Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: lamarca
Date: 22 May 00 - 05:36 PM

I fell off the ladder operators, Peter - I just couldn't think in or outside the box...

Seriously, the most difficult thing about learning any song or tune is making it sound like music, rather than a laboriously learnt series of notes and words. Once you've got the words and tune down, you're not done! You need to practise, to live inside the song (or tune) so it feels like a part of you, so the phrasing and rhythm and ornaments and words all join to make real music. Otherwise, it's just a sterile exercise and a way of showing off technique devoid of feeling. (And I've been guilty of doing that more than once!)

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: Mbo
Date: 22 May 00 - 07:05 PM

Yes! Prelude is C Sharp Minor!!! BUM BUM BUM! BUM BUM BUM!!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: Jim Krause
Date: 23 May 00 - 01:10 PM

Without doubt, St. Louis Tickle. I still haven't mastered it after near twenty years or more. Another close second, although considerably more simple in its chord formations is Blind Blake's West Coast Blues. Been working on that one since 1974. I play it, but not note for note the way Blind Blake did.

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: Vixen
Date: 23 May 00 - 01:55 PM

I'm in the same boat as Rick and Bert.

My most difficult piece (so far) is one of my own. It was the first melody I wrote on the guitar (instead of with my voice or the recorder), and it took me nearly two years to learn to sing. When I took it to my vocal coach, he told me that it was a challenging melody, and singing it would be as much work as splitting wood. I had to go at it note by note, measure by measure, and then, once I could "just do it," I had to go back and find all the feeling I had for the words and the melody way back when I wrote it.

What made it so challenging? The intervals. The breath control. The range. The confidence. It takes all my concentration. I can't perform it even now without a careful and extended warm-up. There is no way I could play my guitar while I'm singing it. I am now thoroughly sick of it, but I still love it and can't stop myself from singing it in places like the shower and the car!

V

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 24 May 00 - 10:51 AM

The hardest I've ever tried to learn was one of my own -- a classical/flamenco guitar piece that I wrote when I was sixteen (some 26 years ago!) that had a couple of passages that still give me pause. What made it so hard, of course, is that it was my own, so I didn't feel I had the option of giving up on it in favor of something easier. And, prima donna that I am, once it was written I wasn't about to change it to make it easier.

I also remember having a pretty hard time with "The Last Steam Engine Train" by John Fahey, learned off a Leo Kottke record. Probably there was an easier way to play it than what I was trying to do, but it was pretty tough to get all the right notes in the right places and still maintain that beautiful percussive train sound that Kottke did so well.

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 24 May 00 - 11:52 AM

Hey there Vixen, you're welcome to climb into the boat with bert and I. We may drown, but we'll do it "Originally".

Rick

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 May 00 - 12:11 PM

John "Big Tree" Song...Running back on Whitehall's High School football team, made first string all-state, 3 years in a row......Very tough to bring down.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: Vixen
Date: 24 May 00 - 03:27 PM

Rick--

Row, Row, Row is a different thread...

But I must say I'm proud to be in such original company!

V

Subject: RE: Most Difficult Song You've Tackled?
From: keltcgrasshoppper
Date: 24 May 00 - 08:17 PM

The Name Escapes Me Reel by Kenny Chaisson..and The Mathmatician as played by J.P. Cormier..KGH