First song you learned that wowed you?
 

Hope this is the right area for this.

Just wondering as a beginner, that was the first "hard" (for your abilities) song you learned and that once you got it down pat, amazed you at how much you had progressed?

Mine was Reckless by Aaron Watson. The verses were super easy. Nothing but G over and over and over. The chorus was tough. It very quickly goes from D-Em-C-G-Em-C-D-Em-Am-G-D-Am-D and back to G for the verse.

I'm still a beginner, but once I was able to play the chorus almost effortlessly, it absolutely amazed me.

I don’t know that wowed is the word to describe it in my case, but when I started playing guitar many moons ago I taught myself “Kathy’s Song” by Paul Simon. Learning it by ear from the “stereo”.
Taught me a lot, especially that playing better guitar is mostly about the control hand, in my case the right.
Learning that one tune turned on a lot of lights for me.

Right now I’m working on Here Comes the Sun. I’ve got the eight bar intro figured out, but I can still only get through it perfectly maybe twenty percent of the time. It’s really fun playing something that pulls the melody out of the chords instead of just strumming away. I’m also working through David Hamburger’s Thirty Blues Fingerstyle Licks You Must Know. I’m finding that learning the steady bass style is really helpful to the kind of flat picking that happens in the Beatles song.

Way back when in college I taught myself the Don McLean Castles in the Air/Three Fights Up mash up from his Live Solo album. I was an accomplished Travis picker early but I remember figuring this thing out as a real effort. It was a great song to play in the ubiquitous Coffee houses back then.

Can still play it but can’t remember all the words! (Hate that!)

Has to be Stairway To Heaven. I learned it soon after came out. In 1972 it was still a fresh new, great song by a great band.

For me, it would be guitar instrumental tunes, not "songs" as such. My favourite songs were always pretty simple ones, at least at the beginning (Dylan, blues, folk, etc).
My source of accomplishment in the early days was fingerstyle guitar - e.g., getting Angie worked out, and various other tracks on Bert Jansch's debut LP. Also ragtime pieces, mostly from Stefan Grossman records (Dallas Rag, Delia, etc). And of course, Dylan's fancier guitar tunes like Don't Think Twice and Girl of the North Country. And Donovan. (Hey it was the 1960s...)

I.e., for me, there was a distinction between "songs" (lyrics, melody, chord sequence) and "guitar technique", which only applied to certain specific songs or instrumentals. I was into songwriting as much as guitar playing, but learning those songs wasn't hard at all. It was the fingerstyle guitar that presented the exciting and satisfying challenges.

I still wouldn't say the emotion I had at the time was "wow", or amazement at how well I'd done. Naturally I'd be pleased with myself, but I'd be moving on to something else, just enjoying the whole process.

Dust In The Wind by Kansas for me. I am still amazed that I am able to play it now. [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

The tune that awakened me to the world of flat picking acoustic guitar was Big Sciota off of Bryan Sutton's 'Not To Far From The Tree'.

That whole album is a lesson in flat picking duets.

D

Mine was "Deal" by Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter.

It had a couple of extra chords than the other tunes I knew, and a shuffle rhythm. When I nailed run in the intro I felt like maybe I was getting somewhere! It still play it often, several decades later :)

Wish You Were Here.
Learned a simple version early on and it was a real confidence booster.

Roll in my Sweet Baby's Arms.
My first flatpicking/Carter style song.

Mood For A Day (Steve Howe). I learned it by ear and it was a huge milestone at the time.

"Stew Ball"!!
Fall of '66......never played guitar before and now I'm Kinda doing this song. It was the moment I realized maybe I could do something with this guitar thing after all. I think it was the Em chord which did a little thing with a 6th (high e third fret?).....and then that D chord dropping off to a D sus, I believe. Got me all excited!!! LOL!

Aura Lee, picking out the melody
Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms, alternate picking and strumming
Billy In The Lowground, flat pick simple version of both parts

It wasn't the first song I played, but the first one I Learned fingerstyle was Dust In The Wind by Kansas... turned out so beautiful that I still play it today :)

I think the first song I learned to play that was really a challenge and still is today was Noel (Paul) Stookey's "A'Soalin". Like Paul Stookey, a person needs to learn to play the bass part and treble part together while also singing the song.

I was still in high school when I figured this out, so I would guess I was about 17 years old.

- Glenn

For me it's probably Little Martha. I made a pass at it after playing for about a year and knew so little that I found a tab that only had one of the guitar parts. I didn't realize it was 2 guitars and couldn't understand why it didn't sound right. I dropped it for a year until I found a Mark Hanson version (recommended on AGF) that put it all into one. It was relatively quick after that and I still play it every couple weeks just to keep it from getting rusty.

In 1966 I was just learning to play a few chords on a borrowed Stella guitar. The novelty song Winchester Cathedral was popular (go figure!) and I made up a finger stye version to play for my grandmother. She was amused and I was amazed that my fingers could cooperate to make a recognizable tune.

Twinkle twinkle little star.

About 1971/72 when I was 8 or 9 my sister who was about 15 at the time showed me a few basic chords & then how to play House of the Rising Sun on her nylon string. Turning those chords into a song no matter how bad it sounded was a pivotal moment. The motivation was there. Usual old chestnuts like Smoke on the Water, Stairway to Heaven etc. followed from there.

When I re-discovered guitar in my early fifties I started to learn some fingerstyle guitar. I had a teacher who suggested that I push myself out of variations of the Travis pick. With her help I learned Sandwood Down to Kyle by John Renbourn. It was absolutely magical when I got to the point where I could sing and play it all the way through. Such a beautiful song and John's arrangement is really wonderful. It is like that one great golf shot that keeps you coming back again and again to re-create that satisfying feeling.

Best,
Jayne

Same here. Because it was the first thing I learned that was really recognizable. It was so cool to play that riff and have it sound more or less "right."

It was years...heck maybe last year (?) When I finally learned the intro solo.
I can play it note for note but somehow it still sounds more or less "wrong" :)

When I was a teenager pretty much anything I was able to get down and play through with my friend Andrew and then later our band.

In modern times once I started fingerpicking it was first full tune I learned in that raggy blues style, Big Bill Broonzy's Saturday Night Rub.

Martin Tallstrom's "He's not Heavy, He's my Brother". Never thought i could play such a nice piece. Took a while to learn, but gave me the confidence I could learn some more advance pieces. Now working the guitar solo that Lindsey Buckingham plays in "Landslide". I also learned his live version of "Go Insane" that I play almost every time I pick up my guitar.

Maybe wowed is the wrong adverb and Suntan of Swing might not be the first, but maybe my greatest.

Learned to pick Travis-style by needle-dropping the intro to Baez’s “There But For Fortune.” Revelatory, for me.

A while ago, Steel Guitar Rag.

Probably the first tune that I impressed myself with was either Landslide or perhaps "I will follow you into the dark" - both were early-on after I stopped using a pick all the time, and fingerstyle really helped turn a light bulb for me.

Well, David Gilmour is TOUGH act to follow. I've played that tune thousands (tens of thousands??) of times and it sounds good - but NOT like David plays it...