These are guitar and/or ukulele tabs I have compiled myself. This list will be growing with time as I have plenty more which need only to be typeset a bit better for posting online.
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.
How you upkeep this collection, if you come back to see if there were more, is to download the file and see what you have already. All songs are in alphabetical order (the and a don’t count to title ordering). So you flip through the file and your collection, if it were in alphabetical order. What you don’t see in your collection, you print. If you can come up with a better way, to do this updating, please do share!
Links to individual tabs with videos
Beautiful Sunday (Daniel Boone)
Blowin’ in the Wind (Bob Dylan) [arranged in 3 keys]
Blueberry Hill (Louis Armstrong)
Edelweiss (from the Sound of Music)
Emotionally Yours (Bob Dylan) [O’Jays gospel version]
Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
Goin’ Up Yonder (Walter Hawkins)
Here Comes the Sun (George Harrison)
I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon (Ernie from Sesame Street)
I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan)
In the Still of the Night (The Five Satins)
It Ain’t Me, Babe (Bob Dylan) [arranged]
It Never Rains in Southern California (Albert Hammond)
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan) [extra lyrics added]
Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver)
Octopus’ Garden (Beatles) [extra lyrics added]
The Water is Wide (Traditional)
Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (Pete Seeger)
You Ain’t Going Nowhere (Bob Dylan)
With all the guitar and ukulele tabs on-line, you might ask, why would I post tabs?
- Printability
- Clarity
- Arrangements that work
- Video/audio assistance
- Easy to play
Printability
My tabs are all in downloadable PDFs that fit on letter-sized pages. Most are on one page. The fonts are embedded. What that means is you can print them out neatly unlike many web pages that print out with things all over the place, whether ads or sidebars or whatever. They also look different on different browsers.
Clarity
My tabs have the chords where you’re supposed to change chords. The PDFs also ensure they stay there rather than move around because of how various programs handles “spacing” and/or various fonts. My tabs also have notes written out. They are only in letters, not musical notes on a staff, though. Notes written out in capital letters mean they are an octave above a non-capitalized note that is also present in the song.
Arrangements that work
Often, tabs found on-line don’t work well for solo guitar or ukulele. People just tab them off the real songs and they sound like crap in places, missing parts or just lacking without additional band or vocal support. My arrangements are for one person with one instrument. Adding stuff is easy, but you know my tabs work if only you were present with a guitar or ukulele. I do rearrange the songs a little bit more than just to make things work. Sometimes it’s out of creativity. Other times it’s just to make things a little easier to play and/or sing. With the clarity of the tab presentation, though, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out nuances I have put in my arrangements.
Video/audio assistance
Further to the notes being written out and the chords place exactly where they should be for changes, I include either videos that have the song tabbed or audio recordings I’ve made of them. That way, you can hear the closest thing to the tabbed song to help you figure things out. I refrain from recording where I don’t have to in order to spare people from having to listen to me, especially if there were a recording close enough to the version I tabbed. However, in some cases, I just need to do so because the arrangement is different enough from anything recorded.
Easy to play
I don’t have songs that I deem are difficult to play. I’m at a pretty basic level of playing so if I can play them, I think most people can. I can’t even play bar chords right on a guitar. Now, that doesn’t mean the songs aren’t good. Great songs sound good even with the least bit of accompaniment and lack of fancy ornamentals to the music. In terms of song challenges, I’d say you’d be better off worrying about your voice range and vocal dexterity than guitar/ukulele skills in playing the songs. I’m not implying the vocals are that hard. Just a bit harder than the basic guitar/ukulele skills required in some songs.
For my needs, I also post them to share with friends and to have access to at any place where I can get an Internet connection. I hope you find the tabs useful and like them!
Digital Citizen 
I love all of your versions of tabs! However, I only know a few of the songs. Do you have any arrangements for more recent popular songs? 🙂
Hi Brittney. Thanks for the comp but unfortunately, I’m an old soul when it comes to music. I am not even sure I have stuff from the last decade, never mind this decade, and not much from the 1990s, even.
I know that doesn’t do you any good, but here’s are a few thoughts. You can learn the new stuff from your friends. Everybody loves to be an expert to teach stuff to others. They’ll love you just as much for asking.
The songs here tend to be rather popular classics. Pending your personality, if they suit you to sing and play, give some of them a try. There are plenty of older people around who love these songs, and younger ones who know them as well. Because they won’t expect these songs to be in your repertoire, you’ll be their darling to show them you can play some of them.
Best of both worlds? 🙂
I should get going and transfer more of my old tabs into the formats here. Unfortunately for you, though, I don’t have a lot of more modern stuff, and not sure of a great site to direct you to for them, either.
Minh
I know a lot of old songs, just only a few of the ones you have posted. Maybe I will enjoy more of your new ones:) thanks anyways!
OK. Maybe you’ll find a few surprises you might like. 🙂
Can we expect any new tabs? They are among the best out there, and I appreciate you going to the effort.
Hi Michael. Thanks so much for the compliment. I’m a bit swamped with some things these days so probably not too soon but probably come summer once things slow down a bit for me. These tabs take me a while and I prefer to them in big time chunks rather than a bit here and there like some other posts here. Unfortunately, big time chunks is not something I have a lot of these days. But hopefully summer.
Excellent. Thanks.
By the way, in your tabs, what are those strings if letters in parenthesis? E.g., ggggbbaa. I can’t figure that out.
Notes to which I sing the tune of that line, so that if you sung that line differently, you’d know to possibly choose different chords. That’s the problem with a lot of online tabs. You don’t really know how a person sings it to use the chords suggested… and I wouldn’t bet most of them actually tab the songs to the actual notes of the version you buy!
Great site and excellent arranging. You are most generous to share your talent. Sincere thanks, Robert
My pleasure. Knowing others find what I have useful and/or enjoy it is my only reward, but it’s the best reward. Thanks for taking the time to let me know! 🙂
Hi I live in the UK and have just started with a Uke, never having played an instrument in my life inspite of being a teenager in the 1960’s and coming from Liverpool. Your tabs have got me playing some 60/70s classics that I could only previousley dream of playing.
All my thanks and keep up the good work. Dave
Thank you very much, Dave, and congratulations on your accomplishment! That is wonderful to hear and best of luck developing your skills and enjoyment of music with the ukulele!
Hello, Minh. I didn’t know if you would read this because I’m sending it in 2019, and the last arrangement you posted seems to have been in 2012. But then I looked at the rest of your blog and you have updated it lately, so hopefully you’ll see this.
Your ukulele chord arrangements with the vocal notes written out on the side are carefully and thoroughly done, which I appreciate. However I’m confused as to why you call these PDFs “tabs.” Every other uke music tab sheet I’ve seen shows what frets to press on what string, and are used for fingerpicking the melody. It seems that your sheets only show where to strum each chord.
Perhaps it’s a Canadian vs. USA thing? I don’t mean to offend. I’m new at this music pursuit.
Steven Winget
San Jose, California
Hi Steven, sorry for the late reply. I’ve been absorbed in some personal projects as well as work.
When I went to the sites for Guitar Tabs back in the day, what they had was similar to what I have so I copied that. I don’t know where things have progressed to, though I know what you’re talking about. I just can’t do that and don’t have the time to do it in the past handful of years with the various other things I have going. Thanks for pointing that out and apologies if they weren’t what you were hoping to find.
Minh