Ukulele Hunt

Tag: Rock

  • The Beatles – Across the Universe (Tab)

    The Beatles – Across the Universe (Tab)Download

    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.

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  • Arctic Monkeys – Mardy Bum (Chords and Tab)

    Arctic Monkeys – Mardy Bum (Chords)Download

    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.

    Mardy Strum

    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.

    Twiddly Bits

    Two little twiddles from the song. Both use the D major pentatonic include C# from the standard major scale.

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  • They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in Your Soul (Tab)

    They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in Your Soul (Tab)Download

    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.

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  • 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.

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  • Radiohead – No Surprises (Tab)

    Radiohead – No Surprises (Tab)Download

    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.

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  • alt-J – Fitzpleasure (Tab)

    alt-J – Fitzpleasure (Tab)Download

    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.

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    alt-J – Ripe and Ruin (Tab)