Pleasantly surprised!

[TBman]

Usually the opposite happens to me. Something sounds like it would be easy to learn and it ties my fingers up when I try it.

I can be a little impatient though with unreasonable expectations at times.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Cecil6243

Same here. Ironically I find once I get to singing AND playing, the singing cements my memorization of the guitar parts to know where I'm at with songs that repeat sections like most of them do.

I had a similar experience recently with a complicated Bert Jansch arrangement.

I'm not really a singer, and it often seems to me with complicated guitar accompaniments to songs that it's hard enough getting the guitar part down, and then singing on top is a whole other skill!

But with his cover of The January Man, I found that the way he sang it tied directly into the rhythms of the guitar part. I.e., the metre (time signature) kept changing, mixing bars of 2, 3 or 4 beats in what seemed a fairly random way. But because the vocal did the same thing - following intuitive speech rhythms - I found that singing while I played (as well as my voice allows!) made the guitar part slot in more comfortably. It showed that it began with the vocal (the original song was unaccompanied vocal), and he arranged the guitar part to fit around the voice. So the one supported the other.

That's not always the case, mind. With Dick Gaughan's arrangement of Now Westlin Winds, which I transcribed years ago, the vocal rhythms seem quite disconnected from the guitar patterns, and I never managed to get it to feel as natural as he clearly does.

But in general, on your OP, I agree with rick-slo: "practice reduces complexity". Or rather, I'd say it "reduces difficulty."

In the old Chinese saying, "a 1,000 mile journey begins with a single step." "Complexity" and "difficulty" end up translating to "a series of simple stages".
Pull apart something complex, and it ends up being composed of simple parts. The work then comes in sticking with it to string all those simple elements together - slow and steady, for as long as it takes.

That's the ultimate test: do you have the time and the patience to stick with it that long? Do you lose interest in it before you get it done? That's happened to me lots of times!
But I don't see it as a huge problem, because there's always countless other great pieces of music out there to get into. The time spent on the unfinished tune is not wasted, because your dexterity and knowledge is increasing all the time - i.e., you can put it down to a practice exercise!

[Cecil6243]

Originally Posted by BillyH

Lot of wisdom in these words!!!

For sure!