Ukulele Wars

Public service announcement: we would like to reassure everyone about the lack of seriousness in the previous post involving a violin and a ukulele. It becomes much easier to understand if you take a careful look at the date. We are staying a ukulele blog!

A long time ago, on a ukulele far, far away...

John Williams is surely a familiar name to many people, as he is one of the outstanding film composers of the age. The composer, who turns 81 this year, has written "proper" symphonic works as well as film scores, yet when we hear his name most of us immediately think of the music from Jaws, Star Wars, Superman and the Indiana Jones films.

This multiple award-winning composer has an extraordinary ability - in the most positive sense - to write memorable melodies that lodge themselves in the mind. Naturally we associate those melodies with the films. There is little doubt that if we had never followed the adventures of Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones, these scores, heard merely as independent symphonic works, might never have reached us - or, if they had, might not have remained so deeply in our memories.

Whenever we hear Williams's music, those invisible strings inside us begin to vibrate as well. One moment they create an inexplicable shiver, another a feeling of grandeur, endless happiness or unbearable pain - or perhaps we simply start thinking about jumping into an X-wing and wiping out the entire evil Imperial fleet.

If our little four-stringed instrument is within reach and we like this music, with persistent practice we can play the following arrangements:

Star Wars - Cantina Band

Star Wars - Imperial March

The tablature for Cantina Band can be downloaded here, and the Imperial March tablature here. Both require plenty of patient practice because they are not easy. Fingers and hands need to reach the right places at the right time, and we also have to pay close attention to which strings the right hand is picking.

YouTube is full of arrangements of John Williams compositions; I have simply highlighted my two favourites here. In an earlier short post on this blog you could also hear an Indiana Jones arrangement.

I should also mention that, in my opinion, another composer of comparable calibre to John Williams is Alan Silvestri , who may not be quite as widely known as Williams. Silvestri belongs to a generation of film composers one step younger. He was already composing for films and television series in his twenties, but his major breakthrough and recognition came with the score for Back to the Future in 1985, which he wrote at the age of 35.