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Posts: 1483
Location: Michigan | A couple to think about ???
Classical Gas - Mason Williams
The Clap - Steve Howe The Yes
What songs piss you off the most because after 100 years of trying to get them down & practice practice practice on them you still can't get them right !!!
BUT YOU KEEP ON TRYING EVERYDAY ! GWB |
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Posts: 803
Location: Avondale, AZ | Foggy mountain breakdown |
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Posts: 486
Location: North Carolina | Classical Gas - not hard but it's a crowd pleaser. Foggy Mountain Breakdown - not hard just repetitious.
What I find challenging, and therefore interesting, is arranging a song for solo presentation. Sometimes this involves altered tunings or rethinking the entire tune. Staying true to the core of the song, making it interesting for the listener yet staying within the boundaries of you abilities - I've been able to do this for every song I've attempted save one.
For forty years or so I've been working on a solo guitar (no vocal) arrangement of "Goldfinger" for no other reason than the piece interests me. I just can't get that SOB to flow to the point I would play it for anyone. I'll keep at it. |
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Posts: 2487
| Ahhh Took my nemesis.... Steve Howe's "The Clap" You really need to develope the use of a Pick and your other two fingers, simultaneously, for stuff like this.
Steve has this almost quirky kind of a style that does not follow in many cases the musical standard when it comes to his music. That is the reason I admire his work so very much and it is the reason he takes a Devil of a time to learn for me anyway.
There is nothing like working out the individual notes to a song that you have had to learn "by ear" or "by sight" and you have struggled for some time achieve this complicated phrase. It is such a great feeling of accomplishment when your fingers gain the muscle memory and it all starts to flow. Ain't it great playing guitar!
Randy |
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Posts: 183
Location: Denver, PA USA | Any of Phil Keaggy's songs. He is incredable. |
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November 2003
Posts: 11039
Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | When someone figures THIS Sample track #7 out, let me know...
Mind you, the sample doesn't contain the guitar solos. |
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March 2003
Posts: 127
Location: Corvallis, OR | Adam Fulara uses his fingers, not a pick. But employs so-called "tapping style" to sound the strings, and anyone of his pieces appears very very difficult
Listen to him playing any one of the Bach pieces on this site.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search=fulara&search_type=search_vid...
Amazing, but too far out in left field for my ability. (And the goofy facial grimacing is a show in it's self) |
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March 2003
Posts: 555
Location: Wooster, Ohio | Maybe not the hardest but, In my youth I was alway mesmorized by David Crosby's Guenivere. Years later in an interview in a guitar magazine they gave the tuning and the tabs. Worked on that and thought man, I did it. Never played it since.
Steve |
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March 2005
Posts: 12759
Location: Boise, Idaho | Any of them where I try to use a tab. I've been working on Classical Gas for 6 months and only have the first page down. I have several tabs and all of them are different.
I haven't tried enough hard ones to know what's really difficult, but the most frustrating are those that don't have a repeated pattern. I can pick with all 5 fingers, but not when there is no pattern. |
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October 2005
Posts: 803
Location: Avondale, AZ | F.A. replied to mine:
Foggy Mountain Breakdown - not hard just repetitious.
It was a stab at a banjoke.
I haven't been that deep into accoustic music in a long time. I have a weird style of picking on my electric. I use a pick between my thumb and forfinger and use the other three fingers as needed.
I had a band mate in the early days that would pick in such a way to get a boogy woogy piano sound. |
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February 2005
Posts: 11840
Location: closely held secret | Anything involving more than 2 fingers. |
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January 2006
Posts: 48
Location: Spokane, WA | There's a song by Andrew York called "Andecy" that I've been trying to get down for a long time. The actual notes and chords are easy enough, but it's got a real laid back, almost mysterious groove to it that's been nearly impossible for me to replicate. Of course, anything by Leo Kottke whups my butt too. |
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March 2002
Posts: 15676
Location: SoCal | The hardest fingerpicking song is whatever I'm working on at the moment..... |
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October 2005
Posts: 5331
Location: Cicero, NY | Originally posted by Waskel:
Anything involving more than 2 fingers. ...or more than two strings... :rolleyes: |
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March 2005
Posts: 12759
Location: Boise, Idaho | Same here, Paul. I was just trying Layla, which I have in a Hal Leonard book. As usual, the tab doesn't sound much like the recording and I can't quite figure out all 3 notes, if there are 3, to the chords in the intro. My ear picks up the top and bottom notes to a chord, but I have problems with the middle ones. |
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November 2005
Posts: 4832
Location: Campbell River, British Columbia | Anji
Both Side Now
(the instrumental on NGDB's Will The Circle Be Unbroken
......No, I'll take that back 'cos i used to be able to play Both Sides Now....
...Anji, properly, never. |
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November 2004
Posts: 37
Location: Warwick, RI | Yes, I was going to say Anji as well. I have a version by Davey Graham, who wrote the tune, Bert Jansch, who refined it, and Paul Simon who threw it on "Sounds of Silence," when he was maybe 20 or so. I have watched Arlen Roth play it on a video, and I still can't get the dead thumb syncopation down, just seem to be missing the necessary gene.
Ron |
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November 2005
Posts: 4832
Location: Campbell River, British Columbia | Yeah, the thumb/bass part seems impossible while keeping the melody on track.
Oh well, it still feels really cool to play... even just close. It swings, hangs, and does humourous little turns... |
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August 2002
Posts: 8307
Location: Tennessee | First Alternate ... there is a really great instrumental version of Goldfinger on the album Surf 'n Burn by The Blue Stingrays. Great surf album by a great band ... which in reality is a one-off project by The Heartbreakers whilst TP was off doing his solo work. The liner notes are as equally inventive as those on the first Wilburys album. Joestonebobbo sez check it out. |
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May 2005
Posts: 486
Location: North Carolina | Thanks stonebobbo. The trick is to get it down as a solo guitar piece. There are only a couple of small spots I haven't gotten smooth yet. I'll beat them into submission someday. |
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November 2005
Posts: 1126
Location: Omaha, NE | I've never been able to get "El Choclo" to fall under my fingers. Most of Mark Knopfler's stuff is out of my league. And of course, I don't even try to cover most Chet Atkins songs.
On the other hand, I can still lay down the Beatles standards (Blackbird and Here Comes the Sun) like nobody's business, and have a devistating version of "Never Going Back Again". :-)
Jeff |
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November 2004
Posts: 4413
| You should listen to Martin Taylor's album of his versions of Art Tatum piano pieces.
Nobody mentioned above (great players that they are) is even in the same league as Martin Taylor when it comes to fingerpicking. You know what Chet said about him. "The Best. Ever." |
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What do you think the HARDEST "" finger picking "" guitar song is to play ???.
