The White Stripes’ Fell in Love with a Girl is a simple song but the tempo is high. I’ve slowed it down in my version (from 180BPM-ish in the original to 170) but it’s still a challenge to keep up. To make things easier, the arrangement moves across the strings rather than up and down the neck. Which means there’s a lot of open strings and use of the g-string in the melody.
Even more than usual, this one rewards practicing slowly. Let your fingers learn the patterns before building up speed . Because once it’s up to tempo, there’s no time to think.
Today we’re taking on Minnie Riperton’s sweet lullaby and notoriously bad karaoke choice Lovin’ You.
I’ve kept the arrangement sparse to match the original and to focus on the melody. But it’s still a challenge to play due to the amount of movement up and down the neck. The trickiest bits being the jumps up to the 12th fret. I found bar 19 particularly challenging.
Of course, Minnie Riperton’s famed vocal range far outstrips the range of the ukulele. So the ultra-high “ah-ah-ah…” section is shifted down an octave.
Here’s my take on the most 90s song there is: STP’s Plush.
Intro: Starting off with a simple chord riff with chromatically descending notes on the C and A-strings.
Verse: Nothing too tricky in the verse. The transition between bars 7 and 8 was the bit I needed to practice most. Once you get to the, “And I feeeeeeel it,” section, you can just blast it out.
Pre-Chorus: More of challenge. It’s all barre chords until the last few notes. And so is the chorus, so you’ll need some finger stamina to get through it. There are also some big stretches in bars 19 and 21.
Chorus: The trickiest part. There’s some quick moving around the neck. I’ve included a fingering suggestion in bar 23 to make the transition easier.
This arrangement of Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good. The chords are simple but effective. The move from Gm to Cm6 (a Cm chord with an open A-string) to D has such a melancholic and resigned feel to it.
Nothing goes above the fourth fret (and even that is only in the solo), so there’s not much movement to deal with.
The only challenging technique is the use of grace notes. A grace note is a quick note you play just before the main note. For example, in bar 8 you play the open A-string then immediately hammer-on at the first fret. This gives the melody more of human touch.
When grace notes happen inside a chord, they’re written before the chord in the tab, but you play them as part of the chord itself. For example, in bar 2 you play 021X, then immediately hammer-on the third fret of the E-string.
I hadn’t thought about Eagle-Eye Cherry’s Save Tonight since the Cretaceous period until it was requested on Patreon. But the chorus is still buried in the back of my brain.
Intro: Just strumming out the chords with a few hammer-ons. Don’t feel you have to slavishly follow the tab here. So long as you keep the feel of the original
Verse: A few challenges here. There’s a lot of movement up to the fifth fret and back, some quick chord changes and some pull-offs to deal with.
Chorus: The chorus is much easier to get in a groove with. Be sure to keep the strums on the second and fourth beats of each bar percussive. I’m almost moving into the range of them being chnks.
Solo: I kept the solo short and strummy. If you want to stretch out, you can double the number of bars (to make it the same length as the original) and introduce your own ideas.
Nirvana’s In Bloom is a nice, easy one. It’s almost all strumming. There’s just a bit of fingerpicking in the first half of the verses. The rest is just blasting out chords with a few extra notes here and there.
The only challenging part is the second half of bar 2 (repeated in bar 30). There’s a quick walk-up on the g-string that’s played with all down strums. If you’re finding that too hard, you can switch to just strumming out the Bb chord.
Here’s one to learn while sweating your bollocks (or lady bollocks) off: Bananarama’s Cruel Summer.
The intro is by far the hardest part of this one. It gets fiddly at the top of the fretboard. Apart from that, it’s pretty straightforward. There’s only three chords in the whole song (Em, D and C). And those are all in the open position until the break section where I use different inversions and things get sweaty on the strumming front.
Intro: The song kicks off with a couple of jazz licks that are completely unrelated to the rest of the song. But do sound cool. It’s fine to drop those if you’re not into it. Or adjust it to your taste.
That leads into the intro proper. I’ve changed this up a bit from the original. And I’ve shortened it since the original is 30 seconds in before the verse starts.
Verse: The verse is nice and straightforward. It’s all contained in the first few frets and uses familiar chord shapes. Be aware that the open g-string at the start åof bar 19 is a melody note, so make sure it stands out.
Pre-Chorus: Switching to strums for the build up to the chorus. I didn’t find a nice way to play the melody and the descending notes at the same time. So I sacrificed the melody and just hinted at it with the hammer-ons on the E-string.
Chorus: Almost identical to the melody in the verse. But it’s beefed up with a bunch of strumming.
Solo: The trickiest part of the song. There are some quick runs that use campanella picking and a bit of quick movement up the neck. There’s room for changing things here. But I wouldn’t move away from the original too much as it has a strong melodic sense to it.
Here’s my take on Cheers theme in tribute to George Wendt. I thought I’d done this one years ago (with it being one of the best theme tunes of all time) but it seems not.
The tune starts out simple enough. Next, things get jazzy in bars 7-9. Then it’s right to the top of the neck for the chorus. Things get decidedly fiddly up there. I did try out shifting the whole section down an octave. It works but it didn’t have the same joyful hit it has in the original.
Intro: Starting off with the cool, staccato riff. First an octave up. Then in first position (where it’s played when it crops up later in the song).
Verse: I like to be a little late to some notes in the verse. Particularly the Gm chord at the start of bar 9. This matches the lyrics about hesitation and stalling.
Chorus: The chorus shifts up the fretboard and is much more strident. I’ve thrown in a couple of licks in bars 17 and 21 that you can change to your own tastes.
Solo: And feel free to come up with your own version of the solo, too. In this solo, I’m using the G natural minor scale. Plus some chromatic notes in bar 28 to lead into the C minor chord.