A modern reggae classic tabbed for ukulele? Yes. And it’s a challenge! This tab will keep you bust for a while with its strange key, chord changes, and rhythm figure picking part.
Matisyahu stands tall amongst the often generic acts populating modern reggae. He crafts deep lyrics and an almost rap-like delivery of them, along with simple, but interesting instrumentation to make reggae music worth listening to again.
King Without a Crown is one of his biggest hits. It ticks all the boxes and is one of the most fun songs I play with my band.
It was probably overkill to create this ukulele tab in Guitar Pro 6, but I love the high-quality look and feel it provides – along with the challenge of inputting the correct note durations.
I didn’t try to insert Matisyahu’s fast barrage of words into the file. You’ll have to sync the two up yourself (a feat in itself).
The song should be broken into parts when you’re learning to play it since there are multiple styles presented in the tab.
Start with the chord rhythm chank. The song is in an odd key so you’ll have some uncommon chords to learn. It sounds to me that the guitar (which we’re trying to emulate) plays a midrange voicing so I left the A-string out of most shapes.
Once you can play along with the recording using the chords (I’d continue chanking throughout the chorus – just use the chords above the staff), then move on to learning the picking part. I find this is easiest to play if I use a flat-pick style with my index fingernail.