Ukulele Hunt

Tag: Movie Themes

  • Monty Python – Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Tabs)

    Monty Python – Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Tab)Download

    Diving into 2025 with some wildly unjustifiable optimism in the shape of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

    Intro: Lots of jumping around the neck in the section. But it’s slow and loose, so it’s not too challenging.

    Chorus: The tempo ramps up here and we switch to swing time. This bit is my favourite part to play. It has a nice flow to it on ukulele. Lots of use of the g-string in the melody.

    Verse: Similar to the intro, but the increased tempo makes it much harder to play. I’ve simplified much of it to make it easier. Particularly bar 19 where I’ve dropped the chords entirely. If you fancy a challenge, you could play this like bar 3.

    Outro: There’s a key change here, so you’re playing the chorus in D. It is more difficult to play in this key. So you could play the chorus again in C and no one would notice or care.

    I’ve tacked on an “have a banana” outro at the end as a nod to the song’s musical hall style.

    Links

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  • Billie Eilish – What Was I Made For? (Tabs)

    Billie Eilish – What Was I Made For? (Tab)Download

    Here’s my take on Billie Eilish’s contribution to the Barbie soundtrack: What Was I Made For?

    Intro: I went with a few spicy chords for the intro to emphasise the melancholy mood of the song. If you prefer, you can just pick through the standard C – Em – F chord pattern.

    Verse: I’ve kept the arrangement for this simple and sparse. It’s a great melody, so doing that gives it plenty of room to breathe.

    Chorus: Things get a bit more involved in the chorus with pull-offs, slides and a few trips up the neck to deal with.

    Break: This section is only loosely based on the original. So there’s plenty of room to play about here.

    Outro: The song is in C but it ends on a G chord (i.e. the V chord). That leaves the song hanging on a tense, uncertain note.

    Links

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  • Joe Hisaishi – Summer (from Kikujiro) (Tabs)

    Joe Hisaishi – Summer (from Kikujiro) (Tab)Download

    Joe Hisaishi is a prolific film composer (I only realised while researching this post that he scored a movie I watched while working on this piece). But he’s best known for his scores for the Studio Ghibli films and for Takeshi Kitano. Summer comes from one of Kitano’s gentler movies: Kikujiro.

    This arrangement starts with some palm muted arpeggios before moving into the main melody. In this section, I’ve used the open g-string as a melody note in a number of places. You can replace any of these with E-string, 3rd fret if you prefer.

    The arrangement goes full campanella mode in bar 18. Playing one note on each string means you don’t have to move your left hand at all for this quick section. Once you’ve got the picking pattern under your fingers it’s very easy.

    Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the rising bass line here to fit with the higher pattern. So I’ve divided them up. So you play the pattern in G, then the lower bass part in bars 20-21, the high pattern in C in bars 22-23 and the bass pattern in C in bars 24-25.

    After a reprise of the A section, the outro closes out with some notes up the neck. Which I manage to flub in bar 39. So play what’s written rather than my screw-up. I manage it second time around in bar 41 if you want to hear how it’s supposed to sound.

    Links

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  • In Heaven (from Eraserhead) (Tabs)

    Peter Ivers & David Lynch – In Heaven (Tab)Download

    If you’re ever in the mood for a strange but hilarious movie, I highly recommend Eraserhead. One of the film’s many joys is the Lady in the Radiator song. The song has had a life outside the movie as In Heaven becoming a Pixies live favourite and a jazz odyssey by Julian Lage.

    I’ve arranged the tune in D minor for ease of playing. And with it being so slow and sparse, it’s a pretty simple one to play. The only oddity is Ab chord in bar 8. Ab isn’t a chord you expect to find in a song in D minor. So it adds a dissonant and unsettling edge to the song (to match the rest of the movie). I bend the notes on the E-string, 4th fret in that bar to accentuate the dissonant sound.

    Links

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  • Star Wars – Rey’s Theme (Tab)

    John Williams – Rey’s Theme (Tab)Download

    John Williams proved he’s still got it with this theme. His best since Harry Potter, in my estimation. Give Sideways’ video a watch for an overview of why.

    The theme has three sections. I play the first theme in two different ways. A single-note version in the intro (picked with thumb and two fingers) and a beefed-up version starting in bar 11 (picked one finger per string). This is my favourite section to play. Like the Imperial March, the rhythm alone is powerful and immediately Star Wars-y. And varying the dynamics is very effective.

    The second part starts in bar 7 is slower and more stately. It’s also the easiest section to play.

    The third part (starting in bar 15) is the most melodic. In the original version, the first theme pops up in the background orchestration. I’ve included this in bar 18. It’s a little tricky to play. If you want to skip it, you can just pluck a few notes from the C5 chord in that bar.

    Links

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  • Gary Jules – Mad World (Tab)

    Gary Jules – Mad World (Tab)Download

    This month’s most popular request on Patreon was Joern’s suggestion of Gary Jules’ cover of Mad World by Tears for Fears. Which is understandable in the current situation. But, boy, is it gloomy. I like some dour music but this one is a little too bleak for me.

    On the upside, the melody is very easy to play. Other than the little trill at the end of the verse, every note is part of the chord it’s played over. So your fretting hand just has to play the chords. In the verses and the first part of the chorus I’m picking with the thumb on C, index on E and middle on A.

    The tricky part is the riff in the intro and at the end of the chorus. Those parts use one finger per string picking and took me a bit of practice to get reliably down. And be sure to play the “maaaaad world” notes with a little extra force to make them stand out.

    Links

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  • Monty Python – Brave Sir Robin (Tabs and Chords)

    Neil Innes – Brave Sir Robin (Chords)

    This post is a little tribute to two sad deaths over the New Year period: official Python Terry Jones and honorary Python Neil Innes.

    As well as writing a wealth of music for the Pythons, Neil Innes worked on the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, invented the mock-rockumentary with The Rutles, had massive hits with I’m the Urban Spaceman and How Sweet to be an Idiot, and was a keen uker.

    Many of his parodies were understated (Let’s be Natural could have passed for a Beatles outtake). But “understated” is not a word I’d use for Brave Sir Robin which Innes performed in The Holy Grail and wrote with Eric Idle.

    I’m using the chords from the source himself and tidying them up a bit and adding the intro from the Spamalot version. I’d suggest playing the B7 the no hassle way (i.e. 4320) which makes a much easier transition from and to Em.

    Suggested Strumming Pattern

    Really simple strumming. You can play just one strum per chord. Although you want might to do two when a chord lasts a whole bar.

    Twiddly Bits

    Brave Sir Robin Accompaniment Tab

    The accompaniment for the song fits very nicely onto uke. My version (at the top of the video) starts with the intro to the Spamalot version, it then moves into very sparse accompaniment before sticking very closely to the melody.

    Brave Sir Robin Melody Tab

    Here’s a tab of the melody. Which did need a bit of adjustment for ukulele. I’d recommend using alternate picking or using a pick as the notes are speedy.

    Links

    Buy the Spamalot version
    NeilInnes.media
    More UK tabs and chords