In the middle of a hauntingly sad song about life and love, a distant voice is heard from the back of the festival tent – “PLAY TOP GUN!”. I used to get heckled by this during my fleeting festival gig career – well, here it is. On ukulele.
This is an instrumental piece, but there are 4 or five parts to choose from if you fancy getting a family ukulele orchestra going…
A gem of a melody and chord sequence from 1954, originally in 3/4 but put into 4/4 for Frank Sinatra’s version. This arrangement of mine puts it into Dm (it just fitted my voice better!) and will give you a few new chord shapes to think about…
Keane’s nostalgic hit, from a piano based band, works actually pretty well on the uke. The original key of A might force you to learn a few chords that we don’t use all that often on the uke, and you’re gonna have to make peace with some barre chords to play this.
You can follow the chords in the chord chart if you want a slightly simplified chord progression, but if you listen to the piano in the original, almost none of these chords stay in one play for long, there are sus4s and maj7ths all over the shop. Check out the tab for the full progression details.
Here’s hoping the sun is on it’s way!
I’ve based this arrangement on the original Cyndi Lauper version, but there are numerous other excellent versions out there. I’ve moved the key to Em, in an attempt to find a way to play the opening piano riff on the uke. That’s the trickiest bit of the song, although the strumming patterns might give you a few hesitations, as there’s lots of anticipated chords in the chorus.
I arranged this 2 years ago for the 25th Anniversary of Macclesfield Music Centre – for ukulele, french horn, piano and choir – it worked surprisingly well – so here’s a homemade version.
Well that was more work than I thought… This one was a lot of fun but took a long time to record. It’s definitely a challenge for a beginner uke player – with lots of chords, an unpredictable structure, and some little riffs and rhythms that take a bit of practice. Worth it though…
Here’s the chord chart and some tabs for the tricky bits:
In 2009, Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers hailed “Patience” as:
“the greatest comeback single in history. If Neil Young had written it, people would be calling it a masterpiece.”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/aug/17/pop-hidden-gems-take-that
It’s good pop. It has simple enough chords (with a couple of curveballs to keep you on your toes) but it’s the melody that shines for me. Plus, when you realise it shares the chorus chord sequence with 100+ other pop songs, it’s a no brainer to learn…
The original is in Gm, but I’ve written this arrangement in Em. If you want to play along with Take That, stick a capo on the third fret of the uke.
I’ve done a picking pattern for the verses, although it doesn’t match the guitar part very closely, it does add a bit of interest.
Doing a song called ‘All of Me’ last week just means that we have to do the ‘real’ All of Me this week. This is from 1931 and has been performed by all the jazz greats over the years.
On the uke, it’ll give your fingers a work out, and your jazz chords a stretch. I’ve done an easy chord chart and a ‘proper’ one. The easy chords follow our emergency chord rule: If you’re faced with a ‘jazz’ chord (i.e. with numbers) that you don’t recognise, just strip away the numbers until you get to a chord you do know. e.g. C6 -> C, A9 -> A7 -> A, Dm7 -> Dm, Fm6 -> Fm, Bbmaj13#5b9 -> Bb. The only rule is, you can’t change the fundamental major/minor nature of the chord (don’t let me catch you playing Am instead of A9!)
Following this rule will allow you to play otherwise pretty daunting songs – of course it won’t sound quite as authentic / cool / fancy but it can get you through a song that would otherwise be impossible…
The ‘proper’ chords are played using voicings designed to allow you to play with all strings fretted, giving a much better control over the length that the strings ring on for, and allowing us to do a nice tight staccato quarter note rhythm without too much effort – they’re also meant to be easyish to move between – I use my thumb around the back of the neck and on to the g-string when doing these chords.