Intro: The verse of Boulevard uses the same chords as the verse of Wonderwall so I went extra Wonderwally for the intro.
Verses: Nothing too tricky here. Just fingerpicking around first position chords.
Chorus: Switching to strums and moving up and down the neck much more.
Solo: This is where it gets challenging. It’s a series of chord stabs with octaves between them. The upside is that it’s very repetitive, so there’s not a lot of it to tackle.
Outro: A completely new chord sequence here using chromatic moves. It’s just bashed out with strums.
Starting off 2024 with a track from Arctic Monkeys’ last good album: Do I Wanna Know?
Intro: The funnest part of the song. The original is just single notes. But I’ve beefed it up for the uke with doubled notes and chords wherever I get the chance.
Verse: The melody is very rambling and conversational even before he does his club singer act on it. I thought I knew this song well, but it took a lot of work to get the timing somewhere near right. The biggest challenge of the song.
Pre-Chorus: The only thing to worry about here is a quick jump down the fretboard in bar 27. If you prefer, you can play the A-string, 2nd fret to the E-string, 7th fret. All you’re losing here is the open E-string ringing.
Chorus: Other than the “Crawling back to you,” part, it’s exactly the same as the intro.
Just enough time before the big day to work up a version of Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas. Later recorded by the whole of Emerson, Lake and Palmer as well as U2, Mark Kozelek and many others. But it’s the original I worked from for this arrangement.
Intro: The trickiest part of the song. There are a few switches in the picking pattern which can get you in a jumble. The best way to get these down is to practice them very slowly (slow enough you don’t make any mistakes). So when you speed up, you can just play them on auto-pilot.
There’s also a bar of 2/4 (bar 8) followed by a big jump up the fretboard. Give yourself a little extra time by not holding the 23 notes and moving up during the open g-string.
Verse and Chorus: Much simpler. All done with basic chord shapes and a melody that fits in the first three frets.
Solo: The solo is adapted from Prokofiev’s Troika. It’s a nice, little Christmas ditty that fits well on the uke. Worth learning this section even if you’re not bothered about the rest of the song.
U2’s song against violence and occupation, Sunday Bloody Sunday, is depressingly relevant again. So time for a tab.
Intro: The perfect example of how simple but effective The Edge’s riffs can be. It’s the easiest bit of the song and worth learning even if you’re not tackling the rest of the song.
Verse: The song has an odd structure at the beginning. There’s just half a verse before it dives into the bridge. This short verse is just fingerpicking. Whereas later verses are fuller with more strums.
Bridge: The first bridge starts out fingerpicked before switching to strums at the end of bar 12. Second time around, the whole bridge uses strums.
Chorus: The first chorus features a Bb chord, which you wouldn’t expect in the key of E minor. That short section (bars 30-33) provides a brief respite before the militaristic muted strums come back in.
Solo: A typically jingle-jangle Edge solo. The first half of the solo in this arrangement is faithful to the original. But the second half is faithful to the spirit rather than the exact notes. So long as you keep all the strings rattling, there’s plenty of scope for your own ideas here.
Here’s my take on Send in the Clowns in a belated tribute to Stephen Sondheim. The most well known versions are the song are by Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra and, of course, Krusty the Clown. Although my favourite is by, occasional ukers, The Tiger Lillies.
Intro: I couldn’t resist referencing Entry of the Gladiators for this intro. Feel free to replace it with something more sensible.
Verses: The verses switch between 12/8 and 9/8. But it all flows nicely, so it’s not tricky to keep track of.
There is a brief pause in bar 5 where the tune hangs in mid-air (indicated by the frown with a dimple over the tab). That pause gives you a chance for that slide up to the seventh fret. When this bar happens a second time (bar 11) without a pause, it’s played on the A-string, 2nd fret so you don’t need to jump down to the C-string, 2nd fret.
Chorus: My favourite part of this song is the long descending line in bars 18 and 19. With the run starting at the E-string, 3rd fret and going almost chromatically to the open C.
This arrangement is very simple and the tempo is slow, so this is a very approachable tab to take on.
Intro: I hadn’t realised until starting on this arrangement that the No Diggity riff isn’t a straight sample of the original. In his version, Bill Withers has an Esus4 chord missing from that version. I went with the No Diggity version for this arrangement (and so did Gregory Porter’s guitarist).
Verse: A couple fingerings to help with the chord changes here. At the end of bar 5, play the A-string, 2nd fret with your index finger barred over all the strings. That’ll set you up for the B7 chord in the next bar.
In bars 10 and 11 (and in the repeats), play the A-string, 2nd fret with your middle finger so you have your index and ring fingers ready for the A7 chord.
Outro: A little minor pentatonic lick to finish things off.
Intro: Matching the Willie version by following the bass notes using the thumb on the g- and C-strings. Followed by strums.
Verse and Bridge: Continuing the thumb-plucking and strums, and adding the melody line. Most of the melody line is picked with the fingers, but some notes are part of the strummed chords.
There’s a simple lick in bar 11 and a couple of lines inspired by the walking bass in bars 12 and 20.
Solo: With Willie playing a nylon string guitar, his solo suits the ukulele fairly well.
The one problem is the bends. It is much easier to do bends on a uke in the middle of the fretboard. So I’m bending the E-string at the 7th fret rather than the A-string at the second fret. That does require some shifts up and down the fretboard.
Although the song is in swing time, the descending line at the end of the solo (bars 43-44) is played straight.
This is a very propulsive song even in the very sparse sections. So in the verses, where it’s just the melody line, I’m using strum blocking to keep the energy up. The verse melody is busy. But it’s fine to miss a couple of notes so long as you keep the song moving along.
Verse: Like a lot of Joni’s songs, there are a lot of words crammed in. So you’ll need some quick alternate picking to fit them in. I have cropped out a few notes here and there to make it more playable.
Chorus: A rare case of a song getting softer at the start of a chorus. Tone it down for the first half of the chorus, then start blasting for the second.
In the second chorus at the end of the song, there’s a brief pause added on “gone” to look out for.
Outro: I love the goofy ending. She knocks it up an octave for “they paved paradise,” then drops below the original melody for the rest (sadly, not room for that on the uke).