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. That way you can find some songs to play no matter how few chords you know.

C, F and G (or G7)

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

Plus Am, Dm and Em

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
LP – Into the Wild
The Lumineers – Ho Hey
Phosphorescent – Wolves
She & Him – Sentimental Heart

Plus D

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

Plus A and E7

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
The Weavers – Pay Me My Money Down
The White Stripes – Little Ghost

Plus Bb

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

Plus Bm

Everly Brothers – Bowling Green
Etta James – I’d Rather Go Blind
The Pogues – When the Ship Comes In

More…

Mastered all those? Tackle more:

Easy ukulele songs
Beginner ukulele lessons

Scott Walker – 30th Century Man (Chords)

It’s already turning into a sad year for musical deaths. This month has seen the loss of Dick Dale, Keith Flint and Scott Walker. I’ve already covered The Prodigy’s Out of Space and done tab a version of Miserlou here. So here’s a quick tribute to Scott Walker.

Walker is best known for his orchestral ballads and dramatic baroque arrangements. But I’ve gone with a stripped down song that really showed off his songwriting chops: 30th Century Man.

I’ve used the most common chord forms in the chart. But I prefer to play using these chord shapes:

Alternatively, you can use one of the alternative ways of playing the E chord or put a capo on the second fret and use these:

30th Century Man (Chords)(Capo Version)

Suggested Strumming

Intro: Since there’s nothing else going on at this point in the song, I recommend following the strum in the original which goes like this:

Verse: After the intro you use this strum:

d – d – d – d u

Play that once on E. You can then play it twice on D. Or throw in the Dsus4 and strum it like this:

Follow that with the main strum once on G and four times on A (or play the strum from the intro).

Chorus: Main Strum once per chord.

Outro: Main strum six times or intro strum one and a half times.

Links

Buy it on Amazon
More 60s tabs and chords

Watch on YouTube

Arko Mukhaerjee and Hari Maharjan Ensemble – Resham Firiri Thanks to @ukeist
Prettier Than Matt – Heaven Forbid Thanks to @ukeist
Elisabeth Pfeiffer – Babooshka
Alicja Maciejewska – I’ll Be There for You
LP – Girls Go Wild
Yuki Niino – Hymne à l’amour
MARLOWE and Chanel Dela Cruz – Talk
The O’Pears – Find the Sun
Kamaka & Kala'e Camarillo – E Pi'i Mai (That’s What I Like

Legendary guitar string maker, Ernie Ball have started making ukulele strings. Check out Got a Ukulele’s opinion and Southern Ukulele Store’s comparison.

HChicago Museum’s history of the Harmony company (via @hermanvdc).

Lupita Nyong’o has been learning ukulele in order to play a zombie teacher.

Window Shopping
– Outdoor Banjolele Carbon Nickel Clear.
– 1930’s Martin 5-K.
– Final Fantasy Sabotender Cactuar Ukulele which looks insane and can’t possibly be worth what they’re asking for it.

Ariana Grande – thank u, next (Tab)

I’ve been a fan of Ariana Grande as a person since the classy way she handled the Manchester bombing. I haven’t been a consistent fan of her music but thank u, next is a winner. Firstly, there’s the tasty chord progression. In the key of this arrangement it goes:

Second is that great vocal run leading into the chorus (bar 20). It’s very quick so I used campanella picking to play it. If you prefer, you could use hammer-ons and pull-offs like this:

And, third, her use of the Scotch snaps rhythm in the chorus (first cropping up in bar 24). Which goes like this:

Coupled with half-time Scotch snaps in the intro and outro:

Links

Buy it on Amazon
More pop tabs and chords

A few great snippets from Irish musicians to get you in the mood for St. Patrick’s Day.

If you like these short tabs, you can find lots more on my Instagram. And there’s more Irishy tabs and chords here.

Thin Lizzy – The Boys are Back in Town

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Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl

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Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová – Falling Slowly

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Damien Rice – Cannonball

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Hozier – Like Real People Do

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Like Real People Do (Tab)

U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday

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Bob Dylan 0 When the Ship Comes In (Chords)

It’s St Patrick’s Day this Sunday so time of the traditional Pogues chord post. This time I’ve gone with their cover of my favourite early- Dylan song When the Ship Comes In.

The two songs are in the same key but they do contain a fair few differences so I’ve written up both.

And if you want more Irish songs you can find all of them on the site here.

Suggested Strumming

For the main strum I like to use:

d – d – d u d –

Do that once per chord except:

– Four times for the G in the intro.
– Twice on the G at the end of the even numbered lines in the verses.
– Twice on the Bm in the fifth line of the verses.

The Pogues Version

The Pogues – When the Ship Comes In (Chords)

Suggested Strumming

The tempo is pretty rapid on this one. So if you want an easy strum you can just use all down strums. Making the intro sound like this:

Easy Strum

Or you could go with d – d u d – which makes it sound like this:

Hard Strum

Twiddly Bits

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The tune in the solo fits pretty nicely on ukulele. I’ve introduced a little campanella run in bar 6. To prepare for it I suggest barreing across the 7th fret at the start of bar 5.

Links

Buy the Dylan version
Buy the Pogues version
More Irish tabs and chords

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist

The O’Pears – Bleak Midwinter / River
Andreas and Corey – Carmen
EatMyUke – Queen Medley
Ukulele Bartt Warburton – Love of My Life
Stevon Artis – Fences
Mandy Harvey – Release Me
Daniel Estrem – Andantino by James Hook
Gerald Ross – Skip It
Paul Hemmings – It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Paul Hemmings’ Duke Ellington covers. Now you can pick up the Duke On Uke tab book of his arrangements.

I stumbled across a Cliff ‘Ukulele Ike’ Edwards track I was unfamiliar with on The Internet Archive with some fantastic ukeing and his trademark deranged scatting: When My Sweetie Puts Her Lovin’ On.

Window Shopping
– Andreas David Samples the Duane Noble Harp Ukulele.
– 1920’s S.S.Stewart taropatch.
– 1961 Martin Tiple.
– 30s/40s Jetel banjolele.
– 1916 Ditson.

On Video
– Feng E returns to Ellen.
– “Gutted I missed the #LibDem conference.”

Tom Waits – Johnsburg, Illinois (Tab)

A song from one of my favourite albums of all time: Swordfishtrombones. And I’ve gone for the grand weeper side of the grim reapers/the grand weepers split in his songs with Johnsburg, Illinois.

My favourite aspect of this song is the dichotomy between the beautiful piano playing and Waits’s raspy voice. He continues that split in the outro where pretty chords knock-up against dissonant notes. I’ve reworked the outro but kept that same idea. I’d definitely recommend coming up with your own outro. When you’re using dissonance, there are no wrong notes.

If ukulele versions of Tom Waits are your thing, you have to check out Pascal Fricke’s Waits covers particularly his outstanding version of Hoist that Rag.

Links

Buy it on Amazon
More indie tabs and chords