Quote:
Originally Posted by raysachs
I checked the next to last box, but it’s really a combination of the next to last and last. I don’t gig, so I don’t bother to memorize chords or lyrics - I always have my iPad open to the song and I read the lyrics and chords as I play. I obviously have to play a song a number of times before I really get a feel for it, and muscle memory takes over with the chord changes at some point, but I still see the chords on the iPad if needed.
I play chords up and down the neck on electric, but on acoustic I mostly play cowboy chords because I just love the sound of open strings ringing out. And on most songs I play the rhythm on acoustic while I “sing” (or should I say “vocalize”?), so I mostly simplify the songs so I can play them in my preferred manner. I’m not particularly good but any songs do is gonna be recognizable - I’m not THAT bad! But to a certain extent, I bring something of myself to it because I don’t know how not to. I’m singing it, I’m playing the rhythm the way I feel it, so it’s gonna sound like my version, for better or worse. I perform it to sound like the original in my head, but when I’m done, if you listen back to back, mine never sounds much like the original…
-Ray
|
This, especially if trying to learn a song that was originaly done by a whole electric band on a single acoustic guitar, sometimes things need to be simplified. A long blazing guitar solo will often be shortened, or even aranged to omit it. I've turned punk songs into country songs, and metal songs into blues numbers, as well as making major chord substitutions to get it to sound "bigger" on the acoustic, and I would still claim to have learned the song.
Rather alot of us on here talk about playing the song "Comfortably Numb", I doubt most of us play all the solo's in their entirity note for note, and honestly it isnt going to be that sonicly pleasing to listen to a solo acoustic guitar play single note runs for that amount of time.