This one is an exercise in picking, which I don't do very much of - I either play fingerstyle or just use the back of my longish index finger nail to strum out chords, but this has led me to discover that this creates kind of a lazy, mumbling tone and doesn't access at all the brightness that my super nice guitar can make.
Vocally not very challenging thanks to all the practice on that last pop song. I think the longer I stay in Japan, the more country I'm becoming...
I learned this song for my friend Andy who's from Argentina and we were first roommates in Niseko three years ago. When I showed it to him it turns out he had never heard of it before that wanker...
Tried not to over sing. Tried to keep it light but got the idea of making each verse more "country" than the last one.
Take aways
- Accuracy with a pick takes a long time but you just gotta keep on picking...
- Songs that don't have much melodic variety leave you vulnerable to confusing lyrics or forgetting where you are especially if you're trying to incorporate rhythmic contrast or other tricks to mix it up. Its a weird space you're trying to get to where you don't want to be on auto pilot but it also doesn't work very well for me to concentrate intensely on coming verses or licks - it ends up just sounding stiff. This just takes time until you're just very very familiar with how the tune goes. I call it seasoning, but how do you accelerate this process? To me the #1 symptom that you're vulnerable is speeding up - and just playing with a metronome wont save you. You just have to put the time in until you know it backwards and forwards and can think about what you're doing and not think about it at the same time...
Ishida