Time for a song of great social and political import. And, more importantly, an easy to play song. I’ve kept the simplicity of the accapella original. Just adding a few chords in for support.
I’m using fingerpicking in my version. But it’s arranged so you can play the whole thing with your thumb if you prefer.
One of 2017 most unexpected hits. Portugal. The Man have been knocking around for years without bothering the charts. But last year’s instantly catchy Feel It Still changed that. And made me tackle arranging it despite it being not immediately uke-suitable. So this one is a bit tricky to play and uses a range of techniques.
The arrangement starts with the bass riff which sets up the C – Eb – F chord progression that is used through most of the song. (The original is in the key of C# so you play in the original key by putting a capo on the first fret.) In this section I’m muting the strings slightly by lightly resting the palm of my picking hands on the strings. The muffled sound makes the melody stand out more once it comes in.
In the spirit of, “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus,” the verses are ultra short. It’s all played with fingerpicking with thumb, index and middle fingers.
You can blast out the choruses by bringing in the strums. The tricky part is fitting the strums around the rapid fingerpicking required. I’m using a lot of alternate picking to fit them in. I’m also flicking my index finger up when picking some notes to create a fuller sound.
Since it’s Christmas, I’m breaking my no Beatles rule to do this one I’ve had a fair few requests for over the years.
I’ve kept the arrangement as simple as possible. After the fingerpicking in the first bar it’s all strumming and lots of familiar chord shapes. And the melody is recognisable you don’t have to worry about emphasising it all that much. I’m using a capo at the first fret which puts it in the same key as the original. But you can just play it open if you prefer.
The only thing that might trip you up are the extra beats that he throws in. There’s one extra beat in the middle of the verse and two extra at the end.
In case you’re not familiar with the Italian repeats in the tab. You play through as normal up to the “D.S. al coda” in bar 29. Then you go back to the squiggle in bar 13. Play through to the “Da Coda” in bar 23. Then skip ahead to the target symbol in bar 30.
Rumours of a new Arctic Monkeys album this year don’t seem to have come to fruition. So I’m doing one of their old songs in an attempt to The Secret a new album into existence.
The chord that really makes this progression is the F# (the major III chord in theory terms). In the key of D you’d expect to hear and F#m (which also crops up the progression). The Bb note in the F# chord doesn’t fit in the D major key so in creates loads of tension until it becomes more settled in the G chord. It’s a classic chord trick. You can hear the same move (I – III – IV) in the chorus of Tennesee Waltz.
Intro, Verses, Break and Solo: The intro starts with all down strums (eight per chord). Then I switch to this pattern (which you can hear in the video below):
The xs indicated strums muted with the fretting hand. If you want a simpler strum that doesn’t use muting here’s one that takes the rhythm from the intro solo:
Which sounds like this:
Chorus: The chorus is much more straightforward. It’s all down-strums. One each on all the Gs and As. Two on the D. And three on the Bm. The exception is the last chorus where it’s just one down-strum per chord (and don’t forget the lenthened Bm chord).
Middle: Eight fast down-strums per chord. Until the final F#-G-A move where you do two slower down-strums per chord.
Two little twiddles from the song. Both use the D major pentatonic include C# from the standard major scale.
There is a lot going on in this song. Slate claims it has 18 key changes in it. But you have to be very generous to get that high. For the most part I think of the song being in C but using both C major and C minor. That’s not too unusual in a rock song. But it is unusual just how much they do it and how far they stretch things before returning home.
The one real key change comes in the solo/middle section where the F#m and E set up a repeat of the intro but this time in the key of A rather than C.
I’m throwing a whole bunch of different techniques at this song. In the smooth sections (the intro and middle) I’m using fake strums. In the loud bits (like the start of the chorus and the bridge) I’m strumming. In the bouncy sections (like the end of the intro and the, “Not to put too fine a point…” bit of the chorus) I’m using thumb and two finger picking. And at the end of the chorus, in the verses and the solo I’m using one finger per string picking.
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.
I may have to return to OK Computer for another tabbing or two. Every song on the record is incredible. But No Surprises stuck out as the one that’s prime for a ukeing.
In this arrangement I’ve tried to keep the fingerpicking riff going under the melody. Which works out pretty well for the most part. But you really do have to make sure you emphasise the melody notes or they can very easily get lost in the picking.
Towards the end I switch towards strumming. To make the melody easy to see I’ve tabbed up the backing strums as just being on the g, C and E strings. But it’s not a big deal if you hit all the strings.
There’s a new alt-J album out. And very good it is too. To celebrate here’s a tab of my favourite alt-J song Fitzpleasure.
There’s a lot going on in this song (as with most alt-J songs). At first I thought I’d have to use multiple ukes to do it. But the melody, chords and riffs are all so strong and elegant they ended up working pretty well on just one uke. The only major part I had to cut was in the, “steepled fingers…” section. The descending riff in bars 59 and 60 should carry though there but I had to switch to chords to carry it off.
I use a capo on the second fret for my version. But that’s only because it makes it in the original key so it was easy for working it out. You can play it without the capo without causing any problems.
Following on from Good Vibrations, another Pet Sound with bass from Lyle Ritz. Sloop John B is a traditional Bahamian song. The earliest version was recorded in Nassau in 1935 under the title Histe Up the John B Sails. There are many lyrical variations. My favourite being the the verse in Blind Blake’s version (the Bahamian one rather than the American blues guy) about having to go home because his pants burst.
This arrangement starts off with that shimmering guitar riff from the Beach Boy’s version. And I keep interlacing this riff with the melody throughout. Be sure to play this softer than the melody so the two don’t get confused.
The verse is all fingerpicked with the melody mostly on the E- and A-strings with some lower notes on the C-string to keep the rhythm going. To give the chorus a bump I play the melody with strums. That means you have to switch between strumming and picking. Which can be tricky. If you need a bit more time to switch you can miss out a note or two of the backing without losing anything important.
EatMyUke’s cover of all the songs on OK Computer inspired me to write up the chords for Paranoid Android. The versions of the chords around the net I’ve seen are very simplified. So I’ve gone in the other direction and made them as true to the original as I could manage. Which means there are lots of unfamiliar chord shapes all over the neck.
The song is split into three main sections so I’ve also split up the chords into three sections.
This section has the biggest leaps up and down the neck. So pay close attention to the fret numbers at the right of the chord diagrams.
If you have trouble playing Gm6 (like I did) you can play it as 0767 and that’ll work just fine. And you can also play E7 as 4445. The only downside of those changes is you don’t get the constant drone on the g- and A-strings.
The least uke friendly section. For the riff I’m using mostly power chords. That means each chord only has two notes so I’m blocking the E- and A-strings from ringing with the underside of my index finger.
It gets much easier when it switches to straight chords for C – G# – Bb. Except the time signature becomes and off-kilter 7/8. The strumming I use goes:
C: d – d – d u d
G#: u – u d u
Bb: d
The third section is mercifully straightforward on uke. It’s all standard chord shapes and you can use this strum all the way through:
d – d – d u d u
Then it’s a return to the riff section for the extended outro.