Blog
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Foo Fighters – Learn to Fly (Tabs)
As you expect from the Foos, Learn to Fly is a straightforward rocker. So a lot of strumming and nothing too intricate.
The trickiest part comes in some of the quick switches from G to Dm. One of these shows up for the first time in bar 5. Here there’s an open-G used as part of the melody to give you a little extra time to change chords. The second comes in the chorus (at the end of bar 13). Here you strum all the strings open and hammer-on an entire Dm chord.
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Pixies – Here Comes Your Man (Tabs)
ntro: The classic Here Comes Your Man riff. Played with a few extra supporting notes to beef it up.
Verse: Nothing too challenging here. Just open chords until the build up into the pre-chorus.
Pre-Chorus: Bars 24-25 are the trickiest part of the song. There’s a big leap up to a bend at the tenth fret for the, “so long, so long,” backing vocals. That makes for an easier transition into bar 25.
Chorus: Back to the riff mixed in with the melody. There’s plenty of jumping up and down here but I find this section fun to play.
First Solo: A nice little melody for the transition back to the verse.
Second Solo: Much less melodic. The original is mostly bashing out chords with a few bends. For this take, I’ve shortened it down but there’s still a lot of bashing.
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Bill Withers – Grandma’s Hands (Tabs)
Grandma’s Hands by Bill Withers. You might recognise the riff as the sample in Blackstreet’s fantastic No Diggity. Or maybe James Corden’s terrible England song.
This arrangement is very simple and the tempo is slow, so this is a very approachable tab to take on.
Intro: I hadn’t realised until starting on this arrangement that the No Diggity riff isn’t a straight sample of the original. In his version, Bill Withers has an Esus4 chord missing from that version. I went with the No Diggity version for this arrangement (and so did Gregory Porter’s guitarist).
Verse: A couple fingerings to help with the chord changes here. At the end of bar 5, play the A-string, 2nd fret with your index finger barred over all the strings. That’ll set you up for the B7 chord in the next bar.
In bars 10 and 11 (and in the repeats), play the A-string, 2nd fret with your middle finger so you have your index and ring fingers ready for the A7 chord.
Outro: A little minor pentatonic lick to finish things off.
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Willie Nelson – Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain (Tabs)
Intro: Matching the Willie version by following the bass notes using the thumb on the g- and C-strings. Followed by strums.
Verse and Bridge: Continuing the thumb-plucking and strums, and adding the melody line. Most of the melody line is picked with the fingers, but some notes are part of the strummed chords.
There’s a simple lick in bar 11 and a couple of lines inspired by the walking bass in bars 12 and 20.
Solo: With Willie playing a nylon string guitar, his solo suits the ukulele fairly well.
The one problem is the bends. It is much easier to do bends on a uke in the middle of the fretboard. So I’m bending the E-string at the 7th fret rather than the A-string at the second fret. That does require some shifts up and down the fretboard.
Although the song is in swing time, the descending line at the end of the solo (bars 43-44) is played straight.
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KT Tunstall – Black Horse & the Cherry Tree (Tabs)
This is a very propulsive song even in the very sparse sections. So in the verses, where it’s just the melody line, I’m using strum blocking to keep the energy up. The verse melody is busy. But it’s fine to miss a couple of notes so long as you keep the song moving along.
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Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi (Tabs)
Intro: A cool strummy riff to start off with.
Verse: Like a lot of Joni’s songs, there are a lot of words crammed in. So you’ll need some quick alternate picking to fit them in. I have cropped out a few notes here and there to make it more playable.
Chorus: A rare case of a song getting softer at the start of a chorus. Tone it down for the first half of the chorus, then start blasting for the second.
In the second chorus at the end of the song, there’s a brief pause added on “gone” to look out for.
Outro: I love the goofy ending. She knocks it up an octave for “they paved paradise,” then drops below the original melody for the rest (sadly, not room for that on the uke).
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Queen – Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon (Tabs)
Intro: The hardest part of the whole song is the chromatic run between bars 3 and 4. I spread the notes between the strings to make it a bit easier to play but it’s still a big challenge.
Verse: Lots of jumps up and down the neck to deal with. Bars 9-12 are fun to play (once you’ve practiced it enough not to have to think about it).
Bridge: The tempo slows right down here which helps to make it easy to play.
Solo: Another section that’s difficult to play. But I mostly ditched the chords for this section so it’s just single notes.
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Bob Dylan – You Belong to Me (Tabs)
You Belong to Me was originally written by Price, King & Stewart in 1952. But I first heard the Bob Dylan cover on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. And it’s the Dylan version this arrangement is based on.
Intro: A very brief intro just to establish the key and feel. There’s plenty of room to expand this to the whole chord progression if you fancy stretching out.
Verse: There are a couple of jumps up and down the fretboard to deal with here. But the tempo is slow and it’s straightforward to play. I am very loose with the timing and phrasing in the video.
The second time around, there are a few extra twiddles to keep things interesting.
Solo: The solo is heavily based on the melody. It’s a very sentimental song, so I went a bit cheesy with it. You’re free to dirty it up in your own version.
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Bobby Darin – Beyond the Sea (Tabs)
Beyond the Sea is an anglicized version of Charles Trenet’s La Mer and regularly crops up in film and TV (most notably the prison kitchen scene in Goodfellas).
Intro: Starting off with some big strums to emulate the brass in the original.
Verse: Nothing too difficult to play in the verse, but there are a ton of chord changes to keep track of.
Bridge: This section has three key changes (to A, to C and returning to the original key of F). Each time it uses the trick of leading into the change with the V7 chord of the new key. So you have E7 at the end of bar 18, setting up the key of A. And G7 at the end of bar 24, leading in the key of C. Finally, you have C7 in bar 30 to lead back to the original key of F.
Solo: The solo is based on different inversions of the chords in the verse with a few melodic elements added. Plenty of room here for your own ideas.
From there, it’s back to the verse and finishing with a simple chromatic lick.
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