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.
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).
The chords here are dead simple. It’s just G-D-Em-C all the way through (i.e. the I-V-vi-IV progression or the I’m Yours progression as ukers know it). So you have plenty of space to make that beautiful melody sing.
There’s a lot of scope for playing the supporting notes to suit your taste. So long as you hold the chord down and keep them quieter than the melody notes. I’m using one finger per string picking throughout.
And one more thing. Thanks to Tim Apple, this tab is going to be forced onto every device with the next iOS update.
As befits its slacker nature, many elements of this song are very straightforward. The melody of the verse is just groups of two notes a semitone apart and are taken directly from the riff. And when they key changes for the solo, there’s no smooth transition it’s just straight from one key to the other and back again. But there’s no denying the riff and the solo are immediately catchy.
As it’s a slacker anthem, I’m taking a loose approach to this one. In the intro, I’m fingerpicking the riff (one finger per string style). Then switching to strums with a few picked notes for the rest of the song. The solo is by far the most challenging part. I’ve adapted it a great deal from the original, so feel free to adapt it further to suit your own playing.
This is one of my favourite songs of last year and no amount of boomer wailing is going to convince me otherwise. I’m also a big fan of her policy of wearing her jammies for every media appearance for the last year.
The song starts out very simple with an F-Bbmaj7 chord progression in the verses. The picking pattern is very ramshackle. I’m just using whatever falls nicely. With the melody mostly played with alternate picking. The rhythm of the melody does get a little complex. So I recommend listening to the original recording and following that rather than trying to read the rhythms.
Once the middle hits, things speed up but get much more simple rhythmically. I start introducing more strums here with just the melody notes picked.
I went into this one expecting it to be tricky. But it all fell quite nicely once I transposed it into C. The riff works very well and is an absolute classic (even if I can’t shake the feeling it’s a bit 90s daytime TV theme).
For my version, I worked from the ’79 version which I didn’t realise until after is subtly different from the 80s video version. The biggest difference is in the bridge section. The video version has harmonised vocals and ascends on the “more”s at the end. While the single version is a single vocal line and descends at the end.
The chord move F-Em-Dm at the end of the riff is very quick. You can make it easier by keeping your middle finger free on the F chord. Leaving open to play the Em. n:
I’m still to entirely sure this one works but it is fun to play. There’s very little melody in the song. So this arrangement is heavily chord-based. But you can style it out, especially if the listener knows the song and is singing along in their head.
The verses and choruses are talk-sung. So there I play the chords in the rhythm of the vocals. The bridge has just two notes: F (A-string, 8th fret) and E (A-string, 7th fret). They’re both in the chords they’re sung over, so there’s little to do here either. The outro has a long descending melody. All but one are the root notes of the chords they’re sung over. So the only addition to the chords is an A note (g-string, 2nd fret) over the B minor chord.
The only tricky bit is the solo. But if you hurl yourself into it and make sure the bends are out of tune it’ll work out fine.
A little tribute I put together for Mary Wilson of The Supremes who died recently.
Where Did Our Love Go, written by the legendary Holland-Dozier-Holland, was originally intended for Mary Wilson. But Berry Gordy decreed Diana Ross the leader. Which is a bit of a shame as this song would have suited her deeper, richer voice more than Ross’s higher, poppier sound.
The arrangement starts out with a Motown stomp before two rounds of the main melody. Next up, I throw the backing vocals into the arrangement.
The only tricky bit of the arrangement comes in the solo. I’ve already adapted it pretty heavily from the original, so feel free to adjust it to suit your playing.
A song from one of my favourite singer-songwriters (and occasional uker). With a hat-tip to Vetiver’s cover.
The song is a lot of fun to play. The arrangement is mostly bashing out the chords with a few hammer-ons and single notes thrown in. There are only two sections in the song and they’re virtually identical.
I must admit, I’d never heard of Agnes Obel until it was requested on Patreon. I looked it up expecting to find a niche artist and found the video had 35 million views. No doubt helped by the long list of TV shows it’s appeared in.
After the opening twiddle, the arrangement starts out with campanella playing. Let these notes ring into each other to build up the sound.
The trickiest bit comes in bar 15 with three open A-string notes played in quick succession. If you’re struggling with that, you can substitute the middle note with the g-string, 2nd fret. Or miss it out entirely.
The only other bits that might throw you are the slight finger-twister in bar 38 and the switch to 3/8 time for bar 42.