Due to its friendly and comical nature, the ukulele is a video game theme magnet. Needless to say, ukulele tabs for songs like Super Mario Bros. are in high demand.
A handful of years ago I got a wild hair to create and compile all the Super Mario themes into one ukulele tab. There are lots of little sounds, songs, and transitions that are triggered as you play through the game.
I tried to include as many of the Super Mario Brothers sounds and themes as possible:
- Overworld (Main) Theme
- Collecting Coins
- Underworld Theme
- Starman Theme
- Water Theme
- 1-Up
- Time Warning
- Bowser’s Castle Theme
- Boss Theme
- Lose A Life
- Game Over
- Level Clear
Playing Super Mario on Your Ukulele
These are fairly basic arrangements based on the original video game music so there is a lot of room to add things. There are many ukulele covers on Youtube that might lead you to more inspiration.
I find that the most difficult part of recreating Koji Kondo’s tunes on the uke are the abundant double-stop harmonies. Especially in the Overworld theme, there are some very fast runs that lean on 3rd intervals. Practice these up and down as slow as you need to to get them right. If you can play these you can play the rest of Super Mario, no problem.
Other Super Mario Ukulele Tabs
If you decide you don’t like my tab and want some more options, here are two other tablature versions that I trust.
Dominator tabbed James Hill’s crazy arrangement many years ago. It’s a lot to look at and I’m not a big fan of note-for-note transcriptions since nobody plays like James, but it might be useful if you want something more intricate.
On the other side of the spectrum is a simplified version from Al Wood .
Super Mario Video Lessons:
Along the way I taped a few Super Mario ukulele tutorials to supplement the tab.