Tag: Jazz

Intro: I love the way the Em6 here gives the song a heavy, brooding feel. There are a couple of challenging bits here. First, the slide up to the 7th fret in bar 6. Second, the fast picking on the triplets in bar 10.

Verse: The verses are nice and simple. If you like, you can use the Em6 here as well in place of the Em. I chose the Em here to make the harmony clearer to the listener.

Chorus: It’s important to create as much contrast as possible between the call and the response here. So this arrangement has the call in single notes high on the neck. And the response is low on the neck and in a chord.

Double Time Chorus: This section is a burst of anarchy in the song. It’s also the most difficult to play. So I embraced the chaos and did whatever I felt like in this section.

Outro: A very effective descending chord run to end on.

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I hope you’re not coming here for a detailed harmonic breakdown of Charles Mingus’s Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, because I have no idea what he’s doing most of the time. Which made it a tough song for me to memorise. With all the unfamiliar chords and movements, I found myself constantly having to think ahead, since there weren’t many familiar shapes to fall back on.

Verse: I found the easiest way to play the opening bars is to barre across the first fret from the last note of bar 1 to the Gm in bar 4. Not all the chords need the barre, but it’s a lot easier to keep it there than to take it on and off.

As well as the harmony, there’s plenty of rhythmic jiggery-pokery going on. Most notably, the entire tune is in swing time except for bar 10. Which is played straight.

Solo: In the original, the solo uses a new (slightly simpler) chord progression. For my version, I’ve gone with a simplified take on the original chords. And I’ve leaned into the songs bluesiness with a bunch of bends and slides.

There’s loads of room here to bring in your own ideas. My take draws heavily on the melody. But you can go way off piste if you’re feeling brave.

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Versions of Irving Berlin’s Blue Skies range widely in their approach. There are uptempo takes, such as the Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole versions, which lean into the suspiciously joyful “we’ll never have problems again“-ness of it. And there are slow, mournful takes like Dinah Washington’s.

This arrangement lands somewhere near the Willie Nelson version with a lot of bluesy touches.

Intro: Starting of with an E minor chord set against chromatically descending notes on the C-string. This bit is mostly picking out notes from the chords with some short licks thrown in. It’s all fingerpicked until the strums leading into the verse in bars 7 and 8.

Verse: Nice and easy to play. The melody is contained and the chords are simple to play. Here I’m picking the melody and strumming everything else.

Chorus: The chorus is more of a challenge. Be sure to keep this section staccato (i.e. short notes) to set it against the more legato verses.

Solo: For the solo, I stuck closely to the chords and melody notes. Throwing in a few bluesy bends here and there. I get a bit more adventurous in the second half, throwing in some chromatic notes in bar 43 and an E minor pentatonic lick in bar 45. I’d recommend building your own solo using any ideas from this solo you like and playing in your own style.

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Here’s my take on Send in the Clowns in a belated tribute to Stephen Sondheim. The most well known versions are the song are by Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra and, of course, Krusty the Clown. Although my favourite is by, occasional ukers, The Tiger Lillies.

Intro: I couldn’t resist referencing Entry of the Gladiators for this intro. Feel free to replace it with something more sensible.

Verses: The verses switch between 12/8 and 9/8. But it all flows nicely, so it’s not tricky to keep track of.

There is a brief pause in bar 5 where the tune hangs in mid-air (indicated by the frown with a dimple over the tab). That pause gives you a chance for that slide up to the seventh fret. When this bar happens a second time (bar 11) without a pause, it’s played on the A-string, 2nd fret so you don’t need to jump down to the C-string, 2nd fret.

Chorus: My favourite part of this song is the long descending line in bars 18 and 19. With the run starting at the E-string, 3rd fret and going almost chromatically to the open C.

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A tab of Willie Nelson’s version of Stardust (written by Hoagy Carmichael) for everyone who likes a bit of Willie. In thanks for his contributions to ukeing as father of Amy Nelson of Folk Uke and grandfather of Raelyn Nelson.

There are loads of less common chords in the song. And a fair amount of hopping around the fretboard. But the tempo is very slow and there’s plenty of room for changing the phrasing of the melody. So this one is fairly straightforward to play.

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As Time Goes By is most famous for its inclusion in Casablanca. But the song was written a decade earlier by Herman Hupfeld for the long forgotten musical Everybody’s Welcome.

Intro: A quick campanella intro. There are a million things you could do here.

Verse: The slow pace of the song make this fairly simple to play. Just a trip up the fretboard in bar 7 to deal with. Another opportunity for your own spin at the end of each verse. I went jazzy in the first verse and bluesy in the second.

Bridge: Bringing out the strums for the bridge.

Solo: The solo is based on the melody shifted up an octave. With a few passing notes, a pre-bend (i.e. bending the note before plucking it then releasing) and a descending-ascending run in bars 23-24.

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Burt Bacharach is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. So I had to do a little tribute to him with I’ll Never Fall in Love Again. For this arrangement, I worked from the Elvis Costello version that cropped up in The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Even in an apparently simple pop tune like this, Bacharach snuck in interesting little moves. So in bar 15 there’s a B7 chord with the melody hitting Ab. Which is the minor third of F creating tension in the key is F major. And there’s a bar of 2/4 cutting the melody short in bar 17.

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