Songs for advanced players?

MassPrimeSyndicate

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i am in need of new songs to play because all of the songs I am playing are becoming quite repetitive, and I need some new songs to play that are advanced. and please dont suggest pop songs, i am looking for good instrumental pieces. :)
 
Wondering what you mean by 'advanced' as it's such a subjective term. Ultimately you can make any song as complex as you want too. Have you considered maybe re-imagining some songs you know well and making your own arrangements for them? That is both a challenging and enjoyable process and a sure way to stretch your playing. The genres of jazz and classical are avenues to perhaps explore also.
 
Don't know what kind of music you want to play, but books by John King (e.g., The Classical Ukulele) and Daniel Ho have some pretty challenging pieces.
 
Wondering what you mean by 'advanced' as it's such a subjective term. Ultimately you can make any song as complex as you want too. Have you considered maybe re-imagining some songs you know well and making your own arrangements for them? That is both a challenging and enjoyable process and a sure way to stretch your playing. The genres of jazz and classical are avenues to perhaps explore also.

This is very good advice. Try arranging some of your favorites from guitar, piano, sax, television, movies etc. There's so much wonderful music that can be adapted for ukulele.
 
I'll add my support to what others are saying about perhaps working on your own arrangements.

I'm not saying to copy Jake, but consider how complex and personalized he has made some of his arrangements from what are often thought of as simpler songs.

If you want to try classical, Wilfried Welti has some wonderful e-books for sale on his site. He's posted tons of videos of his work here, just check out his profile wwelti for started threads. His site's in his sig. There's a huge free "Solobuch" of his at UkeHunt to get you started.

http://ukulelehunt.com/2008/11/12/wilfried-weltis-ukulele-tabs/

Chief Noda has a lot of good stuff, too.

http://www.chiefnoda.com/ukulele/

Ukeval is an amazing player who's posted lots of videos here. He doesn't have a web site, but he often posts links to his arrangements for download.

Michael Parmenter focuses on Renaissance music and some of it is quite challenging.

http://ukeclassicaltabs.blogspot.com/

I'ts a chronological blog, not really searchable. Just keep hitting "older posts" at the bottom of each page. It goes back for a number of years. BTW, he offers PDFs with only tab. If you want standard notation as well (which I prefer) he also offers the .tef files. You can get the TablEdit viewer for free and use it to print notation with the tab. It also lets you adjust margins and spacing so sometimes I'll do that to keep it to one page instead of printing a second with only one line.
 
When I feel cocky, I'll take a familiar old "standard" song, look at a good chord chart (http://www.doctoruke.com/songs.html charts are always excellent) and try to link the chords together with melody notes in a way that evokes the original melody.
It's as advanced as you make it, and the more I tinker with a song, the more arrangement ideas come up - not that I can play them all, my point is that it's an open ended process..and it is working towards being a musician, not just a player.
here's a rudimentary example:
https://youtu.be/nd1iFeteyQg
hope that helps!
 
Ideas:

Write your own.
Listen to Phish, Bela Fleck, Frank Zappa, or anybody who does music "wrong". Then try to figure it out.
Write your own.
Desert Rose by Eric Johnson
Write your own.
 
Some of the Beatle's music is pretty advanced.
 
Dominator Ukes has lots of tabs.
 
When I feel cocky, I'll take a familiar old "standard" song, look at a good chord chart (http://www.doctoruke.com/songs.html charts are always excellent) and try to link the chords together with melody notes in a way that evokes the original melody.
It's as advanced as you make it, and the more I tinker with a song, the more arrangement ideas come up - not that I can play them all, my point is that it's an open ended process..and it is working towards being a musician, not just a player.
here's a rudimentary example:
https://youtu.be/nd1iFeteyQg
hope that helps!

I found this basic arrangement of Danny Boy and have tried to add notes and beef it up with more accompanying harmony. It has been fun. I think I will try your method next, taking a song and trying to weave the melody within the chords and bring it out.
 
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