The Driving of the Year Nail--help

[jbhiller]

Good Day All,

I was wondering if anyone had a good arrangement of Leo Kottke's "The Driving of the Year Nail"?

I'm ready to give it a run and know some of it is going to be very difficult. But, last night I tuned down two whole steps and found that the bars in G (in main theme) and the run up from C to D7 weren't too bad and I can work on them to get up to speed-_well maybe 75% of speed.

I was hoping to find a nice arrangement before I went down this rabbit hole. That way, I'd be trying to learn good stuff rather than have to correct bad later. I'm not fussy. The arrangement can be close--just not totally wrong in spots.

Any help we be super appreciated!!!

[walternewton]

Check out tabpigs.org

[GBS]

Or stropes.com - there is a workshop he is hosting in about a month, where they will teach this tune, along with two other Kottke compositions.

[Professor Plum]

I e-mailed Stropes Editions last month. Apparently they will post transcriptions of both "Driving of the Year Nail" and "Watermelon" in August after the workshop is finished. I'm looking forward to both--Stropes transcriptions are a little more expensive, but in my experience the high quality and attention to detail makes them well worth it.

[GBS]

Agreed!
The only issue I have had with Stropes transcriptions are that sometimes there is no easily available recording. It appears that sometimes John recorded directly from Leo playing specifically for John's use, and that particular variation may not be what Leo did for his released recordings.
So you can get pretty close, but maybe not exactly the same as heard on a given album. It will be 100% as Leo played it. But maybe not 100% as you have heard it before!

OK. there is that other issue: Stropes transcriptions serve to illustrate just how far, far above us mere mortals Leo plays!

[jbhiller]

I took the resources provided and dove in. Then I felt a bit overwhelmed. I walked away for a week and started at it again this week.

I'm a master of the obvious here--I wanted to point out how important it is to go slowly. In working on Section A, I kept it no faster than 40-50% (and I think I'm pretty accurate on that estimate because I am using software to slowdown the song when I'm trying to practice emulating). IT REALLY HELPED.

I think it's going to be hard to nail that lick at the end of Section A, and don't even get me started on how daunting Section B feels.

The other thing I noticed is how the song follows such familiar chord types.

And finally, Leo really had his foot on the gas on this one while keeping the syncopation down. I'm not going to be physically able to play this at 100% speed at 40 years old. When I slowed the song to 80% of full speed I think it sounds great and still amazingly fast. Leo, How the hell did you play this so fast and cleanly!?