Tag: South Korea

  • KPop Demon Hunters – Golden (Tabs)

    For a parody song from a movie, they really went all out with Golden from KPop Demon Hunters.

    Intro: The technical wizardry starts right away. The song starts in 3/4 time and shifts both time signature and tempo seamlessly into 12/8. This is done by having one eighth note in 3/4 be the same duration as two eighth notes in 12/8. This is a technique known as metric modulation. I recommend watching David Bruce’s video on the topic if you want to understand it. And I recommend listening to this section of Stray Kids’ Side Effects to hear some time signature fuckery you don’t get much in pop.

    Verse: From here on, the song is in 12/8. This time signature crops up fairly often in K-Pop such as GFRIEND’s Apple and Fifty Fifty’s Lovin’ Me. In 12/8 the beats are arranged into four groups of three (so you can count each bar 1-2-3-4 with each beat being divided into triplets). But they sometimes go against this grouping. So, for example, in bar 15 (“Now that’s how I’m getting paid”) it’s divided into six evenly spaced notes.

    Pre-Chorus: This is where the vocals start to make big leaps and we head up the neck. But this section is slow and minimal. So it’s straightforward to play.

    Chorus: This is where things get very tricky. In the first half of the chorus, there are lots of rapid repeated notes. And in the second half, we’re leaping up and down the neck. With the melody stretching from the open E-string up to the 12th fret on the A-string.

    Outro: Similar to the chorus, we have a first half with rapid notes and a second half with big shifts. For the rapid notes, I’m doing a modified triplet strum. So I’m strumming down with my index and middle fingers together. Then plucking the A-string with my index finger, followed by a pluck with my middle finger.

    Links

    BlackPink’s Kill This Love (Tab)
    Uke Hunt Patreon

  • BLACKPINK – Kill This Love (Tab)

    I love Blackpink’s willingness to hurl every idea and genre into one song. Kill This Love starts with blaring brass, goes through rapping, diva crooning and girl-power yelling before switching from swing-time to march-time for a militaristic outro.

    Keeping up with all that on a ukulele takes a variety of techniques. In the intro I strum the big blasts at the start of bars 1 and 3 and pick everything else. The verses are fingerpicked and played very staccato (i.e. keeping the notes short). I miss out the, “Here I come kicking the door,” section and move straight into the pre-chorus. This continues the staccato playing in the first half before being played more smoothly from bar 21.

    Heading into the chorus, I use a triplet strum (strumming down with my middle and index fingers, down with my thumb then up with middle and index). Then I blast out the chorus with as much strum power as I can manage while strum blocking any notes I don’t want to sound.

    The outro starts with some thumb and two finger picking with the thumb on the C-string having duel duties picking the melody and providing a steady beat.I make a bit of a hash of the final part of the outro. So follow the tab rather than the video here. But blast it out as loud as you can.

    Links
    Buy it on Amazon
    More kpop tabs
    Uke Hunt Patreon