Intro: I did an extended intro based on the verse chords. It’s a little tricky so feel free to adapt it however you like. Or just replace the whole thing with one bar of G like the original.
Verse: First time around, this section is picked (using one finger per string picking). Second time is more loose and strummed with a few notes picked out.
Chorus: The funnest part of the song with a big G chord on the “HEY!”
Solo: Lots of room for your own ideas here too. You could make it as simple as strumming the chords and throwing in a few sus2 and sus4 chords.
Intro and Verse: It starts off straightforwardly in G minor.
Chorus: A switch to G major and a busier melody make for an upbeat chorus. The octaves in 20 and 24 are tricky to play. If you’re struggling, you can play either the top or bottom line alone.
Solo: My version of the solo is only loosely based on the original. There’s plenty of room for making it your own. Bars 37-38 are a pain in the arse to play. But also the best bars in the whole song.
The biggest challenge with this piece is getting the rhythms right. There are a bunch of time signature changes and even within the bars things get weird.
Intro: In straight 4/4 but the rhythmic weirdness starts right away. You’d expect the initial riff to be played four times but it’s only played three times before switching to the slightly different second riff.
Verses: These are made up of three bars of 5/4 and one bar of 3/4. Tricky to get the hang of but once you do the rest is fairly easy. It’s just strumming and occasionally picking the g-string. Other than that, there’s just a little lick at the end to deal with.
Breaks: After each verse there’s an instrumental section of varying length. You can do pretty much whatever you like in these sections. I’d recommend not following exactly what I’m doing and just use it for ideas for your own version.
I’m using mostly notes from G major and G minor scales with a few extra notes for a discordant sound. The only rule is to keep up the propulsive force of the tune.
Intro: I love the whistled outro of this song. So I simplified it and used is as the intro too.
Verse: I’ve tabbed these as repeats but there are slight differences in the timings of the notes that are pretty easy to pick out yourself. Or I’m sure no one will notice or care if you just repeat the first verse exactly each time.
Chorus: Usually, I’ll emphasise the melody of the song over other elements. But the guitar part here is so great I’ve tried to incorporate that as much as possible.
Bridge: The hardest part of the song. The melody gets a bit fiddly. Especially with it being high on the fretboard.
Outro: What a great melody to just toss out in the outro.
It was a nice surprise to see Paul McCartney playing Oh! Darling live for the first time at the Taylor Hawkins memorial. It’s a nice blend of early-era R&B Beatles in the verses and the harder-edged, bluesier later Beatles in the chorus.
I was surprised to learn this song was written by Tony Hatch. Who is best known to me for writing the theme tunes to Neighbours, Emmerdale Farm and Crossroads.
Daydream Believer by The Monkees is fairly straightforward to play. The biggest challenges are a few quick hops up the neck. The trickiest one coming in the shift between bars 8 and 9. Other than that, it’s all familiar chord shapes and a simple but insanely catchy melody.
The original is in the key of G and that fits very nicely on the uke so I’ve kept it for this arrangement. The little piano riff in the intro works particularly well.
This has to be one of the most beautiful melodies of all time. Which makes for a perfect transition to the uke. The arrangement is based on the sublime acoustic version rather than the not so great later version.
Like many of Mitchell’s songs, the guitar part in Both Sides Now is a strummed open tuning with a few notes added on. That style doesn’t translate well to the uke. So I’ve taken it as licence to do whatever I like with the chords.
There’s nothing too challenging in the arrangement, so there’s plenty of room for interpretation. Be sure to play around with dynamics and timing to keep things interesting.
I came up with an intro/outro of my own so I encourage you to do likewise.
My Girl is a Motown classic written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White. And first performed by The Temptations. A bit of the Otis Redding version might have slipped into this arrangement, too.
The riff in My Girl (first played in bar 3) shows how effective a very simple riff can be. It just goes up the major pentatonic scale in C and later in F. Things get a little more complicated when you try to mix the melody in. Make sure you play the riff more softly because the notes are in the same range as the melody. For example, in bar 8 the first time you play the A-string, 3rd fret it’s part of the riff and the second time it’s part of the melody. So you need to distinguish the two or it’ll all blur into one.
I’ve used a couple of artificial harmonics in the chorus. If you haven’t got those down yet, you can play those notes at the 15th fret or just keep them at the third fret and play them softly.
There’s a key change in the original version. But it’s pretty tricky to play in D so I’ve cut the solo section before the change to keep things simple.
Andy Griffith never made it to this side of the Atlantic, but I was still very familiar with the Andy Griffith Show theme tune somehow.
The bouncy tune and chord stabs make this one a lot of fun to play. Although it’s tricky to play up to speed. Definitely one to play very slowly until you’ve got it under your fingers.