Help with Paul Simon’s ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’

[BobbyMocha]

I’ve recently been re-examining Paul Simon’s playing style and after hearing a young singer named Josh Turner perform ‘Still Crazy’ I’d like to give it a try.

The sheet music for that song (with chords and finger picking pattern) is difficult to find. I tried to purchase it from the MusicNites.com and SheetMusicDirect but neither has what I’m looking for. YouTube has some tutorials but I haven’t scene one yet that I find helpful

Do anyone here have an arrangement of the song with the chords and picking notes they’d be willing to share.

I love Simon’s guitar playing and have tried in the past to learn some of his but he’s difficult IMO. The more I pay attention to what he’s doing the more impressed I am.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by BobbyMocha

I’ve recently been re-examining Paul Simon’s playing style and after hearing a young singer named Josh Turner perform ‘Still Crazy’ I’d like to give it a try.

Hi BM

Josh Turner's you referenced is excellent. It's new this week, and had over 70,000 hits in the first 3 days.




I taught fingerstyle guitar for about 40 years locally.

Part of it was teaching players to read hands, identify keys, so they could dissect videos recordings to learn fingerstyle pieces. There are many great arrangements which there are no TAB, charts or scores for. I also taught them to modify inversions to be able to play songs with outrageous fingerings.

And they all understood basic major, minor chords and scales. Most could transpose on the fly, and could identify chord progressions spontaneously (if I asked in the middle of a recording).

If you focus as you grow on chord structure, 5 major and minor keys (C-A-G-E and D major and their relative minor keys) and lots of variations of chords and their inversions it will pay strong dividends down the line. Then learn to identify and replicate melody in two different octaves for each song, and how to harmonize melodies and you'll be ahead of the curve.

When I was young and started dissecting techniques I'd pull out the cassette and pause-rewind-and fiddle around till I learned what people were playing. Loved it when video came along. It was like free arrangements!

Josh's arrangement is clever, and certainly not un-learnable. It's a medium hard piece, but certainly not at the level of something like Tommy Emmanuel's "Michelle" with all the faux-harp mixtures of open harmonics, touch harmonics and fingered notes.

Josh is posting videos where the sound is sometimes captured using lo-fi gear (he records a lot of his mobile videos on a Zoom H2) and modest camera gear (Canon SL2/200D).

It's nice he seems to be making music which is musical, and making his arrangements accessible to the music community. I don't know if he sells scores of his arrangements.

Have fun learning this stuff!!

[BobbyMocha]

Thanks LJ !!

[lpa53]

Originally Posted by BobbyMocha

I’ve recently been re-examining Paul Simon’s playing style and after hearing a young singer named Josh Turner perform ‘Still Crazy’ I’d like to give it a try..

As ljguitar posted, that video is great. I'm planning on learning from it myself. Don't forget that YouTube allows you to slow down videos without changing the pitch. I use that feature all the time to figure out left hand fingering and then create chord charts using a great free app I have. Figuring out picking from a video isn't as easy, but once you get the chord positions your ear helps find the picking.

[RockyRacc00n]

I clicked on this post thinking I might suggest viewing Josh Turner's video and it seems you were already on to it. Yeah, he is great. I don't think there is a video he did that I don't like. Enjoy learning the song.