This is Halloween

This Is Halloween (Tab)(PDF)
MIDI

This song comes from the Tim Burton film Nightmare Before Christmas. And ‘nightmare’ is about frickin’ right. It’s full of key changes, time signature changes and nothing is played the same way twice. What I’m trying to say is: EPIC FAIL.

I’ve only been able to tab out the first section of the song and time has run out. Hopefully there’s enough there to get you going.

In the arrangement I’ve tried to capture as much of the backing as I can. It’s mostly chords with a few little runs thrown in.

More Halloween Tabs and Chords here.

Requested by Mongoose Mania and Chris.

If this is your first visit here, you can find the chords/tab in those posts by clicking on the song title in red.

Ukulele Halloween Tab & Chords Roundup

You’ve only got a couple of days left to polish up these tunes before the big night:

Addams Family Theme Tune

Chopin - Funeral March

Dance Macabre

Ghostbusters (Duet)

The Gothic Archies - Freakshow

London Bridge Is Falling Down

The Misfits - Dig Up Her Bones

The Misfits - Halloween

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (from The Exorcist)

Twilight Zone Theme

Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London

Ukulele Halloween: Chopin - Funeral March

Funeral March (midi)

This tune has to be one of the most downbeat ever written. It’s so deep and gloomy it makes Leonard Cohen sound like Samanda. That means it’s not entirely convincing on the usually light and sprightly uke. The Funeral March is probably best played as a little throwaway joke than a serious piece.

This website quotes the painter Felix Ziem on the writing of this piece.

Some time later Chopin came into my studio, just as George Sand depicts him - the imagination haunted by the legends of the land of frogs, besieged by nameless shapes. After frightful nightmares all night, in which he had struggled against specters who threatened to carry him off to hell, he came to rest in my studio. His nightmares reminded me of the skeleton scene and I told him of it. His eyes never left my piano, and he asked: ‘Have you a skeleton?’ I had none; but i promised to have one that night, and so invited Polignac to dinner and asked him to bring his skeleton. What had previously been a mere farce became, owing to Chopin’s inspiration, something grand, terrible and painful. Pale, with staring eyes, and draped in a winding sheet, Chopin held the skeleton close to him, and suddenly the silence of the studio was broken by the broad, slow, deep, gloomy notes. The ‘Dead March’ was composed there and then from beginning to end.

My favourite game with this tune is to play it as slowly as I can without slipping into a coma.

Ukulele Halloween: London Bridge Is Falling Down

London Bridge Is Falling Down (midi)

There’s something very sinister about most nursery rhymes. Most real nursery rhymes. The ones that have been passed down through the generations, not the ones that have been passed down from purple dinosaurs. They’re quite often used in horror films (such as The Haunting) and this particular tune was co-opted for the Silver Shamrock theme in Halloween 3.

There are a few of ways you could pick this tune. Each time two notes are picked together, you could pick them with your thumb and index finger. This is a perfectly good way of doing it, but I prefer another way.

I position my hand so that each finger has its own string (those of you that have signed up for the fingerpicking course will be familiar with it) but I’ll use my thumb to pick the bottom note of each pair. So, the first note of bar 1 I’ll pick with my thumb and index finger. The first note of bar 2 I’ll pick with my thumb and middle finger. It seems a strange way to do it, but it’s the way that feels most natural to me. Experiment with these two (and any alternatives you can think of) and see which feels best to you.

Suggested by West

The Saturday UkeTube: Halloween Special

Something a bit different this week. Click here to see some Halloween related ukulele videos from Craig Robertson, NY Ukes, Waitswatcher, Michael Wagner and Petty Booka.
[Read more]

Ukulele Halloween: Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London

Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London (Chords)

Dead simple this one. There are only three chords (D, C and G) repeated over and over again.

If you want something a bit more challenging, the piano riff fits quite nicely on the uke too.

Buy Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon

Ukulele Halloween - Ghostbusters (Duet)

Ghostbusters (Tab)

Duet Midi
Uke 1 Midi
Uke 2 Midi

This record is, as far as I remember, the third record I ever bought - after Chas ‘n’ Dave’s Snooker Loopy and Van Halen’s Why Can’t This Be Love (yeah, I was one of the cool kids). It might just be the nostalgia, but I can’t get enough of this song. Bustin’ does, indeed, make me feel good.

I’ve written this up as a duet, but I think it would sound great in a uke group/orchestra/ensemble. There are easy chords for the newbies, the riff for the intermediates and some fiddly bits for the show-offs.

The intro is the only spooky bit of the song and works well on its own as an atmospheric bit of music. You can play it all on the uke, with a bit of fiddling, like this:

The riff that kicks in after this is a bit of cobble-together of the bass and the chords. It works well against straight chords and sounds great when the high riff joins in.

The trickiest section of the song is the ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghost’ section (and not just the need for turning a blind eye to double negatives). In some of the bars the chords change a beat before you’d expect them to - making them more difficult to keep track of. The synth riff also gets a bit tricky with the added harmony (bars 21 and 22). If you’ve got space on your uke, you might try playing it this way:

I’ve put up midis of both the ukes individually so, even if you’re as lonely and smelly as I am, you can play along and make believe you have a friend. If you want to play along with the original, you’ll have to tune down by half a step.

One thing about this video passed the young, fresh-faced me by but has just shocked the living bejesus out of the old, haggered me. Near the end, there’s an appearance by a very young, very gawky Al Franken. Scary indeed.

Check out Sean Gordon’s version of Ghostbusters on the uke.

Suggested by West and Retrovertigo

Buy Ghostbusters Soundtrack

Ukulele Halloween: The Misfits - Dig Up Her Bones

The Misfits - Dig Up Her Bones (Chords)

This track is from the later, and some would say crappier, non-Danzig version of The Misfits. But I quite like this song and, with a capo at the first fret, the chords are similar to those used in Halloween.

Download Dig Up Her Bones on Amazon

Ukulele Halloween - Twilight Zone

This is my go to riff whenever something spooky (or just vaguely coincidental) happens.

For once, it sounds great when you use a guitar pick to play it. The pick gives it a harsh, piercing tone. If you want to recreate it with fingers, use you nails and pick close to the bridge.

Buy Favorite TV Theme Songs

Ukulele Halloween: The Addams Family Theme Tune

Addams Family (Chords)

The tune itself is so non-scary that The Wiggles would have rejected it as a little pedestrian. If you really want to scare people, play them the MC Hammer version (it’s enough to frighten the parachute pants off even the most superdope of homeboys).

Anyhoo, back to the real thing. If you’re playing the full, the intro goes like this:

If you’re just going to break out the intro, then it’s easier to play it this way:

Buy Favorite TV Theme Songs

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