A very obvious choice for the first tab of 2021.
It’s a short and sweet tune from Vampire Weekend’s latest album with a lovely melody and a laid-back solo. The biggest challenge is some rapid melody notes. I’ve dropped a few notes to make it easier to play.
There’s been a healthy crop of great albums this year. My current favourite is Sylvan Esso’s Free Love. So I grabbed my uke and put together a cover of Rooftop Dancing.
The song fits nicely on uke. The chords are simple and the melody is contained in the first five frets. There’s only one trip up the fretboard in bars 15-18. This section is essentially the intro moved up an octave. So you can substitute the intro there if you prefer.
The challenge in the song is the speed of some notes in the melody. I’ve made things a little easier by removing a few notes. But you’ll still need to do some alternate picking to keep up.
Over the last 35 years They Might Be Giants have but out some of the funnest and nerdiest music around (and found some time to paint cat ukuleles). So I collected together some of their best known songs along with some of my favourites.
Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Starts off with a short solo using the F harmonic minor scale. Which is like the more common F natural minor scale but with the Eb replaced by an E (A-string, 7th fret). The melody for the chorus is made up solely of notes in the Fm chord then the C7 chord. So hold down these notes as long as possible to build the chords behind the melody.
Birdhouse in Your Soul: I wrote up tab for the entire song here. This is just the intro transposed to the key of F.
Dr Worm: A quick version of Rabbi Vole’s guitar solo.
Why Does the Sun Shine?: I love that TMBG wrote a scientifically inaccurate song then wrote a song to correct it.
Boss of Me: AKA the Malcolm in the Middle theme. The chorus for this part is dead simple. It’s mostly just switching between the open A-string and A-string, 3rd fret while the chords change underneath.
Older: While the rest of the songs after Istanbul are in F, this one is in its equivalent minor: D minor.
Dog on Fire: AKA The Daily Show theme. From the original version before Timberland chopped it up.
Seven Days of the Week: From their third album of children’s songs Here Come the 1,2,3s. Although there only seems to be the most marginal difference between their children’s records and the rest of their oeuvre.
Hi, How are you?
Yesterday brought the very sad news of the death of lo-fi legend Daniel Johnston. Johnston was the darling of indie musicians in the 90s. True Love Will Find You in the End alone has been covered by Beck, Flaming Lips, Wilco, Spiritualized, Kula Shaker and Jeff Mangum. And now I’ve had a go at it.
I’ve kept my version very simple. I’m only using the top three strings picked thumb and two finger style. The most important thing is to give the melody notes a little extra umph so they stand out against the backing notes.
There is a lot going on in this song. Slate claims it has 18 key changes in it. But you have to be very generous to get that high. For the most part I think of the song being in C but using both C major and C minor. That’s not too unusual in a rock song. But it is unusual just how much they do it and how far they stretch things before returning home.
The one real key change comes in the solo/middle section where the F#m and E set up a repeat of the intro but this time in the key of A rather than C.
I’m throwing a whole bunch of different techniques at this song. In the smooth sections (the intro and middle) I’m using fake strums. In the loud bits (like the start of the chorus and the bridge) I’m strumming. In the bouncy sections (like the end of the intro and the, “Not to put too fine a point…” bit of the chorus) I’m using thumb and two finger picking. And at the end of the chorus, in the verses and the solo I’m using one finger per string picking.
alt-J’s new track 3WW has me very excited for the new album. In preparation I thought I’d have a go at Ripe & Ruin from their debut album.
Ripe & Ruin is an acappella duet (the good kind of acappella where everyone sings words and no one is doing cheesy beatboxing). But I’ve taken some liberties with the arrangement having anything between one and three notes at a time.
The only tricky part of the arrangement is the rapid jump up the neck in bar 24. Otherwise it’s pretty straightforward so you can concentrate on varying the dynamics.
I think this tune has to be the most overused piece of music on television: reality shows, sporting montages, documentaries. And now it’s been covered by the guy off of G4. That would usually be enough to kill off any song. But this song is so magnificent it gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.
For the uke arrangement I’ve moved everything up a fret from the original to the more uke-friendly key of C. The first half of tune is all played campanella style (i.e. one note per string letting them ring into each other). I know a lot of people don’t like this way of playing but, screw it, it’s easily the best way of arranging a tune like this.
The most important thing to get right is the dynamics (quiet and louds bits). The original gets this one spot on. Obviously you’re not going to have the same dynamic range as a full band and a string section. But try to let the music swell in the first half and blossom in the second half. The dynamics are what gives emotion to the tune.
Another important thing to get right – which I completely failed to do in the video – is to keep an even tempo. I speed up much too fast towards the end. So do as I say not as I do.
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