After tabbing Do I Wanna Know? in January, I hope it’s not too soon to cover another Monkeys track: Fluorescent Adolescent
The biggest challenge here (after spelling the title) is the very rapid delivery of the verse melody. These bits are played with a long succession of hammer-ons and pull-offs. Make sure you pull-off downwards rather than straight off the string. That’ll give it an extra pluck to keep the notes sounding.
Other than that, it’s a fun song to blast through.
The Beatles aren’t going to let a little thing like half the band being dead stop them making hits. And their latest is the earworm Now and Then.
Intro: Some simple strumming to start with.
Verse: There’s a lot of barreing going on in the verses. Which makes it a bit of stamina test for the fretting hand. But nothing difficult to play.
Chorus: The “Now and then” bit is played on the g-string. So make sure you emphasise it enough for it to register as the melody.
Watch out the second time around as the solo cuts the chorus short.
Solo: For once, the solo is very easy. A few notes sliding around but mostly strumming chords.
Outro: A change in time signature and descending chords against a pivot (A-string, 5th fret). My favourite part of the song.
Get ready to be freaked out of your gourd by The Cure’s spooky Lullaby
Intro: The original intro is unusually long, lasting more than a minute. I’ve chopped it down a little for this arrangement.
The intro (like the whole song apart from the bridge) is just Dm-Bbmaj7. The first 8 bars have the guitar line on top of that. And the next four focus on the bass line.
The final 8 bars focus on the string line. With long notes on the Dm and pizzicato notes on the Bbmaj7. To imitate the pizzicato, I’m muting the strings by gently resting the side of my picking hand on the strings near the bridge.
The transition into bar 17 is made easier by muting the g-string with your thumb instead of playing the whole chord. But you can always add in the g-string, 2nd fret if you’re fast enough.
Verse: The wispy and whispery vocals make the melody a little hard to discern. I’ve tried my best but I’ve taken a few liberties with it. Nothing too tricky to deal with here. Just a trip up to the fifth fret at the end.
Bridge: They go all jazz with it and add a third chord. Still straightforward, though. Just a couple of quick pull-offs to deal with.
Outro: This is where things get tricky. There’s a flurry of notes in bars 46 and 50. I’ve gone campanella with it and involved the g-string in the melody to spread out the notes a little.
Intro: The verse of Boulevard uses the same chords as the verse of Wonderwall so I went extra Wonderwally for the intro.
Verses: Nothing too tricky here. Just fingerpicking around first position chords.
Chorus: Switching to strums and moving up and down the neck much more.
Solo: This is where it gets challenging. It’s a series of chord stabs with octaves between them. The upside is that it’s very repetitive, so there’s not a lot of it to tackle.
Outro: A completely new chord sequence here using chromatic moves. It’s just bashed out with strums.
Starting off 2024 with a track from Arctic Monkeys’ last good album: Do I Wanna Know?
Intro: The funnest part of the song. The original is just single notes. But I’ve beefed it up for the uke with doubled notes and chords wherever I get the chance.
Verse: The melody is very rambling and conversational even before he does his club singer act on it. I thought I knew this song well, but it took a lot of work to get the timing somewhere near right. The biggest challenge of the song.
Pre-Chorus: The only thing to worry about here is a quick jump down the fretboard in bar 27. If you prefer, you can play the A-string, 2nd fret to the E-string, 7th fret. All you’re losing here is the open E-string ringing.
Chorus: Other than the “Crawling back to you,” part, it’s exactly the same as the intro.
Outro: A simple little riff to finish off.
Shane MacGowan was one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He’s most famous for Fairytale of New York but his back catalogue is full of incredible songs. Many of which I’ve covered in the past.
To commemorate his passing, I’ve chosen the typically riotous Sally MacLennane to tab. I slowed it down a fair amount from the original but it’s still very challenging.
Just enough time before the big day to work up a version of Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas. Later recorded by the whole of Emerson, Lake and Palmer as well as U2, Mark Kozelek and many others. But it’s the original I worked from for this arrangement.
Intro: The trickiest part of the song. There are a few switches in the picking pattern which can get you in a jumble. The best way to get these down is to practice them very slowly (slow enough you don’t make any mistakes). So when you speed up, you can just play them on auto-pilot.
There’s also a bar of 2/4 (bar 8) followed by a big jump up the fretboard. Give yourself a little extra time by not holding the 23 notes and moving up during the open g-string.
Verse and Chorus: Much simpler. All done with basic chord shapes and a melody that fits in the first three frets.
Solo: The solo is adapted from Prokofiev’s Troika. It’s a nice, little Christmas ditty that fits well on the uke. Worth learning this section even if you’re not bothered about the rest of the song.
U2’s song against violence and occupation, Sunday Bloody Sunday, is depressingly relevant again. So time for a tab.
Intro: The perfect example of how simple but effective The Edge’s riffs can be. It’s the easiest bit of the song and worth learning even if you’re not tackling the rest of the song.
Verse: The song has an odd structure at the beginning. There’s just half a verse before it dives into the bridge. This short verse is just fingerpicking. Whereas later verses are fuller with more strums.
Bridge: The first bridge starts out fingerpicked before switching to strums at the end of bar 12. Second time around, the whole bridge uses strums.
Chorus: The first chorus features a Bb chord, which you wouldn’t expect in the key of E minor. That short section (bars 30-33) provides a brief respite before the militaristic muted strums come back in.
Solo: A typically jingle-jangle Edge solo. The first half of the solo in this arrangement is faithful to the original. But the second half is faithful to the spirit rather than the exact notes. So long as you keep all the strings rattling, there’s plenty of scope for your own ideas here.
Here’s my take on Send in the Clowns in a belated tribute to Stephen Sondheim. The most well known versions are the song are by Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra and, of course, Krusty the Clown. Although my favourite is by, occasional ukers, The Tiger Lillies.
Intro: I couldn’t resist referencing Entry of the Gladiators for this intro. Feel free to replace it with something more sensible.
Verses: The verses switch between 12/8 and 9/8. But it all flows nicely, so it’s not tricky to keep track of.
There is a brief pause in bar 5 where the tune hangs in mid-air (indicated by the frown with a dimple over the tab). That pause gives you a chance for that slide up to the seventh fret. When this bar happens a second time (bar 11) without a pause, it’s played on the A-string, 2nd fret so you don’t need to jump down to the C-string, 2nd fret.
Chorus: My favourite part of this song is the long descending line in bars 18 and 19. With the run starting at the E-string, 3rd fret and going almost chromatically to the open C.