Red Dwarf Theme (Tab)

MP3

Well, the new episodes of Red Dwarf stank to high heaven. Even the presence of Big Suze didn’t help. I do hope there’s some sort of Royal wipeout and we end up with Queen Big Suze.

As you might have noticed, I’ve done a video for this one for the first time in about two years. I think the low quality audio, weird light and facial gurnings should answer everyone who’s asked me why I don’t do videos more often. But it does serve to illustrate a few points in the tab.

The intro is played campanela i.e. letting the notes ring into each other as much as possible. The trickiest bit is getting the end of the first phrase to sustain over the echo part (I did a much better job of making it sound like an echo in the mp3).

I considered arranging the vocal version of the tune but I couldn’t resist the tasteless guitar-widdling version (it’s a trick the piece’s composer Howard Goodall also used in the titles for Blackadder II.

The trickiest part of this section is bar 11. I did try playing it like this for a while:

Which is much easier to play but sounds too wimpy.

In the ‘fun, fun, fun’ bit (someone should make that into a ukulele song) I’m using my favourite triplet strum: down with middle and index fingers, up with index, up with middle.

One thing I struggle with in this tab is the time signature. There are parts that don’t seem quite right. I looked at some guitar tab and they had it in 12/8. But that makes even less sense to me.

Requested by Jimmy (so long ago he’s probably forgotten by now).