For today we will have a look at the song “Norwegian Wood” by the Beatles for Ukulele. I have created a guitarlesson about this song before. Look for the article from 18th of Dec. 2010                                
This time I have chosen to transpose the song in the key of C major, which is a relatively easy key for the Ukulele.

Here are the chordfingerings I use for this song:

            C    Cm     F      G

   A  —-3—-3—–0—–2—–

   E  —-3—-3—–1—–3—–

   C  —4—-3——0—–2—-

   G  —0—-5——2—–0—-

N.B: Notice I play the C chord slightly different from what most of you will use. This fingering is closer to the melodynotes, makes up for smoother transition between chord and melodynotes. Try it and see what you think!

The First part of the song combines a chord with a melody. The song is in 6/8 tempo, which means you get 3 beats on the first chord and 3 beats on the melody.
The strumpattern for the chords is as follows: 

                           Down Down Up Down     Down Down Up Down

              Count        1      2    and  3           4       5   and   6

For the first part of the song you only play the chord for the first 3 beats of the bar, the next 3 beats are made up by the melodynotes. There are only 3 melodynotes per bar, and they make up for the last  3 beats in the bar. Easy!!!

For the second part of the song you only strum the chords for the full 6 beats of the bar, no melodynotes here!!

Here is the first part, which only contains four bars. Once you played these four bars repeat them again before moving on to second section. 

Observe the last bar with only the C chord and no melodynotes at all!!

       C                                     C                                 C                              C                 C

  A  ————————        ————————     ———–5———-     ————————-

  E  ————-5—-3—-        ————————     ——–6——-5—–     ————————-

  C ———————5–        —————-2—5–4   ———————–     ————————-

  G ————————        ————————-    ———————–     ————————–

Here is the second section which is only chords:

     Cm       Cm      F       F

     Cm       Cm      F      G

These chords are played for the full 6 beats, observe strumpattern as given above for this section.

Now watch the video to hear how you can play this song for guitar and ukulele:

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Happy playing and hope to see you soon again,
Eddie