I was inspired by Action Bronson’s Contemporary Man from his latest mixtape to create a 80s medley of my own. And it’s a good opportunity to show how I intended the riffs posts to be used. And it means there’s plenty of scope to add your favourites to the medley.
The first four songs are the same as Contemporary Man: Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer, Phil Collins’ Sussudio, John Mellencamp’s Jack and Diane, Phil again with Another Day in Paradise. Then a couple of my favourites I’ve done before in the riffs series: Harold Faltermeyer’s Axel F and Jump by Van Halen.
I also jammed a reference to the main Doctor Who Theme in at the end.
7/8 Time
The main theme is in rather tricky 7/8 time. When counting it I went with “1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4″. But once I’d got the hang of playing it I dropped the count and just went with the swing of it.
Trickiest Bit
The high, screechy violin bit in bars 5-8. You can simplify this a couple of ways. You can drop the note on the A-string 8th fret at the end of the bar and just stick with the 10th fret. Or you could play a simpler version without the screeches. Either repeat the first four bars or play bars 17-20.
Here’s another tune from Breaking Bad. This time an instrumental version of Marty Robbins’ El Paso from Felina.
This piece – while not really bad – is a challenge. I’ve slowed it down slightly from the original version to make it more playable.
There’s a bit of a mishmash of picking techniques. Mostly it’s one finger per string with some supporting strums. But I switch to thumb and two fingers in the sections where the g-string isn’t played.
The other technique I use is the roll strum. I use that in bar 9.
The Trickiest Bit
The run in the bar three is very difficult. The first part is played campanella style. That gives you two open strings during which you can move from the first position up so your middle finger is playing the note at the sixth fret.
Part of my sworn duties as a ukulele blogger is peruse the YouTube uploads and check out anything interesting. Recently that has involved clicking on everything titled “A Team Ukulele Cover” hoping it would be the theme tune to the superior 80s TV show. And every single time I’ve been distraught to find it’s another cover of that Ed Sheeran song. Never again let it be said I don’t make sacrifices for my art.
So in the spirit of “If you want something doing properly don’t ask an Ed Sheeran fan” I’ve done my own version.
I can’t really blame them though. It was a trial getting it to sound right on the uke. I cropped out the boring bit in the middle but I kept all the exciting bits.
Technique-wish it’s a mish-mash. The first ten bars are played with strums (including roll strums for extra emphasis). Then there are octaves plucked with thumb and index finger in bar 10. That’s followed by the fifths in bar 13 again plucked with thumb and index.
A simple pattern using each finger in order with the thumb starting on the g-string then moving to the C-string. Making a p i m p i m p i m… picking pattern.
Since you’re using three fingers, this pattern is well suited to playing in triplets.
Complicated PIMP Pattern
A similar pattern to last time. But here you’re not using triplets so you have to fill out the bar with just the first two notes of the pattern. So you play p i m but just p i the final time.
Reverse Pattern
Rather than going up the strings as you did in the last two patterns here you pluck with the thumb then go down the strings. So it’s p m i repeated.
Alternate Picking
Alternating is my favourite way to use the thumb and two fingers method. Here the thumb alternates between the g- and C-strings.
In this particular pattern you pluck g-string with your thumb, E with middle, C-string with thumb, A with middle. So it’s p i p m.
One Finger Per String Picking
PIMA Pattern
Picking with your thumb and going up the strings to make p a m i.
PAMI Pattern
Here you pluck the g-string with your thumb. Then go through the strings in the opposite direction. Making a p a m i pattern.
Choosing a Pattern
If you’re unsure of which method of picking to use for a pattern I have a general rule for choosing.
If the g- and C-strings are played next to each other at any point I go with the one finger per string method. It’s much easier than having to switch strings with your thumb quickly.
But if the g- and C-strings aren’t played consecutively then I’ll go with the thumb and two fingers method. I find it much easier to play in general.
Here’s a quick illustration. This is the first thumb and two fingers method played using the one finger person string method. If you’re anything like me you’ll find it trickier to play this way.
In ukulele tab the finger you use to pluck the note is indicated by a letter in italics above the tab. They look like this:
Each letter corresponds to a finger on your picking hand:
t or p = Thumb
i = Index Finger
m = Middle Finger
a = Ring Finger
So when a note has an i above it you pluck that string with your index finger.
You won’t always find the picking notation. Sometimes you’ll just see it at the beginning of the piece and you just carry on that pattern all the way through. Sometimes you’ll just get the fingering for tricky sections.
The names are shortened from: pulgar, indice, medius, annular.
– You don’t use your ring finger. All the picking is done with thumb, index finger and middle finger. – The thumb plays notes on both the g- and C-strings.
So the fingers cover these strings:
Thumb: g- and C-strings. Index Finger: E-string. Middle finger: A-string.
This method of picking has a few advantages over
The big disadvantage is that it makes it harder to play patterns where the g- and C-stings are played next to each other in a pattern. So if you’re playing a pattern that has that use the One Finger Per String Method.
The One Finger Per String Method is the most logical way of arranging your picking hand. Each string is allocated a finger. Each string is only played with one finger and each finger only plays one string.
They are arranged:
Thumb – g-string
Index Finger – C string
Middle Finger – E string
Ring Finger – A string
Like this:
As you can see, I use my little finger as an anchor. Don’t copy that! It’s a bad habit. This stabilizes the hand but there is a trade off. Letting you hand hover over the strings will give your fingers greater flexibility and make it easier to switch between picking and strumming.
And it means my hand always falls into that position. So whenever I’ve chugging a beer in a manly fashion I’m also raising a delicate pinkie.
Anyway, their performance inspired me to have a go at this instrumental piece. I first tried it on standard uke but it didn’t work out. I moved on to low-G with was better. Then I went insane and decided to drag my aNueNue harp ukulele out of deep storage.
Harp Ukulele
The harp strings on the uke are supposed to be tuned C, D, E, F. But I retuned the bottom two to A. One to pluck and the other to give a bit of sympathetic resonance. The sympathetic resonance turned out quite well. You can particularly hear the reverb-like effect at the beginning.
Important: The letters above the tab represent the bass note being played in that bar they’re not the chords.
Low-G
The strings tabbed are just tuned like a normal low-G. And it’s tabbed in the same key as the original. So if you’re playing a low-G you can just play this tab along with the record or a bass-playing friend.
Standard Tuning Version
To play it with a high-g ukulele you’ll need to move the whole thing up an octave. Here’s a tab for that. This time with the chord names above the tab.
Nype suggested I do a uke version of Eddie Vedder’s Tuolumne from the soundtrack of Into the Wild (and the precursor to Just Breathe). I was a bit trepedacious as a lot of guitar picking songs end up finger-crunchingly tricky on ukulele. But it actually works out very well. I didn’t even have to change the key.
Trickiest Bit
Moving down from the 10th fret at the end of bar 2 to the 3rd fret. If you have trouble with that you can take off that 10th fret and just play bar 2 like bar 3.
Picking Pattern
The right hand is doing a constant Travis-picking pattern. The thumb alternates between the g and C-strings, the index finger picks the E-string and the middle finger picks the A-string.
