The 70s song is about the struggles of a singer who moves out to California to pursue a career in Hollywood but does not have any success and deteriorates in the process. That’s in the words of Wikipedia.
Being in Halifax, Nova Scotia, sometimes known as Haliwood for its local prominence in the movie industry, I sometimes substitute “Nova Scotia” for “California”. It’s just for the cheesy fun of it.
It’s a great and catchy song that’s fairly to play otherwise. For newbies to the song, you can just skip the intro and instrumental bit in the middle. Just go through the verses. There are a few small variations among some of the lines that seem to be repeated, like It never rains in California. Pay attention to those if you want to watch the details, but most people probably wouldn’t care or notice those variations much. Otherwise, the tune is pretty close to the one in the video below.
These tabs all fit on one page to avoid the inconvenience of page turns. However, the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) may be too small for your eyes. If so, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
One measure of the popularity of a song over time, and not just on the charts at a given time, is the number of covers it has. Well, there’s no shortage for Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Released!
Bob Dylan
With every cover, there’s a little variation on it from the others and from the original. However, for this song, most only differed slightly in the notes sang and tempo. There’s no big rearrangement involved. My tabbed version is no different, with only a high D to emphasize a few important points in the lyrics. It is noted among the notes that come with the tabs.
These tabs all fit on one page to avoid the inconvenience of page turns. However, the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) may be too small for your eyes. If so, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
The chord sequence is fairly easy with G, Am, Bm and back down again with Am and G. Then a D7 separates the next phrase, and it cycles all over again throughout the entire song. You need to Capo 2 this to get it in the key of A that Bob originally wrote it in. I took the chords off The Definitive Bob Dylan Songbook.
If you have trouble playing the Bm on guitar like I do, you might try the version in C, capoing as you need to get it in your voice range. That uses C, Dm, Em and G7. These are a lot easier than that Bm, in my opinion.
The ukulele challenge is also with that Bm, but I tabbed an alternate version in F because the Em (like in the guitar alternate version), is almost like that Bm on guitar, which was what I was trying to avoid. The version in F on the ukulele uses F, Gm, Am and C7, which I find all fairly easy chords to play.
As for trying to find a video close to my tabbed version, the one below from a concert in 1976 matched it best, though not exactly. This was some concert, featuring Bob and an all-star cast like Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr and many other famous musicians! It should serve as a good guide to figuring out the tabs.
The good thing about a “solid” song like this, though, is that the chords are pretty robust to any little variation you might want to put in the melody to “make it your own”. So you don’t have to follow the notes I have. Just sing it the way it feels to you for notes and it will work.
Rhythm is another story, though! The trickiest part to this song is adjusting from phrase to phrase of when you start in. For some phrases, you strum the opening chord (like G) on the first word. For many phrases, you start in while still on the 7th chord that separates the phrases. Then for the rest, you actually strum that opening chord before you start singing, like with the opening line to the chorus. Figuring out the adjustments from line to line is the hardest part, by far, as far as I’m concerned, to learning this song.
But it just wouldn’t be Bob if it were otherwise! 🙂
Edelweiss is a nice little song from the musical The Sound of Music. Too bad it’s a little harder to play, especially on the ukulele compared to the guitar, with a bunch of jumbled fingered chords.
What I have done is found a couple of keys in which the chords needed would be relatively easy to play, rather than trying to find the key in which it was sung in the musical. There are a billion interpretations in all kinds of keys, anyway.
The other thing I have done is to just have a repeat of all the lyrics, as if you sung it twice, with a couple of bars of humming in between. In the original, the kids came in skipping the first two lines on the repeat. I didn’t like that so I threw it out. This wasn’t about duplicating the musical exactly. Who’s got a Julie Andrews to spare?
Finally, on the last line, second time around, instead of ending with “forever”, I ended with “forever more”. It seemed to me I once heard a version sung like that and liked it so I’ve kept it in my arrangement.
Of all the versions out there, I found this one in the video below to match well to the tabs I’ve created.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
By match, I mean arrangement of verses, transitions, and so on, not key the piece is sung in necessarily. In my tabs, I have the notes written out so you can pic them to help you figure out what you need to be singing.
These tabs all fit on one page to avoid the inconvenience of page turns. However, the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) may be too small for your eyes. If so, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
If the versions in the keys of D or G suit your voice range, you can pick one and put a capo to make it fit. The fact you have access to the song in two keys means you shouldn’t have to capo up any more than 5 frets to find a version that suits your range.
In the near future, I’m hoping to tab Do-Re-Mi, also from The Sound of Music and combine it to flow into this song. That’s because in Do-Re-Mi, it ends with telling the audience how you could use the notes out of order to sing any song. Edelweiss will be the example, and a good choice in being from the same musical.
In the meanwhile, I hope you’ll enjoy Edelweiss on its own. It’s a great little song, but especially for ukulele groups to learn and sing along!
Sometime in early 2010, possibly late 2009, YouTube changed its copyright policies for whatever reason… and lost its edge.
The precise time isn’t important. Nor is the exact reasons why. This isn’t a history documentary. Just a commentary on the state of things.
I first noticed it during the Winter Olympics in 2010, in trying to find clips about which I blogged. There was either nothing, or poorly labeled posts that were taken down sometimes just hours after being put up. I thought the Olympics legal machine had threatened YouTube into temporary submission, but those egomaniacs can go smash their egos elsewhere because this was something much bigger happening.
It seemed YouTube changed conditions of what it allowed to be posted to be something like this.
1. If the obvious true copyright owners of the videos did nothing, they would be left on. That is, you’d have to file a claim of some sort to have any action taken. You’d have to prove it somehow, like if it were a legitimate music video, cut from a show, etc. I’m not sure about just the music track used being copyrighted.
2. The copyrighted videos could be left on with (Google word?) ad revenues in return.
3. The copyrighted videos could be left on but embedding had to be disabled.
4. The copyright videos could be left on with one of several targeted commercials at the start… which is REALLY annoying because they’re unexpected since most videos seem NOT to have one.
5. The copyrighted videos could be removed… en masse. This last change was the killer because YouTube seemed to have done it for entire clients, like Bob Dylan’s videos. I was disappointed a lot of Bob Dylan videos, and performances of his songs, disappeared just like that from YouTube. Not only was I disappointed in YouTube in this case, I was disappointed in Bob. I thought he was cooler than that. Really, does the man need any money? But it’s about the only thing Bob’s done that’s ever disappointed me, and that’s more than I can say for pretty much anyone else I know.
It seemed anything that qualified as “fan creation”, meaning it wasn’t just clipped or taken directly as was continuously from some source, was allowed to remain on YouTube, though. It seemed to also have applied to such fan vids using what should be copyrighted sound tracks. Maybe YouTube was being hypocritical to say it was in the video business so music copyright didn’t apply to it. I don’t know. But that seems to have been the outcome from certain videos I see and don’t see of the same music tracks that remained or were removed from YouTube.
In doing this, YouTube went from rebel teenager to responsible adult overnight. The company that once posted everything and gave the finger at anyone who complained of copyright was now waving another finger to a different beat at those who posted stuff that shouldn’t be on there.
Worse, not long after YouTube first “took down” the videos for copyright, it even removed the message about why the video was being removed. It left a black screen that did nothing, as if the poster screwed up technologically.
Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! You are still an adolescent, YouTube, in behaving like that!
Now, being like many people who got used to YouTube, I still went there to search for videos. However, I kept hitting snags of removed videos that were still searchable. Then YouTube remedied that annoyance and now I just find videos I like, share with friends, only to have some removed just days later. They must have a notification system on because there would be just too many videos to have people actually monitor them for potential copyright infringement.
Recently, however, I hit my breaking point with YouTube. I had had enough of its corporate behaviour. It wasn’t the YouTube that attracted me in the first place. So now I just search for videos on Google, under the “Video” category, and look for alternatives to YouTube first. I admit I still end up going to YouTube half the time, but that’s half the time and a lot less frustration than I used to have because I now have a grasp of what videos I see on YouTube that might not be removed days later.
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So where am I going the other half of the time that I don’t go to YouTube for videos?
No one particular place, really, but I’m finding out a lot of other great video sources.
I like the Chinese youku.com (means excellent and cool) and Tudou.com (literally potato net, thought it sounds like Vietnamese for freedom). Once again, Made in China as trumped Made in the USA. Can you imagine that? I never thought I’d be saying that about Internet services, especially considering the Internet censorship in China. But they only seem to care about Communist propaganda or anti-Communist stuff. They have all kinds of stuff on Youku and Tudou you won’t find on YouTube these days! Furthermore, they don’t have a 20 minute video limit that YouTube had upped from its original 10 minute limit as late as last year. Maybe YouTube did it to compensate for the copyright move. It certainly freed up server space and bandwidth (info flow from loading up videos) with all the videos it removed! Pick your favourite historical massacre and compare the videocide to it!
I mean, really. This is just for sharing and fun. It’s like free preview in poor quality. If the people like it enough, they’ll go buy the real thing from you. You’ll probably sell more copies on that business model. The copyright pundits should really just GET OVER IT! People like me just go elsewhere to find the same things… and then trash them for it.
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But what could YouTube have done?
Well, for one thing, they could have come up here to Canada. Our dollar is still cheaper.
And our copyright laws are so worthless we didn’t even bother copyrighting them!
Anything done politically to try and change them is just a facade. The result would allow a politician to say we’ve got this and that going, but it wouldn’t address the issue and get the money to the right people who own the copyright. Lawyers or organizations fighting on behalf of the people and such would get the revenues. If one does get any revenues, the fees paid to register to get it would cut a lot of it away for most people, or a few would benefit from the lack of gains by the many. Good old capitalism at its best… though without true free market forces. Just greedy bastards out to get you and make themselves look good at the same time.
It’s just a thought. But I’d be stupid to think YouTube would listen. It’s all grown up now and lost all sense of adventure. I just refer to it as BooTube now, even though I know that name’s been copyrighted.
I came across this song at the end of May 2010 via one of those YouTube recommendation feature (enough to blog about it). The feature where because you watched something, its algorithms think you might like something else. Every now and then, it’s good, but this was something I really liked. I just think it’s a cute song, that’s all… and I don’t even have kids. OK, maybe I was influenced by the fact it was Ernie singing it since Ernie has always been my favourite Sesame Street character. But I like the song a lot, nevertheless, and I think lots of people will, too.
I thought when I first heard that song that it’d be a great lullaby for kids, but if you play the guitar or ukulele, you can now pull it out to accompany yourself with that lullaby. Or just sing it for fun like I do.
Ernie, from Sesame Street
The hardest thing about this song is the syncopation. The breaks in the lines are a little bit awkward in places. That’s why all the dashes and commas in the tabs. If those breaks don’t feel natural, then just take a little time to learn them and try not to think about them afterwards when you play. Trust your instincts after you’ve learned where the little breaks are in the lines.
These tabs all fit on one page to avoid the inconvenience of page turns. However, the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) may be too small for your eyes. If so, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
Another challenge to this song is that there are lots of up stroke chord changes, denoted by the / in the tabs. Read left to right, the line goes up like your strumming motion does. If you’re not used to this, it’s not hard to pick it up. Try it and then try not to think about it is how I’d advise you learn. Just go with the flow.
I hope you, your kids, or someone else’s kids (good for entertaining), like this song!
By match, I mean arrangement of verses, transitions, and so on, not key the piece is sung in necessarily. In my tabs, I have the notes written out so you can pic them to help you figure out what you need to be singing.
Sometime in early 2010, possibly late 2009, YouTube changed its copyright policies for whatever reason… and lost its edge.
Digital Citizen 