More guitar progress. For the last few weeks, I have theoretically been learning to play an arrangement of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, as played by Rodrigo y Gabriela, a phenomenally talented acoustic guitar duo, who, I have learned are somewhat quicker and more experienced players than me! I can sort of play the first few minutes, but I think this is going to have to be a more long term goal…
Needing to console myself for this failure, I set my sights on some more achievable goals. To continue to boost my finger-picking skills, I learned the Beatles track “Because” from the Abbey Road album, E.L.P’s “Lucky Man”, REM’s one decent song, “Everybody Hurts”, the beautiful, but fairly simple “Fast Car” by Tracey Chapman, and also “Imagine” by John Lennon – normally played on the piano, but sounds lovely arranged for guitar too.
Having played these tracks to death, yesterday, I set myself a new challenge: “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton. Such a beautiful song! So far, I have got the intro sussed. Today, I aim to work on the verse part. As this will almost certainly take some time to master, I also added the hilarious Beatles track “Norwegian Wood” to my playlist, which I got the hang of yesterday. Very fun to play indeed – and the lyrics always make me laugh.