I Remember You (Tab)
I Remember You is heartbreaking beautiful song from 1941 by Victor Schertzinger and Johnny Mercer. My favourite versions of this are by Ella Fitzgerald and Bjork. But, bafflingly, Frank Ifield’s bizarre yodelling cowboy version is the most well known. You won’t be surprised to learn my arrangement is based on the former two.
This song is part of my
jazz odyssey series where I’m trying to increase my understand of jazz theory and putting it into practice. Instead of focussing on jazz licks like I did in Ja-Da and Summertime, this time I’m focussing on chords. So there are many 7, maj7, 6, and b5 notes thrown in. Hopefully, in a way that they flow together and don’t sound contrived.
I Remember You (Tab with Chord Names
If you are interested in the theory of it, here’s a version of the tab with the underlying chords behind it.
Links
A selection of riffs and motifs from various songs that use powercut-proof instruments. Including uke, guitar, piano, fiddle and marimba (courtesy of, famed minimalist composer, Steve Reich’s Nagoya Marimbas).
If you like these short tabs, you can find lots more on my Instagram.
Seal – Kiss From a Rose
Alexander Hamilton
(The “What’s your name, man?” bit)
Rodrigo y Gabriela – Cumbé
Steve Reich – Nagoya Marimbas
Penguin Cafe Orchestra – Perpetuum Mobile
(Tuning: gBEA)
Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick – Byker Hill
Joanna Newsom – Cosima
Zoë Bestel – Blue
Uncle Kracker – Follow Me
Lewis Capaldi – Someone You Loved (Chords)
You can’t move for I’m Yours chord progressions in the charts at the moment. Those are I V vi IV progressions to give them the technical definition. On ukulele that’s usually either G-D-Em-C or C-G-Am-F. And if you put a capo on the first fret, the later is exactly what you get from Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved.
The main reason I wrote up this song is that it makes for a great introduction to fingerpicking. The picking pattern is dead simple and the easy chords mean you can focus on your picking hand.
Suggested Strumming Pattern
If you’d rather strum than pick, you can use this pattern once per chord almost all the way through:
d – d – d u d u
The only exception is in the middle. There when you reach the first G play the pattern as normal. Then stay on the G for two more down-strums. Then switch to Am for dudu. Before returning to the pattern for Dm.
Twiddly Bits
The picking pattern is very simple and a great place for beginners to start. You pick the E-string with your index finger at the same time as picking the A-string with your middle finger (except at the end of the pattern where you just pick the E-string. Then you pluck the C-string with your thumb. And you just repeat that for the whole song.
The tab above matches the piano part as closely as possible. But you can just use the same picking pattern with the standard chord shapes and it sounds just as good. Like this:
And you can continue that through the middle section (just remember to extend the G chord an extra half a bar).
Links
Bon Iver – Marion (Tab)
Christmas came early for depressed weirdos last week with the surprise release of Bon Iver’s new album i,i. The record is a perfect blend of his previous three albums. The acoustic track Marion is the most like his debut album and so obviously suited for a ukulele cover I started working it out during my first hearing of it.
I’m playing it with a capo on the third fret to keep it in the original key of Eb. But it does stray high up the neck so you might want to ditch it if you’re using a soprano uke.
It’s not too difficult to play. The only big stretch comes in bars 10-11. Everything else is plain sailing. I’m very loose with the timing in the song. Spreading out and compressing notes to add feeling to the song. So I encourage you to do the same.
Links
Warning: This post started out as a bit of fun and ended up breaking my brain.
Playing a Round Alone
I while back Guido Heistek posted a challenge to play a song in the round by yourself. A round is where the same melody is performed over itself with a different starting point. For example, in this three part round the first part starts then, two bars later, the second and, two bars later still, the third part.
It crops up in The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows. And almost in The Beatles’ Paperback Writer. The melody is slightly different the second time around. It goes like this:
For my shot at it, I went with the very simple London’s Burning. Here’s the melody by itself:
And here’s how it goes twice with an offset of two bars.
London’s Burning Round (Tab)
Playing Two Songs at Once
After doing a round, I thought I’d take things one step further and have a go at playing two different melodies at once (a “simultaneous quodlibet” if you want to use the technical term). You quite often get different melodies played over each other in modern music (such as Tori Amos’s Father Lucifer). Sometimes it forms the entire basis of the song like The Beta Band’s The House Song.
I went two songs with very simple melodies: When the Saints Go Marching In and She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain. With them both in the key of C, I’d play them individually like this:
Separate Melodies Tab
They actually fall quite nicely together on ukulele. Particularly if you take advantage of the re-entrant string and move some of the E-string, third frets in When the Saints to the open g-string.
Next job is to adjust parts where the same string is played at different frets and where there are impossible stretches. For example, at the end of bar 2 Saints has the E-string played at the first fret while Mountain has it played at the tenth fret. Moving the Saints note to the C-string, fifth fret and the Mountain note to the A-string, fifth fret makes it playable.
Just doing those things makes for a playable arrangement. Except for one note. At the end of bar 4 Saints has a note on the C-string, second fret while Saints has a note on the A-string, 8th fret. Too big a stretch for me to switch to that quickly. So I examined the lives of the rich and successful to see what they do when faced with a challenge. And I cheated. I switched the C-string, second fret to an open E-string. No-one on Instagram noticed so I think I got away with it.
The two parts separately look like this:
Adapted Melodies Tab
And here they are together. With the Saints notes being plucked with the thumb and the index and middle finger handling Mountain.
She’ll Be Marching ‘Round the Saints (Tab)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Jimi Hendrix – The Wind Cries Mary (Chords and Tab)
Shinyribs’ excellent ukulele version of The Wind Cries Mary inspired me to fix the lack of Hendrix chordings on Uke Hunt (unless you count Wild Thing).
The song is based around an Eb-E-F motif. In the original that’s played with two different inversions. Which is how I’ve written it up (the apostrophes in the chord name indicate the inversion: the more apostrophes the higher up the neck). But Shinyribs goes with the same inversion each time. Both work.
Suggested Strumming Pattern
Intro: One down-strum per chord followed by a chnk.
Verses: For something simple, you can use this as the main strum:
d – d – d u d u
Once for all the C, Bb and G chords. Twice on the Fs. Then the same as the intro on the Eb-E-F moves.
Solo: Same as the verses for C-Bb-F. Then twice each for G, Bb and C#. Then four times on F.
Twiddly Bits
You can either play the straight chords in the intro or throw in a few hammer-ons to match the original version.
The Wind Cries Mary (Solo Tab)
The solo is very tight and restrained for a Hendrix solo. Which means it transfers very nicely to ukulele. It’s mostly based on double-stops on the E- and A-strings. With just one big of pentatonic widdling in bar 9.
Links
Tracklist
Bad Mouse Orchestra – It’s The Animal In Me
Tom Rosenthal – Bicycle Lane
Shinyribs – The Wind Cries Mary
Arnaud Martin – Chariots of Fire
Lami JEON – Johann Sebastian Bach – Cello suite no.1 prelude
Feng E – Radio Gaga
Uklectic Fred – East St. Louis Toodle-O0
Choan Gálvez – Firebug’s Dance
Due to a technical snafu, my post 6 Easy Blues Outros didn’t get sent out to email subscribers. It’s a good one so please check it out.
The Mumbai police really go all out for a lost ukulele. Including scouring city-wide CCTV and interviewing 200 rickshaw drivers.
On Video
– Lupita Nyong’o latest role is a ukulele-playing zombie slayer.
– Taimane lists the different types of ukulele players.
– Each year XXL list the most promising rappers. Their 2019 list includes eight have done ukulele versions of their songs with Einer Bankz. Watch them here and judge for yourself.
Window Shopping
– Kanile’a have launched an Endangered Bird Series of ukuleles to aid Saving Hawai’i’s Forest.
– Pete Howlett long-neck concert.
– 1961 Martin tiple.
– Stewart Wailing resonator.
