The little instrumental break in the original song sounds great on the uke. So I decided to use that as the intro. It is also the most difficult part of the arrangement to play, though. After that, the verse and pre-chorus are straightforward. The chorus does have a couple of trips up the neck to contend with.
Tag: Moderate
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Bruce Springsteen – I’m On Fire (Tabs)
Springsteen’s steamy I’m On Fire has to be the only seduction song that goes into detail about how wet the protagonist’s bed is.
The intro is my favourite part to play. It’s just and F chord and Dm7 both with the g-string open. But it’s very effective. I add a bit of palm muting here (i.e. resting the side of my picking hand very gently on the strings near the bridge).
The intro is picked thumb and two finger style. After that I go rogue. Throwing in alternate picking and a few strums where it suits.
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Warren Zevon – Keep Me in Your Heart (Tabs)
Warren Zevon’s Keep Me in Your Heart is one of the emotional songs I know of. It was the final track on his final album The Wind released shortly before his death. It was used recently by Jimmy Carr to pay tribute to Sean Lock.
It’s a straight-forward one to play. Nothing too tricky and one finger per string picking all the way through.
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Travis – Why Does It Always Rain on Me? (Tabs)
It’s always fascinating to see how bands deal with the death of musical fads and Travis are a prime example of it. Their debut album Good Feeling was full of Oasis-y rockers about good times and picking up girls. Which would have flown off the shelves if it had been released in the Britpop era rather than in 1997, the year Radiohead killed off the genre with OK Computer. After the lukewarm success of the album, they shamelessly reworked themselves into a Radiofriendlyhead sounding band on The Man Who (even slagging off Wonderwall on the first verse of the album) and had a breakthrough Why Does It Always Rain On Me?. Setting the scene for Coldplay who released their debut a year later.
The chords for this one are very easy. The only challenge is some rapid picking (which you’ll need to do some alternate picking) and pull-offs.
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Louis Armstrong/Sam Cooke – What a Wonderful World/Wonderful World (Tab)
A pairing of two almost identically titled songs: Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World and Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World. One because of a Patreon request and the other in tribute to Maple the guitar dog.
The arrangement starts with the beautiful melody of What a Wonderful World. Nothing too difficult here. Be sure to make the melody notes stand out against the backing note. And prepare for bar 13 by barreing across the strings for the notes on the E-string, 1st fret in bar 12.
Things speed up for Wonderful World but the chords get simpler. I must have heard this song hundreds of times, but I didn’t have any recollection of the bridge section. It’s certainly more forgettable than the earworm of the verse and chorus.
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Beyonce – Halo (Tabs)
My favourite part of Halo to play is the intro. It fits so nicely on the uke I decided to use it as the outro too. Things stay fairly straightforward to play in the verse. All that is played with one finger per string picking.
But in the bridge and chorus Beyonce stretches her vocal range which means a trip up the neck. The arrangement goes as high as the 14th fret where it’s tough to play cleanly. You’ll also need to pick more forcefully so to keep the volume of the note at the same level as notes lower on the neck.
The picking in the rest of the song is more haphazard. For the quick notes, I’m using alternate picking to keep up.
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Mouse Rat – 5,000 Candles in the Wind (Parks and Rec)(Tabs)
I hope you brought a change of clothes because your eyes are about to piss tears thanks to Andy Dwyer’s heartbreaking tribute to Li’l Sebastian.
The trickiest part of playing this is fighting through the tears. There are also some quick bits of picking and a rogue bar of 2/4 on “horsiest friend” near the end.
If you want to play along with the original, put a capo on the second fret.
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Joan Osborne – One of Us (Tabs)
Back when I spent entire days watching MTV, this song and More Than Words made up a good 30% of the airtime. I got heartily sick of it at the time. But I’ve mellowed on it.
The tune is very simple. Four chords and the melody doesn’t go higher than the third fret. The only slightly unusual part is on the “Yeah, yeah”s in bars 13, 15 and 17. If you want to make that super-simple, you can replace 5500 with 2000 and 543x with 003x and it won’t sound much different.
The original starts with an instrumental version of the chorus. But, since we’re playing that later, I came up with an intro based on the chords. Feel free to ditch it and come up with your own.
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Taskmaster Theme (Tab)
A short and sweet one I worked out while watching the New Zealand version of Taskmaster.
The theme is mostly just chords with a few notes picked out. The tricky bit comes right at the end (bars 8-9) that goes way up the fretboard. You can safely chop it short and end the run at the first 12th fret.
After that, I’ve added in the little theme that plays at the start of the tasks.
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Iris Dement – Our Town (Tabs)
Amazingly, Our Town was the first song that Iris Dement wrote and she came up with the lyrics from beginning to end with no editing. Another fact I learned researching this song: The Goo Goo Doll’s Iris was named after her.
This arrangement is based on the original. But the first time I ever heard this song was Kate Rusby’s cover. So some of that version will have slipped in.
The backbone of the song is baby’s first chord progression: C – F – C – G7. That runs all the way through the song. The melody is also straightforward. It’s all contained in the first few frets. Plus, I’m playing it loosely and throwing in strums wherever it feels right. So there’s nothing too challenging here.
But if you want to stretch out, there’s plenty of room to do solo in the solos. The solos in my arrangement are of my own invention. So you’re welcome to ditch them and come up with your own. If you keep track of the chord changes and use the C major scale, you can’t go wrong.
I would recommend approaching each solo with an idea or a plan to explore. So I based the intro solo on the melody and kept it within the first four frets. For the second solo (bars 21-24) I start off with a country bend, then focus on holding the chord shapes and adding notes onto those. And the final solo (bars 49-52) I wanted to use campanella style playing (so the notes are spread across the strings).
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