Yesterday at my guitar lesson we started working on the solo in Arriving Somewhere But Not Here. It’s incredible what a good teacher can help you with.
This is some of the tastiest guitar playing out there. The smoothness of the playing is really special. There’s a lot of “touch” in this playing. I have looked up tabs, but they never really sounded quite right, but they were also so close.
So my teacher immediately showed me a few technique things to mess around with that were critical. Slowing the song down and talking it out, we both agreed that we think all the tabs are wrong. There’s a note that’s being shown as voiced that’s just not there– I started playing with him and we sort of discovered/determined together that we actually think there are some notes being allowed to ring out and generate a minor third interval and that’s what people are hearing. The notes are different and played differently, in a way that feels more natural to play. And a bar or two later, there’s another instance of letting a note ring out while hitting that minor third so it makes sense musically.
Within 15 minutes of picking up the song, with plenty of work to do on my part, I already can get my playing significantly closer to the recording. I learned some fingering patterns that are necessary to use to get that fluidity, and we even applied some ear training and theory to figure out what the right way, or at least what sounds and feels more right, is to play the song.
I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years and couldn’t have accomplished what I did in 15 minutes in weeks. And now I get to practice the correct way to play this instead of being completely unable to connect what the notes seemingly are to how the song sounds.
Just getting to talk music like this is so helpful for my own growth and motivation.