Ukulele Hunt

Tag: Nightmare

  • Rusted Root – Send Me on My Way (Tabs)

    Rusted Root – Send Me on My Way (Tab)Download

    Rusted Root’s Send Me on My Way was a bit of a flop when it was first released. But it’s jaunty nature and semi-comprehensible lyrics have given it success in soundtracks to Ice Age, Matilda and that millipede.

    There are a lot of rapid notes to get your fingers around in this one. Even at this slightly slowed tempo, it’s tricky to pull off.

    Intro: The classic riff. Making use of the high-g string to avoid moving up and down the neck.

    Verse: No avoiding moving up and down in this part. But it’s not too difficult until the end of bar 14 with the mabubadeesay mabubadeeum bit (lyric sheets claim he’s saying, “You know what they say about the young,” but there is no way). This includes my favourite trick: playing the same note on different strings (g and E) to allow for quicker picking.

    Chorus: Busting out the strums for the chorus. Nothing too difficult here.

    Bridge: The trickiest bit with the very quick “Send me on my way”s. I’ve cut down the number of notes in some of these to make them easier to play.

    Solo: The funnest bit. As long as you keep the strumming up, you can play around with this section as much as you like.

    Outro: Just strumming out the chords in the outro followed by a stripped down version of the riff.

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  • Blind Melon – No Rain (Tabs)

    Blind Melon – No Rain (Tab)Download

    Here’s my take Blind Melon’s massive 90s hit (at least partly thanks Bee Girl).

    The arrangement starts off with the iconic guitar riff. It’s a little challenging but sounds great on uke. I recommend learning this bit even if you don’t bother with the rest of the song.

    The verse is nice and easy before the chorus moves things back up a notch.

    But it’s the solo where things get lemon difficult. So I drop the chords all together for this arrangement. Which does leave things sounding a little sparse. But the solo does a great job of playing with tension so I think it just about works. The repeated pull-offs in bars 33 and 34 build up the tension which gets released with the slides down and up the neck in bar 35. That’s followed by a bluesy section with a rapid descending line finishing it off in bar 38.

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  • Dolly Parton – Jolene (Tabs)

    Dolly Parton – Jolene (Tab)Download

    Following on from I Will Always Love You with the song Dolly wrote on the same day. I don’t know how it’s possible to write two all-time classics in one day.

    The arrangement starts out with a very basic version of the chorus. You could play the verse in this style and create a nice arrangement.

    Next is an approximation of the intro riff from the original. The syncopated rhythm is tricky to get the hang of. Apparently, even the session musicians had trouble getting it down. I’ve made a close up video for just this section. If you want to play along to the original, you’ll have to tune down half a step to Gb B Eb Ab.

    The verse and chorus are based on an alternating thumb picking pattern (moving between the C and g-strings) like the original. Unfortunately, the melody sometimes strays onto the C-string which complicates matters. I found it a little tricky to switch in and out of the alternating pattern. But after starting super-low and gradually increasing the speed, it started to feel almost on autopilot after a while.

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  • Guns N’ Roses – Patience (Tabs)

    Guns N’ Roses – Patience (Tab)Download

    Guns N’ Roses – Patience (Tab)

    While not quite in the league of November Rain, Guns N’ Roses’ acoustic lighter-swayer Patience is still a bit of an epic. So for this arrangement I’ve trimmed down the intro and outro and skipped the repeat of the verse and chorus.

    The intro follows Axl’s whistling for the first four bars before playing the first solo section. Just a bit of bending to deal with here.

    The main solo section starts in bar 28 with some sliding around. My favourite part is the lick in bar 32-33. I wasn’t sure if this bit was going to work on uke, but it ends up fitting neatly.

    Things switch up in bar 39 for the outro with some loose strumming and a fun sliding solo section.

    I found the melody in the outro (from bar 47 on) tricky to arrange. Usually, you’d have a G note over the G chord somewhere. But the melody sticks with the F# (E-string second fret) and A notes from the D chord. That makes it hard to pull out the chord changes in this section clearly. But if you keep the chord changes clear in your head you should navigate it okay.

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    My tabs of Sweet Child O Mine and November Rain are both on the Uke Hunt Patreon for concert level backers and up.

  • Robert Schumann – Vanitas Vanitatum Mit Humor (Tabs)

    Robert Schumann – Vanitas Vanitatum Mit Humor (Tab)Download

    I’ve been getting into classical music much more over the pandemic. I’ve occasionally got the over-ambitious impulse to try something on the ukulele. And the first part of Robert Schumann’s Five Pieces in a Folk Style is the only to have made it through to this stage. 

    The piece is written for piano and cello. But this arrangement is almost entirely the cello part. The only time I dip into the piano part is bars 90 and 92.

    There are plenty of challenging sections in the piece, but the part that took the most practice was the C section (not it’s official name). There’s also a very rapid section in bars 49-56 but that doesn’t require any scooting up and down the fretboard. 

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  • Dua Lipa – Don’t Start Now (Tab)

    Dua Lipa – Don’t Start Now (Tab)Download

    About once a year a pop song manages to pierce my grumpiness and make me grin. This year it’s been Dua Lipa’s Don’t Start Now.

    There’s a lot to recommend the song: the jazzy chords, the funky bass, the cowbell. But my favourite aspect is the one-note chorus. Adam Neely recently made an outstanding video about the worst solo of all time that’s a must-watch on this subject.

    Contrary to what Ben Shapiro will tell you, not having a melody doesn’t mean it isn’t music. The static A note (in this arrangement) adds a different flavour to each chord. So it changes the Em into Emadd11, the C into C6 and G into Gsus2.

    It also means there’s more room to play about with other aspects of the song. So there’s a little chromatic run-up to the root note of the chord (inspired by the bass line). And, in the second chorus, I throw in some harmonics on the E-string 5th fret to imitate the cowbell. I don’t think I entirely pull it off but it is fun.

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  • Playing Two Songs at Once

    Playing a Round Alone

    I while back Guido Heistek posted a challenge to play a song in the round by yourself. A round is where the same melody is performed over itself with a different starting point. For example, in this three part round the first part starts then, two bars later, the second and, two bars later still, the third part.

    For my shot at it, I went with the very simple London’s Burning. Here’s the melody by itself:

    And here’s how it goes twice with an offset of two bars.

    Londons Burning Round (Tab)Download

    Playing Two Songs at Once

    After doing a round, I thought I’d take things one step further and have a go at playing two different melodies at once (a “simultaneous quodlibet” if you want to use the technical term). You quite often get different melodies played over each other in modern music (such as Tori Amos’s Father Lucifer). Sometimes it forms the entire basis of the song like The Beta Band’s The House Song.

    I went two songs with very simple melodies: When the Saints Go Marching In and She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain. With them both in the key of C, I’d play them individually like this:

    Separate Melodies TabDownload

    They actually fall quite nicely together on ukulele. Particularly if you take advantage of the re-entrant string and move some of the E-string, third frets in When the Saints to the open g-string.

    Next job is to adjust parts where the same string is played at different frets and where there are impossible stretches. For example, at the end of bar 2 Saints has the E-string played at the first fret while Mountain has it played at the tenth fret. Moving the Saints note to the C-string, fifth fret and the Mountain note to the A-string, fifth fret makes it playable.

    Just doing those things makes for a playable arrangement. Except for one note. At the end of bar 4 Saints has a note on the C-string, second fret while Saints has a note on the A-string, 8th fret. Too big a stretch for me to switch to that quickly. So I examined the lives of the rich and successful to see what they do when faced with a challenge. And I cheated. I switched the C-string, second fret to an open E-string. No-one on Instagram noticed so I think I got away with it.

    The two parts separately look like this:

    Adjusted Separate Melodies TabDownload

    And here they are together. With the Saints notes being plucked with the thumb and the index and middle finger handling Mountain.

    She’ll Be Marching ‘Round the SaintsDownload

  • The Beatles – Blackbird (Tab)

    The Beatles – Blackbird (Tab)Download

    With there already being plenty of Beatles ukulele material around, I tend to avoid adding to the pile. But I couldn’t resist having a go at adapting the gorgeous picking of Blackbird for ukulele. I love the rising and falling lines. Particularly the chromatic rise and fall on the E-string in bars 5-8 of the tab.

    It’s a challenging piece to play on the uke. There’s plenty of movement up and down the neck and some tricky picking. There are also loads of time signature changes in the song. But none of them are jarring. So if you know the song well they’re going to feel natural.

    My arrangement uses thumb and two finger picking almost all the way through. There are two main patterns:

    – The pattern in bar 1 alternating index and middle fingers (picking the E- and A-strings respectively) and the thumb picking the g-string.
    – The pattern in bar 2 where the thumb alternates between the g- and C-strings.

    There are 2 big exceptions. One is the picking is in bars 6 and 21. For those I’m alternating by thumb between the g- and E-strings. the other is bars 32-34 where I switch to strumming.

    Links

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  • Tallest Man on Earth – King of Spain (Tab)

    Tallest Man on Earth – King of Spain (Tab)Download

    I did a tab for the intro of King of Spain a few years ago. But I love that song and had to extend it out into a full instrumental version of the song. The song can be played with mostly strums and barrels along at a good pace so it’s perfect for a ukeing.

    Tuning

    I’m using open-F tuning to mimic the open-C version of the original. You get that by tuning the g-string down to F and the E string up to F.

    The main chords used are F (0000 and 0003), Dm (0200), Bb (0201) and Cadd11 (0403).

    Trickiest Bit

    In bar 5 there’s a chord played with 7th fret harmonics. If you’re having trouble hitting that cleanly try playing the harmonics at the 12th fret. There’s more room for error there and you get the same effect.

    Other than that I’d recommend barrelling along with it and not worrying to much about the occasional flub (as demonstrated in my version).

    Links

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  • Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk (Tab)

    Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk (Tab)Download

    Here’s one if you’re looking for a challenge. There are lots of jumps around the neck, syncopated rhythms, twists and turns, and tricky strum blocking to get to grips with.

    On part that isn’t too difficult is the strumming hand. Most of the song my right hand is just strumming sixteenth notes. The rhythm is created by muting and playing strings with the left hand.

    For example, in the intro you play a constant strum, hold down the chord stabs and mute the g-string (I use the thumb of my fretting hand), otherwise mute all the strings.

    Here’s a video of it done slowly then up to speed:

    The verse is done in a similar way. Strum constant sixteenth notes and mute the strings when nothing is played. The difference is you also have to mute all but one string. That can get tricky and it takes a lot of practice. I call this strum blocking and I did a tutorial on it here. It’s a great way to give a piece lots of attack and a strong rhythm.

    In this song I mostly mute the g-string with my thumb, C-string with my middle finger, E-string with my ring finger and the A-string with the underside of my index finger. But you’ll need to play around with it and see what works best for you.

    Here’s the first line of the first verse played slowly then up to speed:

    Note: in the tab I’ve noted the muted strums with just one x to keep the tab clean. But you do strum all the strings.

    Other note: In the video I mess up the ‘Saturday night…’ bit in the middle section. It should sound the same as it does in the bridge sections.

    Links

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