As Tears Go By (1964)

Something struck me when I learned of Marianne Faithfull’s passing on 30th January 2025. Her first single, “As Tears Go By” recorded and released when she was 17 years old, remains a hit today. Let’s look into how we can play it on the ukulele. She sang “As Tears Go By” in the key of C major.

Download the song sheet in C major.

I couldn’t resist playing “musical mosaic” with the notes on the ukulele.

Unlike the piano where there’s a one-to-one correspondence between a note and a physical key on the piano keyboard, stringed instruments offer more possibilities. One needs to decide where to play a note.

On the high G ukulele, the G above middle C can be on the open high G string or the 3rd fret of the E string and elsewhere.

Transposing the song into the key of G allows more “notes of the chord” to be used as we tend to hear the highest pitched note in a chord. One can read the lead sheet below and play the melody and the harmony together, hence “chord melody arrangement.”

Notice the tempo, key, voice, and accompaniment are all different in this version of the song by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Another option is to use the high G ukulele and place the notes differently, as shown below.

I taught this song in the free one-hour workshop today for World Ukulele Day at 2 PM EST. 38 ukulele players had registered in Zoom and 20 showed up. I emailed the participants a feedback form — all who answered all questions were invited to request a free thank you gift from me.

Music requests

Request for the music arranged or composed by Anne Ku from the list of Daily Music Writing Project. Please be specific (i.e. indicate lead sheet, chord melody arrangement, high G or low G, and the key). See request & feedback form for details.