What do you play just for fun?
 

I've just started back playing guitar after over a more then 30 year absence. An important part of my practice routine if my "free time". I pick project music I want to learn and play. Also, the primary objective of taking up guitar is to play for enjoyment (mostly myself and my wife).

I'm wondering what do others play for their own enjoyment - in particular those that are "intermediate" skills and experience. NOTE: While I used to sing, the voice is shot, so I'm really hoping to get ideas on instrumental arrangements.

Looking forward to hear what others play...
Thanks

I'll start with what I've started playing for fun (you'll note none are instrumentals - I play along with the soundtracks for now)
Ed Sherran - "Perfect", "Thinking Out Loud"
"Wagon Wheel" - I play along with the Old Crow sound track
"Sweet Caroline"
and working on "Norwegian Wood"

An instrumental that's not too hard to learn and is a lot of fun: Elizabeth Cotten's arrangement of "Vestapol".

https://youtu.be/S4EA8DNjxx4

My favorites "Babe I'm gonna leave you", "Layla" acoustic version-the intro sounds so much more difficult than it is, and "Black River Killer".

I had a similar lay-off from playing full time at a fairly advanced level (both finger style and with a flat pick) and returned for fun about 6 years ago. My favorite finger-pick tune (a la E. Cotten/Mississippi John) has to be "Shortnin' Bread". No real changes, just endless variations.

My "coat hook" tune, to which I return to frame new tonal ideas, is "Nearer My God to Thee". 6 years in on my second go-'round and I'm still finding new ways to play it through. My best advice is to let the music come to you, do what you can...what feels good...and enjoy the journey without worrying about where you'll end up.

Good luck.

One Note Samba

Kids songs, mostly. Stuff my Littles will sing along with.

Jeff - cool idea (littles sing along). What do you play? Would love to get some ideas for things to play for my grandssons.

Any and everything. Broadway show tunes, film scores and I play along with commercials when they come on TV. Keeps the ear sharp.

Everything I do is fun. I can't imagine playing, otherwise. I don't do requests if I don't like them. That would not be fun.

Did you work out the arrangement yourself, or get it from somewhere else? Any videos/recordings available? I'd love to learn to play some Jobim.

I like to have a couple of tunes to work on at a time. Started working on "Almost Cut My Hair."

And working on finishing up "Piece of my Heart." Don't quite have it at the record tempo yet, and the solos where he goes nuts on one or two strings are not down yet, timing wise.

Both on the electric mainly, though I like to practice the same things on acoustic too, if it is not too far up the neck.

Now days the only stuff I play is fun stuff. Fun to me. Believe me it took years to come up with stuff that's fun to me as I got rid of allot of stuff I used to do to entertain people.
I play country blues rags and stuff that sounds like early piano players. Mostly blues and show tunes if I want to sing.

I like Al Petteway's music. He has the tab for this and a bunch others on his web site for $5 each. A lot of his things are too fast for me so I pick and choose carefully what I will learn, :) This tune is only three pages long so I may have it decent for a recording in a couple of weeks if I don't get overworked by my wife, lol.



And I also like music like this, a cover of Masaaki Kishibe tune "Time Travel" by Daria. Generally I play the slower stuff but this one is neat. I'm learning it both with and without the percussive by extending the length of the note preceding the percussion.



I learn them, and then forget them as I go on to the next one. I just play for fun, can't sing, so everything is an instrumental.

Everything I play, I play for fun.

Hey! A topic I can relate too. I played nothing but blues and blues rock for 15 years straight and then stopped playing altogether for 20 years. After almost 2 years back into it I still like to play the blues and blues rock. However for fun, I like to play Beatles songs