General Music Chat

Hello again to all! I have the perfect questions.

1. What is the hardest song you have ever tried to play?
2. What is the hardest song you know? (Response can be for any instrument)
3. What song are you working on learning now?

The hardest song I have ever tried to play was probably Hendrix's "Machine gun". The hardest song I know is probably Master Of Puppets by Metallica (Not hard structure, just the speed tends to bust my chops). Right now I am working on Metallica's "Orion" and Peter Frampton's "Do you feel like we do?"

A couple formations ago of the band, we learned Tull's Agualung.

I guess each of us were able to learn our parts, the timing and the breaks just took a ton of repetition to get down. Once it was there it was a fun song to play.

"Do you Feel . . . " isn't really a hard song . . . but it's a real good song, though; used to be one of my favorites.
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I used to think "Classical Gas" by Mason Williams was hard, but I just started playing w/ it last week, and it's actually not too bad. I play it with my own finger-picking style . . . a different rhythm, and with differing emphasis, but every bit as difficult.
If I skipped practicing my own stuff for a while, I'd have it down within a week. At the rate I've been working on it, though, it'll probably take me another 2-3 weeks to play it a way I like.
I'm not all about covers . . .
The hardest song I've tried, this year (besides my own stuff), is the "Brandenburg Concerto," (on guitar).
Everybody else uses a whole symphony orchestra to play it. Like I said; I tried it; but it'd take too long to learn, and after all was said and done, it wouldn't be my song anyway . . .
I don't read music. I play by ear. I have 2 versions of 'Brandenburg Concerto' to listen to, but they are different from each other.
It'll take me forever just to figure out / remember how it goes.
I choose to invest my learning time into my own music . . .
As to other guitar music.
Well . . .
Listen to some of Leo Kottke's fast finger picking songs. Not the sliding stuff, but the other stuff he plays.
Just about anything he does - if you can even find one of his disks in the stores . . .
. . . that stuff is HARD. His repetoire of chords is phenomenal . . .
Some of my originals are similar, so I know just how much practice he had to put in to learn them correctly . . .
I've got a lot of respect for Leo Kottke.
You can NOT play his music while reading the sheet music. At the speed he's playing, and with the'weird chords' he's playing, and the physical distance between the chords, you HAVE TO look at the fret-board.
Unless you don't mind flubbing a string here or there . . .a nd if you DON'T mind flubbing strings well, then . . . - then, you're no Leo Kottke.

To jump from one 'weird' chord to another, 12- 14 frets away, and grab it in an eyeblink, and NOT flub any one of the strings . . . whew . . .
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There may be only 4 or 5 guitarists in a thousand who can do what he does . . . assuming they know 400 - 600 chords to begin with . . .
Most guitarists probably can't play 250 chords or variations of chords . . .
. go up & down the neck, and count, sometime . . .
And - after listening to Leo Kottke play, remember - he's doing that on an ACOUSTIC guitar!
Damn!
It takes a pound of peeled-off callusses to learn that stuff on an acoustic,

By the way, "Aqualung" is a great song.
I love the low singing voice, too.
BTW, speaking of covers, I remember that "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" by E. John took me a while to figure out, and remember all the changes.
I learned it by ear, and then wrote down the chords. If you don't already play it, it'll take you a while to learn and memorize it . . .
If you have a copy of it, listen to it, and fart around with it . . . it's a pretty good song . . .

Fantasia Suite by Al Dimeola

Meditarain Sundance / Rio Ancho by Al Dimeola.

Frevo Resgado by Egberto Gismonti as played by Paco Delucia and John McLaughlin

Midsummers Daydream by Rick Emmet.

Franz Liszt - Transcendental Etudes

Frederic Chopin - Polonaise in Ab Major

Sergei Rachmaninoff - 3rd Piano Concerto

*Whistles* Woah, you guys posted all of the classical music. Classical is extremely complex. I remember I took a look at Beethoven's Fur Elise, and I thought to myself "I could never in ten million f**king years play those kinds of chords and strings that quick." Lmao. Yeah. The hardest stuff is always classical. But I will take a look at what you were talking about RhythmMan_BluesRockFolk .

By the way, yeah it is not too hard to play Frampton's "Do you feel like we do," but I do find some of the chords strange (New to me). Also, playing by ear is a cool trait to have. If I could play entirely by ear I would be happy, mostly I just get the tablature out (Unless there is something missing, then I put it in by ear to finish the piece). I cannot really read standard notation, especially fast. But I will take a look at those pieces you guys all brought up.

In the early days it took me forever to learn Jethro Tull's Minstrel In The Gallery. The hardest part was just remembering all the changes! I wore out a couple of LP's and a cassette learning that one. But Malmsteen's Far Beyond The Sun is probably the most demanding piece I've learned. I still have to warm-up for a while before even attempting it. I remembering thinking I was badass when I learned JS Bach's Bouree from a Frederic Noad book. Right now I just finished learning Steve Vai's Juice and that was a lot of fun. But to this day I feel it takes some of the mystique away from the song as a listener when I learn how to play some of my favorites.

AeolianReflex,

You are right about one thing, I find it takes sometimes away from certain pieces of music when I learn how to play them. I go to listen to it and lose some of the love for it. For example, I learned how to play Pretty Handsome Awkward by the Used, and I lost some of the joy in listening to it. It was the only song they did I liked.

But on another note, something I need to warm up before playing is Master of Puppets and any piece that is fast, like the intro to Colorado Bulldog by Mr. Big (Paul Gilbert).

Guitaranatomy,
Warmed up or not, if you are playing Colorado Bulldog, I humbly bow to you!

Lol. Do not bow so fast, I have only gotten to somewhat get down the large stretches at the beginning. Some of these shredders are so technical that you have to alter your entire style of playing.

By the way, "Aqualung" is a great song.
I love the low singing voice, too.
BTW, speaking of covers, I remember that "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" by E. John took me a while to figure out, and remember all the changes.
I learned it by ear, and then wrote down the chords. If you don't already play it, it'll take you a while to learn and memorize it . . .
If you have a copy of it, listen to it, and fart around with it . . . it's a pretty good song . . .

We used to play that, stopped cuz our vocals were pretty weak on it.

When I first saw this 2 songs came to mind. YYZ by Rush and going way back Roundabout by Yes.

But the more I think about it almost any cover song even the simple ones are hard cause youve got to inject that thing in them that makes them interesting. I used to play with another guitarist who was awesome, but he couldnt put life into something like Sweet Home Alabama or Lagrange. I think the problem was he felt like he was playing below his abilitys so he didnt put much into it. Recently Ive been auditioning for a few cover bands and one of them had this dude quit who I always have looked up to as a guitarist. After playing with these people one of them said Ive never heard those songs played that way. At first I took this as an insult and I said, Was I that bad? The guy said Oh no, you sounded fresh and like you wanted to play the songs. All the songs were familiar but a lot of them I had never played, of course some I just ad libbed on.

I guess we all work hard to nail our parts on a hard song, but maybe we should try harder on the simple stuff and breath a little life into it.

I can see what you mean JW. Somethines you just learn the piece, you do not actually feel it. If you learn to put life into a piece that is when it is great. When I know I am feeling music is when I am improvising solos over it. I will take a piece like Metallica's "Fade to Black" for instance, just solo throughout the entire song. I also do good with feeling Jazz and Blues guitar pieces. However, if I am playing something I just learned for the Hell of it, like Bulldog Colorado for example (I only know the very intro and that is hard as hell, lmao), I have trouble with it. There is no feel in the piece, so it is just like picking up a guitar and striking random notes. I apologize if this response is a bit jumbled, did not know any other way to phrase it.


Peace out, GuitarAnatomy.

Good comments.
I used to play Roundabout, years ago, and I took me a while to be able to do it.
But, when it first came out, I hadn't been playing long enough to attempt the whole song. I could do parts of it easily enough.
Roundabout is NOT a song you'd risk blowing, in public . . .
At the time, memorizing it wasn't my problem though. It's a fast song, and it took me quite a while to hit the right sequence of notes.
Some leads you can kind-of do anything you please. But Roundabout has some highly recognizable parts, and if you don't play those parts the exact same way, then it's probably more because you didn't learn it right, than 'artisitic ingenuity.'
Screw around with the wrongs parts of this song, and people will fling bloody snots at you.
I remember playing a few parts REAL slow during practice, over and over, until my fingers remembered the parts.
It didn't seem to make any difference that 'I' knew the right notes; . . . my fingers had to go there without my thinking about it . . .
Some songs you can figure out on the fly, and some songs you can improvise, but you can do neither with Roundabout.
This is still one of my all-time favorite songs, even after all these . . . decades . . .
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Good example, jw123