How to play Boy With the Arab Strap by Belle and Sebastian

http://www.ukulala.com

Chords and lyrics at:
http://ukulelehunt.com/2008/05/06/belle-and-sebastian-the-boy-with-the-arab-s...

This is a video by a beginner and for a beginner. It goes over the tuning, chords, chord order, and strumming pattern for Boy with the Arab Strap by Belle and Sebastian.

This is one of the most rockin'est songs Belle and Sebastian songs ever made. It's not as mellow as their other stuff, but his Scotsman voice sounds great over a rock beat and a good bassline. I love the clap as part of the beat.

It's a simple song to learn, at least in terms of chords. It has just G, C, and D and the chord switches are slow. This song is all aboot rhythm. Unfortunately I don't have a good source for the chords yet, because everywhere online has incomplete chords.

The good people over at ukulelehunt.com figured out that the missing chord in the online chord list was a "D", so if they put up a version of this song I will post a link. Video breakdown: 0:00 - Intro 0:12 - Tuning (GCEA) 0:25 - Chords (G,C,D) 1:05 - Strumming pattern (details below) 2:55 - Chord switch timing 3:21 - Demonstration (slow to faster w/ lyrics)

The difficult part here is the strumming pattern. Using my normal way of describing it as beats, where each beat is an up or a down strum, there are two "sections" of the strumming, which look like this:

Section 1:
1) down
2) up
3) hit
4) up

Section 2:
5) miss
6) up
7) hit
8) up

Then, once you can do those sections individually, the entire pattern loops like this:

Strumming pattern:
1) Section 1
2) Section 2
3) Section 2
4) Section 2
(Repeat twice then switch chords)

That was kind of hard to explain, but hopefully it made sense especially if it goes along with the video. If not, please let me know in the comments and I will try to fix it.

For more detail on this, check out:
http://ukulala.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-play-boy-with-arab-strap-by.html

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ukulele
• ukulala
• tutorial
• lesson
• how
• to
• play
• boy
• with
• the
• arab
• strap
• belle
• and
• sebastian
• learning
• learn

[markmckaytnt]

ty



[999zz888]

جب جب احمار

[current18]

very nice n' smooth to follow AND understand! thankkk you :)

[moiafro]

This is awesome your a very good teacher

[flexyrhead]

Why did you stop making videos? MOAR PLS

[padraigf76]

cool! I always wanted to play this song.

I like the way you break down the rhythm, it's often left out and not so easy for beginners to pick up.

[thearabstrap]

valeeeeu :D

[thevillagejoke]

this is so awesome man!

you do all the songs i love too. haha. :D

[patunia12]

thanku very much. great help!

[razorio007]

Great stuff!