alternatively, you can pull of from the A-string, 1st fret to the open A-string and follow that with a bar of six down-strums and a bar of four. Which sounds like this:
Verse and Solo: Main strum twice each for the first three chords (G – Cm – D7 in the key of G). Then once each for the next two before returning to the start of the progression. For the final chord, do the main strum four times. Which goes like this:
Chorus, Middle and Outro: Main strum four times for each chord.
The solo mostly restates the melody. The trickiest part is the run at the end which requires a big jump up the fretboard.
As much as I’m a fan of dreary and depressing music, I like pop music to be at least a little joyful. And K-pop has been injecting some much needed fun into pop music recently. And I’m a fan of the way they tend to cram as many styles of music into a single song as possible. So you get little sections like the rock riff in Seventeen’s Clap, Blackpink’s blarring trumpets in Kill This Love, and the jazzy 20’s lick in Momoland’s I’m So Hot that are prime for a ukeing.
If you like these short tabs, you can find lots more on my Instagram.
It’s been very gratifying to see the revival of interest in Queen the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic has produced. Their songs so often have interesting twists and turns, memorable guitar solos and amazing harmonies. Plus Brian May started out on ukulele and picked it up again for Good Company.
Main strum: d – d u d –
Intro: Just one strum per chord to start with. Then you can down-strum on each beat for the build on Bb – C.
Verse and solo: When there are three chords to a line, main strum once each for the first two chords then two on the last chord. Two each on the G7-C. And one each on the last line. Which sounds like this:
The verses do switch up a little. Verse two starts two main strums on the F and one on each of the last line.
Chorus and Outro: One down-strum per beat on the F in the first line. Then switching back to the main strum once per chord until two big down-strums on the F6. Then back to the main strum twice per chord.
Bridge: Here you down-strum on the first four beats of each bar. And switch to down-strumming every beat as the tension builds. For the last line I strum down on the Csus4s and up on the Cs.
Here’s a take on the piano part in the intro also played with a capo at the third fret. It’s a fingerpicked version of the chords with a few bits of filigree.
I love Brian May’s solos. They’re always melodic and interesting. This one uses the Ab major pentatonic most of the way through. It switches to the Ab major scale in bar 8. Then switching the D flat of the major scale for a D natural to move to the Ab lydian mode.
The end of the original solo turns into a bit of a widdle-fest that doesn’t translate well to uke. So for my version I’ve borrowed from the, “someday I’m going be free, lord,” vocal part.
I’m playing this without a capo. But there’s nothing below the third fret so it won’t cause any problems if you’re playing the chords as well.
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