Ukulele Hunt

Tag: USA

  • BoJack Horseman Medley (Tab)

    BoJack Horseman Medley (Tab)Download

    After bouncing off BoJack a couple of times, I finally started watching it in earnest after I was told to watch this fantastic bit with K Flay’s Blood in the Cut riff. After that it rapidly became one of my favourite shows of all time.

    As well as being hilarious and insightful, it also uses some great music. Both in terms of licensed music and original music from Jesse Novak (who I’ve covered before with his People Person’s Paper People jingle from The Office). So I had to put together a medley of my favourite songs from the show (that RBW pretended to like proving himself to be a Hollywoob phoney).

    For most of the medley I’m either using strums (with a few picked notes mingled in) or thumb and two finger picking.

    The song that works best on ukulele is the outstanding I Will Always Think of You. Which is such a dead-on pastiche I had to double check it wasn’t a long lost Cole Porter song.

    The trickiest to pull off is Back in the 90s. That includes some quick Cotton picking i.e. the thumb alternates between the g- and C-strings with the index and middle fingers playing the melody on the E- and A-strings respectively.

    The full tracklist:

    A Horse with No Name (America)/Special Feeling/Avant Gardener (Courtney Barnett)/I Just Met My Perfect Match/Generic 90s Grunge Song/Mr Peanutbutter’s House/Blood in the Cut (K.Flay)/I Will Always Think of You/Back in the 90s/Stars (Nina Simone)/Boxer vs. Raptor

    Links

    Buy the BoJack Horseman soundtrack
    More TV theme
    Uke Hunt on Patreon

  • Santa Baby (Tab)

    Santa Baby (Tab)Download

    I couldn’t let the festive season pass without another addition to my jazz odyssey. This time the Christmas classic written by Joan Javits and Philip Springer in 1953 and made popular by Eartha Kitt.

    I used the intro and turnarounds to stretch out a bit and throw in some fancy chords and chromatic notes. I would definitely recommend playing around and coming up with your own ideas for those sections.

    The fingerpicking is all over the place. So do whatever feels natural to you.

    If you’re interested in more Christmas tabs, check out my Christmas ebooks.

    Links

    Buy it on Amazon
    More Christmas tabs

  • Billie Eilish – idontwannabeyouanymore (Tab)

    Billie Eilish – idontwannabeyouanymore (Tab)Download

    I don’t think any ukulele player has had a bigger year than Billie Eilish. She’s been all over the shop and her debut album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? and 2017 EP don’t smile at me have both been selling by the bucket-hat load. I’ve already done a few tracks from the album, so today I’m doing one from the EP.

    I’m using one finger per string picking all the way through this arrangement. There are many chnks in the song which can make it difficult to get your fingers back in position. I’d recommend not doing a standard chnk and instead muting the strings with your fretting hand and bringing each finger down on the string it’s plucking. That should leave them in the right position for picking.

    The tab is pretty long thanks to the second verse and second chorus being slightly different to the first. Both are a little trickier second time around. I don’t think anyone would notice if you just played them the same both times.

    Links

    Buy it on Amazon
    More Billie Eilish tabs

  • They Might Be Giants Medley (Tab)

    TMBGMedleyDownload

    Over the last 35 years They Might Be Giants have but out some of the funnest and nerdiest music around (and found some time to paint cat ukuleles). So I collected together some of their best known songs along with some of my favourites.

    Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Starts off with a short solo using the F harmonic minor scale. Which is like the more common F natural minor scale but with the Eb replaced by an E (A-string, 7th fret). The melody for the chorus is made up solely of notes in the Fm chord then the C7 chord. So hold down these notes as long as possible to build the chords behind the melody.

    Birdhouse in Your Soul: I wrote up tab for the entire song here. This is just the intro transposed to the key of F.

    Dr Worm: A quick version of Rabbi Vole’s guitar solo.

    Why Does the Sun Shine?: I love that TMBG wrote a scientifically inaccurate song then wrote a song to correct it.

    Boss of Me: AKA the Malcolm in the Middle theme. The chorus for this part is dead simple. It’s mostly just switching between the open A-string and A-string, 3rd fret while the chords change underneath.

    Older: While the rest of the songs after Istanbul are in F, this one is in its equivalent minor: D minor.

    Dog on Fire: AKA The Daily Show theme. From the original version before Timberland chopped it up.

    Seven Days of the Week: From their third album of children’s songs Here Come the 1,2,3s. Although there only seems to be the most marginal difference between their children’s records and the rest of their oeuvre.

    Links

    TheyMightBeGiants.com
    More They Might Be Giants tabs

  • DuckTales Theme (Tab)

    DuckTales Theme (Tab)Download

    Finishing off cartoon week with an exceptionally catchy tune that set the standard for yelling “woo hoo!”. And it’s particularly relevant to give it a ukeing now that the rejiggered series features Uke Hunt favourite Kate Micucci.

    The song includes a subtle key change with the chorus being a whole step higher the second time around. To keep things easy to memorise, I’ve arranged it so it’s played exactly the same but two frets higher second time around.

    Links

    Buy it on Amazon
    More TV tabs

  • SpongeBob SquarePants – F.U.N. Song (Tab)

    SpongeBob SquarePants – F.U.N. Song (Tab)Download

    While writing up Sweet Victory earlier this year, I decided I had to do a tab of this classic SpongeBob ukulele song.

    I’ve kept the arrangement very simple. There are just three underlying chords: F, Bb and C. And I’m only using my thumb for picking. Although you could very easily use fingerpicking or a pick. Using those might help with the quick thumb work in bars 5 and 6.

    Links

    Buy it on Amazon
    More easy tabs
    Uke Hunt Patreon

  • The Decemberists – Shankill Butchers (Tab)

    The Decemberists – Shankill Butchers (Tab)Download

    There’s a long history of murder ballads in folk music. But they’re all set comfortably in the past. It’s a very different experience listening to a song about murders set in your own lifetime.

    The Shankill Butchers were loyalist gang in 1970s Northern Ireland who viciously murdered 19 people (possibly with police turning a blind eye). Hearing a song mythologising them is an uncomfortable experience. But it brings home how fresh the events in old murder ballads were to those who originated them.

    Shankill Butchers is in the key of C#m. My first instinct was to rearrange it into a more uke-friendly key like Cm or Dm. But it turned out to work best in C#m. The intro riff (played with the thumb alternating between picking the g- and C-strings) works particularly well.

    Links

    Buy it on Amazon
    More folk tabs