I’ve covered a lot of Halloween songs over the years and I’ve always avoided Monster Mash. It’s delivered in a talk-singing voice, so there’s no real melody to transport to uke. So the melody in this arrangement is largely fictional. I’ve tried to follow the contours of the vocals and match the vibe of the original. But feel free to change anything you don’t like. Either way, I’m sure Pam would hate it.
Tag: Halloween
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Dusty Springfield – Spooky (Tabs)
Apologies to anyone who tried to use the site in the last couple of weeks and couldn’t. I’ve been having some tech problems. It should be fixed now. Just in time for a Halloween themed tab. Spooky was originally by The Classics IV, but best known for Dusty Springfield’s version. And it’s the Dusty version I based this arrangement on.
Intro: Just a two chord vamp with a bit of a 60s bossa feel to it.
Verses: The biggest challenge in the verses is quickly getting down from the A-string 5th fret to the C-string second fret. Other than that, it’s fairly smooth sailing. I love the discordance of the A7#9 at the end of each verse. The chord has both the major third (C#) and the minor third (C) of the chord. Which is the spookiest part of the song.
Solo: The first bar is the only one that is based on the solo in the Dusty version. Everything else is just me noodling on the D blues scale. So I recommend building your own solo here.
Links
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The Cure – Lullaby (Tabs)
Get ready to be freaked out of your gourd by The Cure’s spooky Lullaby
Intro: The original intro is unusually long, lasting more than a minute. I’ve chopped it down a little for this arrangement.
The intro (like the whole song apart from the bridge) is just Dm-Bbmaj7. The first 8 bars have the guitar line on top of that. And the next four focus on the bass line.
The final 8 bars focus on the string line. With long notes on the Dm and pizzicato notes on the Bbmaj7. To imitate the pizzicato, I’m muting the strings by gently resting the side of my picking hand on the strings near the bridge.
The transition into bar 17 is made easier by muting the g-string with your thumb instead of playing the whole chord. But you can always add in the g-string, 2nd fret if you’re fast enough.
Verse: The wispy and whispery vocals make the melody a little hard to discern. I’ve tried my best but I’ve taken a few liberties with it. Nothing too tricky to deal with here. Just a trip up to the fifth fret at the end.
Bridge: They go all jazz with it and add a third chord. Still straightforward, though. Just a couple of quick pull-offs to deal with.
Outro: This is where things get tricky. There’s a flurry of notes in bars 46 and 50. I’ve gone campanella with it and involved the g-string in the melody to spread out the notes a little.
Links
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Norma Tanega – You’re Dead (What We Do in the Shadows) (Tabs)
For spooky season, Norma Tanega’s You’re Dead aka the What We Do in the Shadows theme.
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.
Links
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Black Sabbath – Paranoid (Tab)
I put a call out for Halloween-suitable songs on this month’s Patreon request thread and Sam requested Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album in celebration of the 50th Anniversary. Which was a great and also ridiculous idea.
It is, of course, entirely unsuited to ukulele. Which makes it all the more fun to play. It uses forceful picking almost all the way through. With just a few quieter sections to keep things chugging along.
And then there’s the solo. My take on it is pretty shambolic. So feel free to concoct your own. Or take then sensible option and leave it out entirely.
Links
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The Walking Dead Theme (Tab)
The Walking Dead theme uses a technique I should have included in my spooky ukulele sounds post: unusual timings. Each bar has a pattern that rises and falls twice but then cuts off half way through the third time. The bars themselves are played an odd number of times. The first pattern is played three times at the beginning in my version (seven in the original) and five times at the end. Usually you see bars in powers of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8 etc.) or at least an even amount. Having an even number gives it a unsettling feeling.
I went with low-G tuning here. It makes it so much easier to play. But I like the way it sounds even on high-g. Even spookier if you ask me.
The tune is very simple. It’s just one pattern on three different locations on the neck. It’s great for practicing your thumb and two finger picking. I’ve been using it as a little warm up exercise. The great part is you can move the pattern up and down the neck and it always works.
Links
Buy the Walking Dead Soundtrack
Bear McCreary talks about writing the theme
More Halloween tabs -
Ghostbusters Theme (Group Tab)
I’ve tackled Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters theme once before way back in 2007. But I wanted to return to it to tidy it up and make it into a full instrumental version for a ukulele group. Also because it’s a stone-cold classic.
This version has five different ukulele parts of differing levels of difficulty (including one that just involves smashing the strings in time) and each one can be simplified or fancied up as suits.
Rhythm Ukulele
Ghostbusters (Rhythm Tab)
This part takes care of all the chord work. For almost all the song the chords are just C – Bb – F. You can choose whichever inversion of those chords suits your playing.
Lead Ukulele
This part plays the riff for most of the song. For the intro and middle sections I make use of campanella style. Letting close harmony notes ring into each other makes them extra spooky.
Melody Ukulele
Ghostbusters (Melody Tab)
It’s important to make this part as expressive as you can to give it the feel of a vocal melody.
As well as handling the vocal melody, this part plays the guitar lick in bars 27-28 and 43-44.
Extras Ukulele
Ghostbusters (Extras Tab)
My original plan was to combine this part and the melody part. In the end I split them off so I could have the vocal part more prominent than this one. But the two parts are never playing at the same time so you can easily combine the two into one part if you wish.
The part starts of by plucking the strings with a pick between the nut and the pegs. It’s always high-pitched and out of tune up there so you’ll always get a spooky effect from it.
The intro spooky noises do include one additional uke. I scrapped a pick along a wound low-G string to get a bit of a creaking effect.
Percussive Uke
No notes at all in this part. I’m just muting all the strings with my fretting hand. I’m using two main patterns. The first one in the video I strum down right in front of the bridge to create a thud. Then up again in that area. Then and other down-up where the fretboard hits the body.
The next pattern is the same sort of idea. Start with the same down-up near the bridge. Then three down-ups at the fretboard.
The bridge strums do give you a good sound but they’re a bit tough on the fingers and not essential. You can also emphasise beats just be strumming more forcefully.
Links
Buy the original on iTunes
More Halloween tabs
Uke Hunt Patreon