Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is one of the most amazingly well-written songs ever, in my opinion. The soaring melody and odd, but brilliant chord changes makes for a very interesting and memorable piece. Here’s an ukulele tab for how to play the hit.
This tab is in D (the lowest you can go and still play the melody with a high-g) and it uses the whole range of the ukulele.
There’s nothing remarkable about the picking because it’s just a single note version of the melody. The chords, however, will be a fun challenge for intermediate uke players since there are lots of them and many that are out of key.
Since both chords and melody are so distinct, this style ukulele tab is a perfect starting point for creating a solo ukulele piece. When you do this you combine the chords and melody together, played on one ukulele.
If you want to do this, I’d recommend learning each part of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road separately. Sing or hum the tune and strum the chords until they are very comfortable. Then switch to picking out the single-note melody by itself. This will force you to become familiar with each facet of the song before trying to put it together.
Jumping to the full arrangement too fast is often the cause of unsteady timing and a less satisfying sound. So take your time and learn each bit individually. Once you can really nail the two parts, click on the link above to learn how to incorporate them together.
Here’s Colin Tribe playing his version. He uses a different key, but the concept is similar: