Ukulele Hunt

Tag: USA

  • Childish Gambino – Redbone (Tabs)

    Childish Gambino – Redbone (Tab)Download

    Helpfully, Genius has a video of Redbone producer Ludwig Göransson breaking down all the parts in the song. Including a chord chart and sheet music. As well as being useful for learning the song, it’s interesting to see how the song grew. Well worth a watch. 

    One of the things he mentions in the video is the oddity of an extra bar in the second pre-chorus. To avoid making the tab unnecessarily long, I’ve tabbed the alternative bars next to each other. So first time around you play just bar 22 then skip to the chorus. And second time, you skip bar 22 and play bars 23 and 24 instead. 

    The picking in this is one-finger-per-string right up until the solo where I switch to strumming. 

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  • Nerf Herder – Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme (Tabs)

    Nerf Herder – Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme (Tab)Download

    Shamefully, I’ve never seen an episode of Buffy. I couldn’t even have hummed the theme tune before it was requested on the Patreon. Even so, it’s such a 90s-fest it gave me nostalgia.

    And it’s dead simple. It’s mostly bashing out chords with a few single notes here and there.

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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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  • Dolly Parton – I Will Always Love You (Tabs)

    Dolly Parton – I Will Always Love You (Tab)Download

    I Will Always Love You is one of those songs where a cover version has completely obliterated the original. But Dolly’s version is still my favourite. Specifically, the 70s countrified version rather than the syrupy 80s version. So I used that one as the basis for this arrangement. Although some of the phrasing might be closer to the Whitney Houston version.

    The intro is the trickiest part of the arrangement with a couple of bends and a bar of 2/4 to navigate.

    The arrangement uses a lot of arpeggios. So you really need to emphasise the melody notes so it doesn’t just become a mush. But you can rely on most people being familiar with the melody, so they’ll do some of the work for you.

    You do need to prepare a bit for the high vocal trills in bars 15 and 19. There are open strings either side of those to give you a bit more time to move.

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  • Tenacious D – Fuck Her Gently (Tabs)

    Tenacious D – Fuck Her Gently (Tab)Download

    Here’s my take on Jack Black and Kyle Gass’s lewd ode to soft loving. But if you don’t tell anyone what the title is, it functions nicely as a pleasant tune. The jump up the neck at the start of the chorus (bars 19 and 20) is particularly sweet.

    And there are a few jumps up the neck to deal with. But the trickiest part is the rapid pull-on and hammer-on section in bar 26. If you struggling with that, you can replace the whole 10-12-10-8 with the A-string, 10th fret.

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  • In Heaven (from Eraserhead) (Tabs)

    Peter Ivers & David Lynch – In Heaven (Tab)Download

    If you’re ever in the mood for a strange but hilarious movie, I highly recommend Eraserhead. One of the film’s many joys is the Lady in the Radiator song. The song has had a life outside the movie as In Heaven becoming a Pixies live favourite and a jazz odyssey by Julian Lage.

    I’ve arranged the tune in D minor for ease of playing. And with it being so slow and sparse, it’s a pretty simple one to play. The only oddity is Ab chord in bar 8. Ab isn’t a chord you expect to find in a song in D minor. So it adds a dissonant and unsettling edge to the song (to match the rest of the movie). I bend the notes on the E-string, 4th fret in that bar to accentuate the dissonant sound.

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  • Frank and Nancy Sinatra – Something Stupid (Tabs)

    Frank and Nancy Sinatra – Something Stupid (Tab)Download

    Something Stupid was made famous by Frank and Nancy Sinatra and written by C Carson Parks (who I just learned is brother of Van Dyke Parks). More recently, Lola Marsh recorded a ukulele version for Better Call Saul.

    There’s plenty of scope for your own noodles if you want to take them. I stuck close to the original in the intro but you can let loose as much as you like here. After that, I’ve thrown in a lot of my own twiddles. Keeping them nice and cheesy to match the rest of the song. I using the C major scale and throw in a few chromatic notes.

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  • Roy Orbison – Crying (Tabs)

    Roy Orbison – Crying (Tab)Download

    Here’s a version of Roy Orbison’s Crying. Which Rolling Stone declared the 69th greatest song of all time. Nice.

    Roy Orbison’s unmistakeable falsetto is in full effect in this song. So the big challenge here is jumping up and now the neck accurately.

    In the second chorus, the melody goes all the way up to the 15th fret. If you can’t access that fret on your uke, you can just play it the same as the first chorus. Or, if you really want to go for it, you could use artificial harmonics.

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  • Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day (Tabs)

    Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day (Tab)Download

    Here’s my take on, part-time uker and full time Belieber, Sufjan Stevens’s heartbreaking Casimir Pulaski Day. I also love Mikaela Davis’s harp cover, so a bit of that has snuck into the arrangement too.

    The song gets much of its power from being blunt and straightforward. So I’ve kept the arrangement stark and tried to play it directly without too much emotion.

    The picking is mostly thumb on the g- and C-strings and the index and middle on E and A respectively. The big exception is the rapid notes on the C-string at the end of each stanza e.g. bars 9 and 17. For those, I recommend using alternate picking as it’s too quick to comfortably play with your thumb.

    The other big exception is the trumpet solo, where I switch to strumming to give things a lift.

    Links

    Tab for Sufjan’s Death with Dignity

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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.