I don’t cover a lot of pop music on here but Charli XCX’s contribution to the long tradition of lusty songs about handsome boys was the song of last summer and one of my favourite songs of the year.
The arrangement is a bit tricky with a few leaps up and down the fretboard. Probably the trickiest parts are the Mario coin noises. These are created by playing a note on the E-string 10th fret quickly followed by natural harmonic on the A-string, 12th fret. If you’re still getting the hang of natural harmonics you can fret the string at the 12th fret as you usually would. It won’t have the same ringing sound but it will sound right.
Time for the Uke Hunt Annual Chord Quiz. Test your chord knowledge, theory knowledge and musical ear. The method is as low-tech as ever.
– Grab a pen and paper.
– Answer the questions (using a ukulele to help you is entirely allowed and encouraged).
– Check the answers here (no peeking).
Each of these triads of notes makes up a major chord (e.g. the notes of an F chord are F, A and C). Which one? (The notes are listed in alphabetical order starting at C to make it harder.)
16. C, E and G
17. C, F and A
18. C#, E and A
19. D, F# and A
20. C#, F and G#
Chord Progression
Match the MP3 to the chord sequence:
a) D – G – D – G – D
b) D – G – D – A7 – D
c) D – G – Em – A7 – D
d) D – F#m – G – A7 – D
e) D – A7 – G – A7 – D
I’ve been inspired by the King of Springsteen ukulele Jim Boggia and his show Bruce Off Broadway to do a Boss song. One of these days I’m going to tackle one of Jim’s amazing arrangements. But for today I’m taking on Born to Run.
The song is in the key of E so to keep things easy I’ve arranged it with a capo 4th fret. That keeps most of the song simple but there’s still the strange middle section to deal with. That’s made of a series of chord changes from the sus4 chord to the major chord. Very similar to the moves used in The Who’s Pinball Wizard.
Suggested Strumming
I use this as the main strum:
d – d – d u d u
Intro: Main strum twice on C, once on F, then two down strums each on G7sus4 and G7.
Verses: Main strum twice on C and once each on F and G7 in the first two lines (there’s a variation in the third verse where you use the strum from the intro). Then I switch to this pattern:
d – d u – u d –
Do that once for every chord except the Bb on the “OOOOOOOOOHHH” part. There play nothing for once beat followed by one down-strum. Finally, back to the main strum for the last line.
Solo: Same as before on C-F-G7. On Am, main strum once then a single down-strum. Followed by single down-strums on the rest of the chords. Here’s the timing for that last part:
I first tried to do a uke arrangement of The Woodpile back when it came out in 2013. But it quickly joined the massive pile of tabs I’ve started but wasn’t satisfied with. But with the death of Scott Hutchison I had to dig it out and get it finished. Particularly since Midnight Organ Fight is up there with Pet Sounds as one of the great albums that have a tiny bit of ukulele on (in the later part of Good Arms vs Bad Arms).
There are a couple of things that make this tune tricky. First is the artificial harmonics played in the riff (the ones with A.H. above them). There’s a guide to playing artificial harmonics here. But if you don’t want to tackle them you can just play the tab as written without them and it’ll sound perfectly fine.
Secondly, the shifting time signature. The riff and verses alternate between bars of 5/4 and 4/4. The change isn’t jarring but it messed me up a few times when I was learning it. So it’s worth counting the bars in your head while you’re getting it under your fingers.
Here are five licks adapted from blues gods to inspire your own solos. Play them as they are, change the rhythm, move them around, use the same shapes. There’s no end to the ways to make them your own.
All the licks are in the key of C. So you can move them around to fit whichever key you’re in.
Skip James might be my favourite blues musician. His music uses simple ideas but he plays them so expressively. This example is based on Devil Got My Woman.
BB King was a master of weaving together major and minor elements. This lick based on the intro to Lucille begins with a sweet phrase using the major pentatonic. Then it switches to minor pentatonic for the rest of the lick.
It also has masses of space between the notes to maximise the impact of each note.
This lick based on Born Under a Bad Sign is very versatile. The original includes a few bends. But since bends don’t work so well on nylon strings I’ve replaced them with slides.
Blues licks often repeat short phrases over and over in a lick. This one based on John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom repeats just two notes. Building up the tension until it’s released at the end of the lick.
The new Father John Misty record is out next week. And the lead single, Mr Tillman, suggests it’s going to be a good one. He does that skeezy lounge singer schtick with much more wit and tunefulness than the Arctic Monkeys managed on their latest album.
The song’s chord progression has an off-kilter feel to match the lyrics. That’s created by switching between major and minor sounds. The most obvious is the use of both G and G minor. The other is the D major chord that starts the progression being mismatched with the F that follows it (a D major chord includes an F# note while D minor includes an F).
Suggested Strumming
Dead easy for the strumming. You can just do this for each chord the whole way through:
