Klovn is Denmark’s version of Curb Your Enthusiasm. As far as I can tell. I stumbled across it during an international tour of Netflixes. There were no English subtitles so I couldn’t make out much of the show (judging by the comments I got on the video, all Danish Uke Hunt readers hate it). But I really loved the theme tune.
In a rarity for me, the arrangement uses low-G tuning. The picking hand is a bit tricky in this one. I’m playing alternating bass notes with the thumb (on the G-, C- and E-strings) and melody notes with the index and middle fingers.
The Brain Scoop is one of my favourite YouTube channels. It’s the channel of Emily Graslie who was working in a tiny museum in Missoula when Vlogbrother Hank Green featured her in a video and talked her into starting a YouTube channel. Now she works in the massive Field Museum making videos on everything they do from slicing open animals, to expiditions, to searching through their collections (including their ukulele). I highly recommend checking it out.
It also has a catchy theme tune (by general Nerdfighteria producer Michael Aranda) that I had to do a uke version of. I’m very excited that it got the Brain Scoop and Hank Green seal of approval.
Following on from ABBA, my other favourite Eurovision song is France’s 1965 winner: France Gall’s Poupée de cire, Poupée de son (written by Serge Gainsbourg).
The only tricky part in this arrangement is the intro. Here I’m picking the A-string with my middle finger and everything else with my thumb.
From there on it’s all pretty simple. Everything is plucked with the thumb apart from a few bits of strumming (indicated by the arrows on the tab).
Teardrop is one of my all time favourite songs. As well as the original Massive Attack version (used as the theme tune to House) there have been a bunch of great covers. The version by Jose Gonzalez and Acoustic Labs’ instrumental guitar take on it had a big influence on my version.
There are a couple of unconventional techniques in this arrangement. The first is in the percussive section (bars 13-14). Here I’m using muted strums the rapping my finger nails against the bottom edge of the uke. In the tab the muted strums are an x on the C-string and the nail-strums are an x on the A-string.
I tried out a few different percussive techniques (e.g. bashing the body of the uke with the side of my hand in place of the muted strums and tapping my fingernails on the sides of the uke) and some are very effective. I settled on these because they’re the most straightforward but I’d recommend trying out a few variations for yourself.
The trickiest parts are the harmonics in bars 27-30. Harmonics at the fifth fret give the high ringing required but they’re a real pain to play. I screw up a few of them in my version. If you want something more forgiving play the harmonics at the twelfth fret. They’ll sound right but be an octaves lower.
I was inspired to arrange this one by Brooke Pallson’s ukulele version and somehow it’s taken me two years to get from that to a finished version. That might suggest it’s a deeply complex arrangement but it’s pretty easy to play (although I still manage to jack it up at about 1:20 in the video).
The trickiest bit is the solo section that starts in bar 31. The first four bars ape the keyboard solo and the next for the “ain’t nobody’s business” vocalising. It took me a bit of practice to be able to switch between those. They’re just similar enough and just different enough to make it tricky.
If you’ve been following my riffs for ukulele series, you’ll have heard me encourage you to use it more creatively than just playing one riff at a time. One way to use them is to cram a bunch of them together to make a melody. That’s what I did with my Arctic Monkeys medley and this collection of Strokes riffs.
The songs in this medley are:
Barely Legal/Take It Or Leave It/Hard to Explain/12:51/One Way Trigger/Reptilia/Barely Legal (again)/Someday/Under Cover of Darkness/Last Nite
I had assumed Junior Brown’s Better Call Saul would be the theme tune to the show. But they went with the more unexpected choice of, Nottingham indie rockers, Little Barrie.
But the theme is very in keeping with the feel of the Breaking Bad theme. It’s similarly sparse which makes it a bit tricky to keep time. As you can see in the video, I keep strumming without touching the strings to keep time. But you can do it by tapping your foot or nodding your head.
After last week’s two nightmaredifficulty posts something much more straight forward this week.
Like the original, I start my version off with just the melody. It’s a great traditionally inspired melody (written by the guys off of The Lumineers) and is plenty strong enough to hold your attention alone. I’m just picking this with my thumb but you can use fingers if you’re comfortable with that.
Then from bar 17 I introduce a few chords but still keep it very minimal. Again, I’m just using my thumb to play these. Strumming down the strings whenever there’s more than one note.
Here’s one if you’re looking for a challenge. There are lots of jumps around the neck, syncopated rhythms, twists and turns, and tricky strum blocking to get to grips with.
On part that isn’t too difficult is the strumming hand. Most of the song my right hand is just strumming sixteenth notes. The rhythm is created by muting and playing strings with the left hand.
For example, in the intro you play a constant strum, hold down the chord stabs and mute the g-string (I use the thumb of my fretting hand), otherwise mute all the strings.
The verse is done in a similar way. Strum constant sixteenth notes and mute the strings when nothing is played. The difference is you also have to mute all but one string. That can get tricky and it takes a lot of practice. I call this strum blocking and I did a tutorial on it here. It’s a great way to give a piece lots of attack and a strong rhythm.
In this song I mostly mute the g-string with my thumb, C-string with my middle finger, E-string with my ring finger and the A-string with the underside of my index finger. But you’ll need to play around with it and see what works best for you.
I had to do this tab to celebrate the finale of the first series of Serial. The plinkiness of it was just dying to be uked. To keep it extra-plinky it’s played right up the neck.