It’s impossible to get away from this song around this time. And this blog isn’t going to give you any respite. But it has been 10 years since I posted the chords so it’s about time for the tabs.
This arrangement starts off with pretty simple with a loose fingerpicking arrangement. After that it’s strummed with a few notes picked and a lot of string muting until a return to fingerpicking right at the end.
In case you’re not familiar with the repeat markings, You play straight through to “D.S. al Coda” the first time. Then you go back to the symbol that looks like a drunk dollar sign in bar 23. Play up to where it says “Da Coda” then skip ahead to the target in bar 59.
Today I’m writing up Parada de Tettas by The Vengaboys. But then again, no. I’m doing this year’s John Lewis ad Elton John’s Your Song.
The arrangement uses a capo on the first fret to make things easier. But it’s still not completely plain sailing as there are some smart chord moves. The best being the use of F# minor and F# major. Being in D, the F#m fits with the harmony you’d expect. So the F# spices things up and lifts the progression after melancholy descending Bm move in the previous line.
Suggested Strumming
You can use this strum once for almost chord:
d – d – d u d –
The only exceptions are the Asus4 – A and Dsus4 – D moves. There you play the first half of the bar (d – d -) on the sus4 then switch the to major chord for the rest.
Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans. And happy No-Americans-on-the-Internet Day to everyone else. Today I’m thankful for baritone ukuleles. They may be inferior to real ukuleles but sometimes they’re the best tool for the job. Such as for this latest tune from Lana Del Rey.
The picking pattern in the verse and chorus is based around Travis picking (i.e. thumb and two finger picking with the thumb alternating between the D and G strings). But because the G-string is needed for some of the melody notes there are a few exceptions. The trickiest is pair of notes on the G-string, 7th fret in bar 10. Here the first is plucked with the thumb and the second with the index finger.
We’re about a month out from Christmas so time to start polishing up the festive tunes and learning a few new ones. Here’s a rundown of everything Christmassy on the site.
I’m mostly into St Vincent for the wild guitar playing and shuffle dancing. But this beautiful, straightforward ballad immediately struck me as prime for a ukeing. And other than a few big pinkie-stretches it works very neatly.
I’m mostly playing this very loosely without any strict pattern. In the first and third verses I throw in a lot of index-finger flicks where – rather than picking the note – I’ll flick my index finger upwards to catch the melody note and one or two other strings. This helps fill in the sound a little. In the second verse I switch to full strumming to get an even larger sound.
The only part that requires strict one finger per string picking is the rapid picking in bar 7 which is extended in the coda. Other than that you can play it however you feel it.
Technically, I shouldn’t be posting this on White Album week. But it was recorded during the White Album sessions and it is one of the best (possibly the best) Beatles song. If you’re dying for a White Album song have a go at the Blackbird tab.
I’ve kept the arrangement as simple as possible. It has such a strong (and well known) melody it doesn’t need much to back it up. I’m not following any strict pattern for the fingerpicking. For the most part the thumb plays the lowest string in the bar then letting the fingers fall on a string each from there.
In the repeat of the chorus I play a slight variation on the, “And don’t you knowwwwww…” in bars 15 and 16.
After all that I switch to strumming and the occasional finger flick for the boisterous sh-outro. I bash out a couple of adornments in this section. You don’t need to do anything complicated with these so long as you use the appropriate amount of gusto. Both mine are just based on the C7 chord.
