Songs, strumming & bored

Out of interest what is the song?

The Sound of Silence. I’m so happy to be learning this!

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Some good versions out there Judi.

I did a hybrid version of the old S&G and this

The end result ? Our Open Mic 14

As @CT frequently says, find your own voice and go your own way. :sunglasses:

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Toby

Super cover of a great song. Very enjoyable.

Brian

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Thank you for both of those, Toby! This is one of the reasons I love this song - as you say, there are many ways to interpret it. I love that you played it on an SG!

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As I said at the open mic itself, the SG was a nod to Simon and Garfunkel

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Likewise. I didn’t really get fingerstyle in the earlier courses but have found recently that I quite like it!! In fact I would go so far to say enjoying it! I have to blame @Richard_close2u for this and his excellent fingerstyle vintage clubs which started me off again.

I have used the tabs from Justin’s lessons for The Sound of Silence and found it to be not to bad, although still working on some of the transitions.

Have also started learning Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. So far so good.

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I wonder why we think of “fingerstyle” as its own type of guitar playing…

To me, playing guitar is using the fingers and hands in some combination of strumming, picking, tapping, slurs and whatever to develop the sound you want.

Unless you play strictly background chord rhythm in a band, and never solo, never play melody and only crank out chord rhythms, you will play or mix in fingerstyle.

I understand starting with strumming, and learning the broader rhythm early on is important, but after a while, as the thread title states, that gets boring.

Especially for those of us who play by themselves and don’t sing much. Without bringing in a way to express melodic structure, the music lacks.

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I guess because, in my case, I’m using my fingers and not a pick.

Good point, I have completely forgotten that people play with picks! D’oh!

Good to see that sarcasm is not dead :slight_smile:

I have felt like this as well, but in my case I did not practice strumming enough, and my rhythm playing is not as it should be.

There are lots of different strumming patterns and rhythms, for example try playing rhythm to Santana ‘Samba Pa Ti’ only the outro guitar solo is played in double time over just G am Am, but it’s a tricky strum pattern with muting. You could also learn the solos, it took me a while but I enjoy playing it, often with mistakes.

Another good song IMHO is Pink Floyd’s ‘ Wish you were here’, as Justin would say it is a grower. Justin has a lesson on it, it took me ages to get the strumming right on the first section so I kept time and could play the riffs properly. I am pretty certain that Justin simplifies the Verse/Chorus strum pattern which I found out after I learnt it, also there are many tabs with it wrong. If you you decide to have a go, once you are getting confident have a look at WYWH , possibly the most accurate I have found to date.

If you like blues you could try BB King ‘The Thrill Is Gone’, there are simplified versions but he plays it at the 7 fret so you would have to start barre chords if you haven’t already. It uses simplified 4 string chords Bm and Em7 with tricky rhythmic slides of partial chords, and there is a nice riff between each chord change, you would also have to learn G7 at 10th fret and F#7#9 at 9th fret. It’s an interesting rhythm but not too hard to get, once you have the verse/chorus you could try the 2 solos which are not too long to learn.

Just some ideas that might help😃

In addition to what people have already said, I would try some unusual strumming patterns and/or rhythms, or some 16th note strumming, if you haven’t yet. ‘Free Fallin’ comes to mind, or ‘What’s up?’ I always have a lot of fun trying to puzzle out different rhythms^^

You can also look beyond Justin’s lessons for songs that resonate with you more. There’s a ton of tutorials on youtube; I’ve found one for every song I wanted to try, even in different languages. It’s kinda fun to mesh them up, too, take something from this tutorial, combine it with something from another, et voilà, you have your own version.