This Sega classic by Masato Nakamura starts off with the hardest bar in the entire arrangement. And it’s such an iconic run there’s not much scope to change it.
The good news is that this is followed by a very easy section of just Em, Dm and F chords. And the rest of the tune isn’t too tricky. The most difficult bit are the little runs in the Em parts (e.g. bars 11 and 13).
A short and sweet one I worked out while watching the New Zealand version of Taskmaster.
The theme is mostly just chords with a few notes picked out. The tricky bit comes right at the end (bars 8-9) that goes way up the fretboard. You can safely chop it short and end the run at the first 12th fret.
After that, I’ve added in the little theme that plays at the start of the tasks.
Amazingly, Our Town was the first song that Iris Dement wrote and she came up with the lyrics from beginning to end with no editing. Another fact I learned researching this song: The Goo Goo Doll’s Iris was named after her.
This arrangement is based on the original. But the first time I ever heard this song was Kate Rusby’s cover. So some of that version will have slipped in.
The backbone of the song is baby’s first chord progression: C – F – C – G7. That runs all the way through the song. The melody is also straightforward. It’s all contained in the first few frets. Plus, I’m playing it loosely and throwing in strums wherever it feels right. So there’s nothing too challenging here.
But if you want to stretch out, there’s plenty of room to do solo in the solos. The solos in my arrangement are of my own invention. So you’re welcome to ditch them and come up with your own. If you keep track of the chord changes and use the C major scale, you can’t go wrong.
I would recommend approaching each solo with an idea or a plan to explore. So I based the intro solo on the melody and kept it within the first four frets. For the second solo (bars 21-24) I start off with a country bend, then focus on holding the chord shapes and adding notes onto those. And the final solo (bars 49-52) I wanted to use campanella style playing (so the notes are spread across the strings).
I’ve been getting into classical music much more over the pandemic. I’ve occasionally got the over-ambitious impulse to try something on the ukulele. And the first part of Robert Schumann’s Five Pieces in a Folk Style is the only to have made it through to this stage.
The piece is written for piano and cello. But this arrangement is almost entirely the cello part. The only time I dip into the piano part is bars 90 and 92.
There are plenty of challenging sections in the piece, but the part that took the most practice was the C section (not it’s official name). There’s also a very rapid section in bars 49-56 but that doesn’t require any scooting up and down the fretboard.
I’ve cut the intro way down from the original version. You’re welcome to use any picking pattern and any inversion of the chords here.
The chorus is brilliant. It manages to pull of the trick of being both bleak and catchy.
The verses are angry and even more sparse than the chorus. In a case of do as I say not do as I do, let the verse breath and try not to rush the melody.
Finally, the legendary drum Phil (bar 60). I’ve gone with a descending run based on the D blues scale with the last four notes played chromatically.
For this arrangement I worked from the Cat Stevens version. But a few bits of the version I sang in primary school might have slipped in.
The two main sections of this song are wildly different in terms of difficulty. The verses are very straightforward. It’s a gentle melody with easy chords and a few supporting notes.
The section where he’s hammering away on the piano is much trickier. As well as the fast picking, the chord changes are more challenging. In the original, he speeds up considerably in these parts. I haven’t sped up anywhere near as much. And you could slow the tempo even further without spoiling the sound.
The chords here are dead simple. It’s just G-D-Em-C all the way through (i.e. the I-V-vi-IV progression or the I’m Yours progression as ukers know it). So you have plenty of space to make that beautiful melody sing.
There’s a lot of scope for playing the supporting notes to suit your taste. So long as you hold the chord down and keep them quieter than the melody notes. I’m using one finger per string picking throughout.
And one more thing. Thanks to Tim Apple, this tab is going to be forced onto every device with the next iOS update.
As befits its slacker nature, many elements of this song are very straightforward. The melody of the verse is just groups of two notes a semitone apart and are taken directly from the riff. And when they key changes for the solo, there’s no smooth transition it’s just straight from one key to the other and back again. But there’s no denying the riff and the solo are immediately catchy.
As it’s a slacker anthem, I’m taking a loose approach to this one. In the intro, I’m fingerpicking the riff (one finger per string style). Then switching to strums with a few picked notes for the rest of the song. The solo is by far the most challenging part. I’ve adapted it a great deal from the original, so feel free to adapt it further to suit your own playing.
Putting it together made me realise it’s structured similar to Rhapsody in Blue (and that other rhapsody). It’s made of a few very catchy but unrelated sections that rub together and sometimes outright interrupt each other.
The song starts in that fashion with the lyrical, “I want to…” line being interrupted by them yelling bicycle. You can bring out that contrast by playing the lyrical section smoothly and the shouty section brashly and more staccato.
It then switches from major to minor for the hard-edged verse. I like to give the strings a bit of a snap for this section.
The middle section, which returns to a major key and a more gentle style cuts, the second chorus shor and shifts to12/8 time. Make sure you’re warmed up before attempting the big stretch up to the 11th and 12th frets.
The next chorus starts off two frets higher (making it a bit more difficult to play) before dropping back down to the original key in bar 31. Strumming the strings above the nut does a good job of imitating the bells at the end of this section.
The solo is the trickiest part to play. The original has two guitars playing answer and response phrases. Moving both to one ukulele means some big, quick moves up and down the neck. It’s tricky. I certainly make a hash of it.
A seasonally appropriate song from Simon and Garfunkel (the supergroup formed from Garfunkel and Oates and Trevor and Simon) and a good fingerpicking workout.
I’ve kept the Travis picking technique from the original for this. The index finger picks the E-string, the middle finger the A, and the thumb alternates between the g- and C-strings all the way through. This brings up a couple of problems.
Firstly, it’s very easy for the melody to get lost in the pattern. Which would make it sound like an accompaniment. So try to emphasise the melody as much as you can.
Secondly, the first note of the melody (bar 7) is on the C-string. There you have to break the pattern by picking the C-string with your index finger. I found it awkward and the trickiest part of the arrangement.
There are a few bars of 2/4 scattered around the tab. But everything flows very nicely, so don’t let that put you off.