Norma Tanega – You’re Dead (Tab)

For spooky season, Norma Tanega’s You’re Dead aka the What We Do in the Shadows theme.

The biggest challenge with this piece is getting the rhythms right. There are a bunch of time signature changes and even within the bars things get weird.

Intro: In straight 4/4 but the rhythmic weirdness starts right away. You’d expect the initial riff to be played four times but it’s only played three times before switching to the slightly different second riff.

Verses: These are made up of three bars of 5/4 and one bar of 3/4. Tricky to get the hang of but once you do the rest is fairly easy. It’s just strumming and occasionally picking the g-string. Other than that, there’s just a little lick at the end to deal with.

Breaks: After each verse there’s an instrumental section of varying length. You can do pretty much whatever you like in these sections. I’d recommend not following exactly what I’m doing and just use it for ideas for your own version.

I’m using mostly notes from G major and G minor scales with a few extra notes for a discordant sound. The only rule is to keep up the propulsive force of the tune.

Links

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Now you’ve got your kinky ski lift costume ready, here are some tunes you may wish to bone up on before the big night.

Addams Family Theme Tune
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Childish Gambino – Redbone (From Get Out)
Chopin – Funeral March
Jonathan Coulton – Re: Your Brains
The Cranberries – Zombie
Dance Macabre
The Decemberists – Shankill Butchers
The Doors – People Are Strange
The Fall – Mansion
The Gothic Archies – Freakshow
Halloween Theme
Harry Potter – Hedwig’s Theme
In Heaven (From Eraserhead
The Last of Us II –
Through the Valley
London Bridge Is Falling Down (From Halloween)
The Misfits – Dig Up Her Bones
The Misfits – Halloween
My Chemical Romance – Welcome to the Black Parade
Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (from The Exorcist)
Nerf Herder – Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme
One Night Ultimate Werewolf – Fantasy Theme
Ray Parker Jr – Ghostbusters
The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil
Gustavo Santaolalla – Last of Us Theme
Skrillex – Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites
This is Halloween (From Nightmare Before Christmas)
Tom Waits – Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard
Twilight Zone Theme
Twin Peaks Theme
The Walking Dead Theme
Warren Zevon – Werewolves of London
The White Stripes – Little Ghost

Five Halloween riffs/intros: Thriller, Devil Went Down to Georgia, Sweet Dreams, Don’t Fear the Reaper and Jump in the Line
Five More Halloween riffs: Voodoo Child (Slight Return), All the Good Girls Go To Hell, Suspiria Theme, Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, Evil Eye.

And a tutorial to spookify your playing:

Spooky Ukulele Sounds

Otis Redding – The Dock of the Bay (Tab)

Intro: I love the whistled outro of this song. So I simplified it and used is as the intro too.

Verse: I’ve tabbed these as repeats but there are slight differences in the timings of the notes that are pretty easy to pick out yourself. Or I’m sure no one will notice or care if you just repeat the first verse exactly each time.

Chorus: Usually, I’ll emphasise the melody of the song over other elements. But the guitar part here is so great I’ve tried to incorporate that as much as possible.

Bridge: The hardest part of the song. The melody gets a bit fiddly. Especially with it being high on the fretboard.

Outro: What a great melody to just toss out in the outro.

Links

Buy the original
More soul tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Watch on YouTube

Tracklist
Feng E – As It Was
Jacob Bittencourt – Santa Morena via @ukeist
Sasha Samara – Problems
Benny Chong and Byron Yasui – There's A Small Hotel
SeattleUke – Groundhog Day
Ukulele Solos – I Will Follow You into the Dark
Jiggy With Viggy – Still Into You
Zoë Bestel – Oh Lori

Dido – Thank You (Tabs)

Here’s my take on Dido’s very catchy but slightly annoying Thank You. Famously sampled in Eminem’s Stan.

Intro: A nice little chord arpeggio section using one finger per string picking.

Verse: From this point on, the picking is all over the place. There are a few tricky sections here. I found bars 7 and 8 required the most practice.

Chorus: Things chill out a bit in the chorus. There’s a big slide up to the 8th fret to deal with. And some alternate picking required for the fast notes at the end of bars 12 and 16.

Bridge: A slight variation on the verse with the Am-Gm ending from the chorus.

Links

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More pop tabs and chords
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The Foggy Dew (Tab)

The Foggy Dew is a traditional Irish tune that gathered lyrics in 1919. It’s usually sung slowly but my version is closer to the tempo The Dubliners play it at.

The arrangement starts of with a bit of campanella playing before beefing things up with chords. It’s also worth varying the dynamics of repeated sections so it doesn’t get same-y.

Links

More Irish tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Someone decided it would be a good idea to hand out ukuleles on flight to Hawaii and give everyone a ukulele lesson leading to headlines like “Terror In the Sky!” and “Why the Hague Exists”. Although, with the amount of cheap publicity this got, the furore might have been the goal from the start.

Choan Galvez has a new set of original tabs for low-G uke: May the Low 4th.

Terry Thomas and Liberace duet.

Window Shopping
– Stroviols Soprano the uke with a horn.
– Two from Lichty: Mahogany Steel String Baritone and Archtop Tenor U177.
– Mya Moe resonator.

Patreon

A massive thanks to all Uke Hunt’s Patreon backers for keeping the site up and running this month. And double thanks go to these legendary patrons of the arts:

– Arthur Foley
– Colleen Petticrew
– Dan
– Dennis Boutsikaris
– Elizabeth Beardsley
– Ivo
– Jameson Gagnepain
– Jeff K
– Jon Kenniston
– Kelby Green
– Kie77
– Lisa Johnson
– Monika Kolodziejczyk
– Moses Kamai
– Nevylle Carroll
– Nick Parsons
– Olga deSanctis
– Pat Weikle
– Pauline LeBlanc
– Robert
– ROBERT WALKER
– T S
– Thorsten Neff

If you join Patreon at the Concert level or higher, you’ll get access to all previous exclusive tabs including September’s: Classical Gas by Mason Williams.

The Beatles – Oh! Darling (Tab)

It was a nice surprise to see Paul McCartney playing Oh! Darling live for the first time at the Taylor Hawkins memorial. It’s a nice blend of early-era R&B Beatles in the verses and the harder-edged, bluesier later Beatles in the chorus.

Links

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More 60s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon

Petula Clark – Downtown (Tabs)

I was surprised to learn this song was written by Tony Hatch. Who is best known to me for writing the theme tunes to Neighbours, Emmerdale Farm and Crossroads.

I was inspired to tab this one when it cropped up in Girl, Interrupted and I immediately lost interest in the movie and started working it out. This arrangement is based on the Petula Clark version. Although the Groundskeeper Willie version is definitive.

Links

Buy the original
More 60s tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon.

What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor? (Tab)

I recorded the video for this ages ago and never got around to posting it. But International Talk Like a Pirate Day seems like a good occasion to get it up at last.

This arrangement of Drunken Sailor includes one of my favourite tricks: playing the same note on multiple strings. The first bar has consecutive A notes on the g, E and A strings. Followed in bar two by consecutive G notes on the g, C and E strings.

Links

More traditional tabs and chords
Uke Hunt Patreon