Colin Tribe Tabs

I like to keep learning new songs and trying to play new songs, and I like solo ukulele. I think I've found most of the sites on the web that offer free tab, and I think I've bought every book off Amazon that offers ukulele tabs. And I've bought tabs off of several sites.

Periodically I've toyed with buying all of Colin Tribe's tabs. I have tried a few of them over the years, but I finally took the plunge and bought the lot of them. The package I got had 800 tabs.

A handful are really simple, and a handful are east Indian music and a few other things I'm not interested in. However, probably more than 700 of them are pop tunes or standards or show tunes with a smattering of classical.

The arrangements contain standard notation and tab, which I find helpful. They are very easy to read. My complaint with a lot of the free tab is that it is hard to decipher, even when printed and not handwritten. They are also musically excellent. The chord voicings are exactly right, and musically the arrangements how together. They also have proper intros and endings.

About a third of them I can sight read pretty well and could probably polish up with a little bit of practice. About a third of them I can sight read most of the piece but have a few passages that I need to work on. The remaining third are all playable, but I'll need to work on them a bit. None of them seems so hard as to be particularly daunting. While I can make my own arrangements I don't particularly like the embellishments that I add or the chord voicings that I use. Playing these arrangements is giving me a lot of good ideas.

Colin sells his Beatles arrangements separately (but includes them in the bundle). If you don't want to spend the full amount, the Beatles bundles are really good. He does a great job with Beatles songs.

The overall collection is really amazing. I'm really glad that I bought them.

Sounds like they will provide years of enjoyment for you. I need to look at what he has, though I could not read any of it right off the bat, probably.

I play Colin's arrangements frequently. Enjoy!

Hi,

how buy his books please ? i don't have any response with his mail

I just e-mailed him a couple of days ago and got a response. Verify his e-mail colinrtribe@btinternet.com and try again. He will e-mail you an attached list of all his song compositions. Basically you tell him what you want and then he sends you a paypal request. Once you pay him he e-mails the files to you.

Dear Marie

Thank you for the request for information and my complete collection of now over 800 is available for £150 , here attached is a recent example which I hope you will enjoy learning and playing. They are all finger style solo arrangements

This style of playing is taught in my Fingerstyle Tutor with an hour long Video - "Uniquelele" for just £15

12 songs for £10

25 songs for £20

50 songs for £30

All of The Beatles (50 songs) £30

Arrangements of music you would like to play can be done for £25 per song. Sets of Video tutorials 5 songs each 10-15 minutes £20 including PDFs.

Sets of Video tutorials 5 songs each 10-15 minutes £20 including PDFs.

I bought the whole collection as well the problem I have is that he is so prolific. He probably added another 50 since I purchased the whole lot.

I wish there were periodic updates to his collection for those that bought the whole set

I wondered about the same thing so I asked him about it and he said you would just have to pay for the additional songs added.

Any samples available out there? Are the tabs chord melody? Thx...

If you email him he will send you a sample. You can see his youtube videos and pick out one or two which he will send you for free.

Most of the tabs are chord and melody finger picking. I bought the whole set and now that I've picked through and played a significant number of them, I'd say there are at least 100 songs in the full set that I have no interest in because of the music. He has transcribed quite a few Bollywood songs and I have no interest in those. There are some that are transcribed folk songs that are very easy - I think he's tried to do some "beginner" stuff. Overall most people will find the set pretty challenging. You need to be able to read tab pretty well and be fairly comfortable over the whole neck. Most of them are not as hard as they look. Once you get used to his style of writing tab and his overall approach, the collection starts to open up and many of them are fairly easy.

For me, because I like to finger pick, the price of the full collection is well worth it. I can sight read my way reasonably through a significant percentage of them, but still find something challenging in almost every one. The chords and music are very well done with very few wrong chords or notes. The arrangements are inventive, with very clever translation of musical ideas from other instruments. Colin definitely has a "style" of transcription so certain ways of doing things and chord changes carry from one to the next. They are incredibly fun to play, challenging enough to make me push myself, and full of ideas I can apply in a variety of musical contexts. I'm really loving them and think they are some of the best spent ukulele dollars.

Totally agree on all the points below. it' s a challenge and if you are are interested enough it is far cheaper to get the whole collection than to buy a few at a time. But this is definitely not for a beginner. You need to be comfortable with tabs, music notations and chords by their letter names.

katysax said:

If you email him he will send you a sample. You can see his youtube videos and pick out one or two which he will send you for free.

Most of the tabs are chord and melody finger picking. I bought the whole set and now that I've picked through and played a significant number of them, I'd say there are at least 100 songs in the full set that I have no interest in because of the music. He has transcribed quite a few Bollywood songs and I have no interest in those. There are some that are transcribed folk songs that are very easy - I think he's tried to do some "beginner" stuff. Overall most people will find the set pretty challenging. You need to be able to read tab pretty well and be fairly comfortable over the whole neck. Most of them are not as hard as they look. Once you get used to his style of writing tab and his overall approach, the collection starts to open up and many of them are fairly easy.

For me, because I like to finger pick, the price of the full collection is well worth it. I can sight read my way reasonably through a significant percentage of them, but still find something challenging in almost every one. The chords and music are very well done with very few wrong chords or notes. The arrangements are inventive, with very clever translation of musical ideas from other instruments. Colin definitely has a "style" of transcription so certain ways of doing things and chord changes carry from one to the next. They are incredibly fun to play, challenging enough to make me push myself, and full of ideas I can apply in a variety of musical contexts. I'm really loving them and think they are some of the best spent ukulele dollars.

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Hello Colin!!
I was told by an answer to my post on ukulele forums that you have the Spanish song Managuela for the Ukulele in the standard key of C.
Is this correct
Harley

Harley3348 said:

Hello Colin!!
I was told by an answer to my post on ukulele forums that you have the Spanish song Managuela for the Ukulele in the standard key of C.
Is this correct
Harley

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You have to email Colin at colinrtribe@btinternet.com. He will send you the tab.

You can also commission Colin to tab a particular song by request ("Clair de Lune," in my case). I forget how much it was, it wasn't cheap, but it was well worth it! He also threw in a midi file.

He already has tabbed Maleguena.

I bought the whole collection, too. Terrific stuff. And I agree with Katysax about the quality of his Beatles arrangements.

My solution for his more challenging bits (5-5-5-12 -- really?) has been just to play the E and A strings, which seems to pick up the melody without stretching my left hand beyond what's allowed by human anatomy.

good_uke_boy said:

I bought the whole collection, too. Terrific stuff. And I agree with Katysax about the quality of his Beatles arrangements.

My solution for his more challenging bits (5-5-5-12 -- really?) has been just to play the E and A strings, which seems to pick up the melody without stretching my left hand beyond what's allowed by human anatomy.

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LOL. I can't play 5-5-5-12 comfortably either but but 12-13-12 works fine. 5-5-5-12 is C-F-A-A and 12-13-12 is CFA. In every case where Colin has some crazy reach I just substitute something I can reach. There are one or two songs where I'll play the melody note and a 5th or 3rd instead of the chord in a couple of spots. Otherwise I just find a way to get the notes without having to reach so far. I also don't like 2-4-3-3 and similar chords or 7-5-5-8. I usually just play strings 1 through 3 in most places where I see that.

I have many of Colin's tabs and enjoy them too. I agree there is a wide range of music, both in terms of genre (pop, classical, etc) and level of difficulty. I prefer his arrangements of old jazz and pop tunes. It seems like all of his tabs are demo'ed on his youtube page, if you want to hear an arrangement before you buy it.

He also has two books (real books, made of paper!) of folk music, published by Schott with a demo CD. I found them on Amazon.

Wow, this is causing a flare-up of MAS.....darn! I just bought a book of Irish songs, with tabs, but none of the notes are chorded. The chords for strumming are on top of the lyrics so I'm playing around with those.....

So for those using Colin's music, tabs and standard notation or just tabs? Also is he generally writing for reentrant tuning?

Pie, his notation is tabs and standard, and all reentrant. However, he does not use the high G for the melody all too often, so I find most of his arrangements are easily adapted to low G. I found I could make the adjustment my head as I play them with a low G uke. His arrangements are definitely not campanella style. Some do involve a fingerpicking pattern that depends on a high G, though.