Blink-182 have been pigeonholed by critics, on numerous occasions, as a teenage band, and of being juvenile. I wouldn’t say it’s a valid criticism at all. Blink-182’s hilariously awkward tales of adolescent love and childish adulthood are a craft in itself. They clearly have an ear for a catchy melody and a killer riff. Let’s learn to play Anthem Part Two, Dumpweed and M+Ms on the ukulele.
What Are We Learning To Play?
The tabs are from a fun little video I made for my TikTok account recently. It’s pretty much showcasing the various levels of playing difficulty for blink 182 riffs. It starts easy and ends on a super challenging riff. Scroll down to give some of them a shot.
Ukulele Tabs
Easy - Anthem Part Two
This is a fantastic riff for beginners as the driving force behind it is the open C string. That’s going to ring out and make it sound nice and full. Use your ring finger to fret the 3rd fret and then your first finger on the 1st fret.
A |---------------------------------|
E |-3---3---1---1---0---0---1---1---|
C |---0---0---0---0---0---0---0---0-|
G |---------------------------------|
Medium - Dumpweed
I would consider this an intermediate riff we are using a barre chord for part of it. If you are unfamiliar with them or want to improve your ability. Check out this guide for 3 tips on how you can improve.
Use your first finger across the top 3 strings on the 4th fret. Strum the chord and then pluck the E string twice. using your middle finger, hit the 5th fret on the E string. You can keep your finger barred and pluck the G string. The move the barre down to the 2nd fret.
It gets a little tricky once we move onto the third measure as we need to strum the A major chord and then get back up the neck quickly. My advice is to force your self to get back into that barred chord on the 4th fret. It’s going to make it much easier to pick out the notes.
A|-----------------------|-----------------------|--------------------|--------------------| E|-4----4-4-5-4--------2-|-4----4-4-5-4--------2-|-0----4-4-5-4-----2-|-0----4-4-5-4-7---2-| C|-4---------------------|-4---------------------|-1------------------|-1------------------| G|-4---------------4-2---|-4---------------4-2---|-2------------4-2---|-2--------------4---|
Hard - M+Ms
This is a hard riff to play as its super nippy and we need to efficiently use the pull-off technique. A pull-off is when you pluck a string and then drag your finger off to reveal the next note. The term drag is suitable as it’s that dragging motion that will amplify the sound.
The timing is absolutely crucial here, you need to use the open note to almost bounce back into the fretted note. To get it right, I slowed the whole thing down and then worked on speeding it up.
A |-----------------------------|------------------------|
E |--4p0-0-5p0-0-7---5--4--5--4-|--2p0-0-4p0---0-5---4-2-|
C |-----------------------------|------------------------|
G |-----------------------------|------------------------|
