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.
A great solo using the A minor pentatonic scale over a blues shuffle between the major and 6 chords (both of which I cover in depth in the Blues Ukulele ebook). I’ve also included the chorus riff at the end of the solo.
Way back in the early days of the blog I wrote up the bare bones of this tune to encourage people to come up with their own take on the tune rather than aping Jake’s version. That was a dismal failure.
A rapid-fire harpsichord solo presumably used to represent the hifalutin piggies. I was expecting this to be impossible to do on uke but add a capo at the third fret and it’s tricky but doable.
It’s the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ White Album this month. So I thought I’d completely trash my no-Beatles rule with a week of songs from that era. Starting with the 1920s pastiche of Honey Pie that was made to played on uke.
The intro is a typical piece of genius. I’ve tried to capture the spirit of it without over-complicating it in the chord chart. But there’s a tab version below with all the twiddly bits.
Suggested Strumming
You can use this as a main strum:
d – d – d u d u
Intro: One down-strum per chord.
Chorus and Outro: Two of the main strum on the G. Then one for every chord after that until the Eb7 – D7 at the end. There split the strum into two so you’re playing d-d- on the Eb and dudu on the D7.
Verse and Solo: Same as the chorus including splitting the final bar between F# and F. Speaking of which, if you’re struggling with the quick switch to F# you can just slide the G chord down a fret and mute the g-string with your thumb.
Bridge: Main strum on everything until the D7 at the end. The do du-u to match the “tee tee tee”s.
Apparently this little solo was played by John. Which explains why it’s not as clean an precise as most of George’s solos. But it does pack in some nice ideas.
For Halloween, a song from the greatest horror film ever made. It’s so densely packed with detail, unforgettable images and jarring juxtapositions. Which has spawned an entire industry of fan theories from the undeniable to the entirely ridiculous to the disturbing and plausible (and if that theory is true it recontextualizes this song in an entirely alarming way).
Midnight, the Stars and You was originally perfromed by Al Bowlly and Ray Noble and released in 1934. Making it out of time for the 1921 photo. The song also cropped up in Snowpiercer and was recently unexpectedly covered by Deerhoof.
The tune gives plenty of room for some jazzy noodling. For the first half of the arrangement I use those gaps to play around with the chords. In bars 7-8 and 11-12 I add in chromatic descending notes. And in bars 19-20 I throw in diminished and augmented chords.
In the second half of the verse I throw in a couple of licks in bars 23 and 27-28. In those licks I’m using the F Mixolydian scale. Which sounds fancy but is just an F major scale with a flatted 7th (i.e. an Eb instead of an E). I picked that up from the Eb used so effectively in the descending run at the end of the original version.
Time for some loosely Halloween-based music. And there’s no more Halloweeny instrument than the bone-clattering sound of a harpsichord.
Tiny Tim performed a ukulele version of People Are Strange. And it’s one of his more successful covers. But I’ve stuck with The Doors’ version for this write-up.
There are only four chords in the song so it’s a pretty easy strum-through. Particularly if you use the no hassle 4320 version of the B7 making for an easy change to Em. The only time it’s worth switching to the 2322 version is right at the close of the song so you can slowly strum over the chord and end on that B note.
Suggested Strumming
This piece is in swing time. Which means the down-strums last slightly longer than the up-strums (the downs are two thirds of a beat and the ups one third). This gives the song its shambling feel.
Verse and Harpsichord Solo: For the verse strum you can use this pattern:
d – d u
Play that twice for the first Em on the first and third lines. And once for everything else.
Chorus: Here’s a main strum:
d – d – d u d u
You can play that once per chord name until the last line where you play it four times. Or you can do a short down-strum on the “rain/name” then play a full-step bend on the E-string, 5th fret.
Guitar Solo: Use the chorus strum once per chord name.
Here’s a very loosely interpreted version of the guitar picking at the start of the tune. Even if you’re strumming rather than picking I’d recommend starting with that descending line in the opening bar.
Finally, the harpsichord solo is largely a harmonised version of the melody. So if you want to simplify this part you can just play the highest note in each pair. Where the g-string is played that’s the highest note – I’d recommend switching that to the A-string (where the note will be two frets lower).
