Green Day’s American Idiot doesn’t require a whole lot finesse. Just blasting out the strums all the way through. The hardest bit is making sure the strum blocking is effective in the parts where there’s just a vocal melody.
The solo is just messing around with the chorus melody and chords. Lots of scope for you to come up with your own set of chord inversions here.
The Pinky and the Brain theme is a lot of fun to play. I always love a bit of strum blocking on the riff, i.e. strumming all the strings and muting all but one. It gives the tune a forceful, percussive sound that you can’t get from just picking.
Intro: A quick intro previously used by Marvin Gaye, The Rolling Stones and The Velvet Underground. It uses one of Marr’s favourite tricks: letting open strings ring through chord changes.
Verse: The verse is all in the first position. Mostly just switching between Dm and Csus4. There’s a little lick in bars 25-26 which I play first time round but not second time (where I substitute in bars 9-10).
Chorus: The chorus is a step up in difficulty. In bars 39 and 47, there’s a big stretch to the fifth fret while playing Bb. If you want to make it easier, you could just play the A-string, 5th fret by itself. Or play the C-string open if you want a fuller sound.
In bar 43 of the second chorus (“heavenly way to dieeeee”), I accidentally played bar 51 (“Pleasure and the privilege is mine”). So play what’s written rather than my screw up.
Outro: A nice, easy strummed outro.
Don your Joy Division oven gloves for a round of Love Will Tear Us Apart.
Intro/Outro: This section ramps up the tension and anticipation. In the original, the bass plays an A power chord, and the guitar plays an Em chord. Combined, these produce an A9 chord.
This arrangement moves the song down a step. So the G5 and Dm create a G9 chord. The intro chord also includes a 4th (the C note on the A-string) for an extra bit of tension.
Chorus: This section flows so smoothly on ukulele. I love playing it. Which is handy because it makes up most of the song.
Verse: The verse I found less natural to play. The melody here fits more awkwardly against the chords to fit the song’s lyrical theme.
Ray Charles’s Hit the Road Jack is tricky to play. Mostly because it’s so quick. I’ve slowed it slightly from the original. But it’s still a challenge.
Intro: This sets up two aspects that run through the whole song. First, the descending pattern of Dm-C-Bb-A7. And second, the liberal use of chnks.
Chorus: This continues the pattern from intro and adds the melody on top. There’s a trip up the neck for the “no more…” part that requires some quick and accurate jumps.
Verse: The melody here is quick and relentless. I’ve included a few bits of campanella playing to fit them all in. This is the section I had the most trouble with.
Solo: I went with a very ukulele-style solo. So it’s almost all chord strumming with a lot of movement all over the neck. Then finishing off with a quick run.
The Severance Theme minimalist, making it relatively easy to play. It can feel sparse on the ukulele, but it still retains the original’s eerie atmosphere.
A Section: Played with thumb and two finger picking. The one exception is the Abm chord. I pluck that with index and middle fingers to keep the same timbre as the other notes at the start of the bar. But you can stick with thumb and index here if you prefer.
B Section: Switching to one finger per string picking for the B section. This section is trickier but still very manageable. Start by barring at the fifth fret, then gradually move the note on the C-string down a fret each bar. In bar 11, switch to fretting the A-string,5th fret with your pinkie to prepare for the Eb on the C-string, 3rd fret.
For the giltchy outro, I used Cryogen by Glitchmachines. I wouldn’t recommend paying full price for it. I picked it up for £3 in a sale.
Here’s a tab of a song that featured in Aftersun, my favourite movie of the last few years:
Blur’s Tender.
Intro: Starting off with the trickiest bit. The quick hammer-on to pull-off to slide at the start of bar 3 is a finger-twister.
When this riff repeats at the end of the chorus, there is a slight change in bars 21 and 22 to watch out for.
Verse: Just a G – F – G chord progression and nothing too tricky in the melody.
Chorus: In the second and third choruses, I’ve included the high “fee-ling” part the choir sings (bars 33 and 46). This involves a slide up to the 14th fret. If your uke doesn’t have that many frets (or you just don’t fancy it) you can just repeat the first chorus.
Chan Chan was originally written by Compay Segundo. But it’s the Buena Vista Social Club version that is best known. And it’s that one I worked from.
Intro: The intro sets up the chord progression that’s used (adding a 6 or 7 here and there) all the way through the song: Dm-F-Gm-A. The rest of the song is in 4 bar sections, but the intro has 6 bars. Which makes the start of the verse come in at an odd place.
Verses: For the melody sections, you’re playing the same chords at the fifth fret. And that’s interspersed with two bars from the intro.
Chorus: A very similar melody to the verse, but this time played twice through and with a four bar section of the intro.
Diving into 2025 with some wildly unjustifiable optimism in the shape of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Intro: Lots of jumping around the neck in the section. But it’s slow and loose, so it’s not too challenging.
Chorus: The tempo ramps up here and we switch to swing time. This bit is my favourite part to play. It has a nice flow to it on ukulele. Lots of use of the g-string in the melody.
Verse: Similar to the intro, but the increased tempo makes it much harder to play. I’ve simplified much of it to make it easier. Particularly bar 19 where I’ve dropped the chords entirely. If you fancy a challenge, you could play this like bar 3.
Outro: There’s a key change here, so you’re playing the chorus in D. It is more difficult to play in this key. So you could play the chorus again in C and no one would notice or care.
I’ve tacked on an “have a banana” outro at the end as a nod to the song’s musical hall style.
Just sneaking this one in before the deadline. The song was originally written by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé and first recorded by Nat King Cole. It’s one of the chillest songs in existence to listen to. But not so chill to play. There are many big moves up and down the fretboard to deal with. And plenty of unfamiliar chord shapes.
The intro and solo are of my own devising. So feel free to mess around with those as much as you like.