PlaysoloistStringsUkuleleSongsThe Black Velvet Band
ukulele song · Strings
The Black Velvet Band Ukulele Tab
- Composer
- Traditional
- Year
- —
- Key
- C
- Time
- 3/4
- Tempo
- 120 BPM
- Difficulty
- Beginner · ★
- First note
- G4
The Black Velvet Band on ukulele
The full melody, rendered as four-string ukulele tab in re-entrant High-G (gCEA) you can read on screen or print for the stand — free, and never truncated.
Notes marked with a dot are folded up an octave to sit in the ukulele’s range — the app arranges them the same way.
Arranged for the standard re-entrant High-G (gCEA) ukulele. On Low G, Baritone or D tuning the app re-fingers the same melody live. Left-handed? The app can mirror the whole tab.
Lyrics
Bar 1 — In a neat little town they call Belfast
Bar 5 — apprenticed to trade I was bound
Bar 9 — and many an hour's sweet happiness
Bar 13 — I spent in that neat little town
Bar 17 — Her eyes they shone like diamonds
Bar 21 — I thought her the queen of the land
Bar 25 — and her hair it hung over her shoulder
Bar 29 — tied up with a black velvet band
Trad. Irish ballad, 19th c. — public domain.
How to practise this on ukulele
The Black Velvet Band is in C and opens on G4. This tab is arranged for the standard re-entrant High-G ukulele: the fourth string (the top of the written tab, marked g) is tuned above the two strings under it, which is why a melody can dip onto the open g and come out sounding high — that's the instrument's signature, not a misprint. If you play Low G, the app re-fingers the same melody for your tuning live.
Pick the melody with alternating thumb and index, or the index alone on slower pieces, and keep your fretting fingers curled so open strings ring clear. Set the metronome under around 120 BPM, watch the tab rather than your hands, and loop the bar your take review grades worst until it comes back clean twice in a row. By the numbers, this setting runs 72 notes across 32 bars, from G3 up to G4 in 3/4 time.
Also playable on
The same melody is graded across 6 Playsoloist instruments. See every version, with difficulty and provenance, on the The Black Velvet Band cross-instrument hub.
Keep exploring
Free on the App Store
Play The Black Velvet Band — and hear every note graded.
Soloist Ukulele reads this four-string ukulele tab in re-entrant High-G (gCEA) under the notation and grades your take on-device, note by note — free on iPhone, no ads, no account.
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