Musicians...Toughest Song You Ever Had to Learn?

[Dave2112]

Just curious all you amateur and semi-pro musicians out there.

What was the one song (or piece of music) that was a true bitch for you to get under your fingers? The one that you almost gave up on, even though it felt great when you finally nailed it?

I'd have to say mine (as a bassist) was when one of my old bands got the brilliant idea to include Paul Simon's "Call Me Al" in the set list. Have you ever actually listened to the bass line in that thing?!? Slides, pops, two-handed tap sections and it's all over the damn place. Not to mention that you have to get the tone just right and insert a carefully balanced flanger in and out of it all through the song. That sumbitch took me over a month to get right. And I though YYZ was hard...

As a keyboardist, I spent a very long time getting "Hoedown" under my fingers. We did the ELP version of the Aaron Copeland classic, with a bit of a synth twist. If you ever want to really give your fingers a workout, give that one a shot.

Anyone else?

 

[Krokus]

I'd say playing the final drum rolls of the tool song schism....to this day I still can't pull it off perfectly, but it's damn near close.

 

[drew70]

I'm mostly about keyboards. Hardest tune for me to nail was "Scatterbrain" by Jeff Beck. It's in the key of B flat minor, and it has a 9/8 time signature, and it's fast fast fast. It's a great finger exercise.

For guitar, I don't really push the limits as much as I should, but I remember feeling very pleased when I got down the chord progression for Hocus Pocus, by Focus. There's a fast switch from B flat to E7+9 (fondly referred to as the 'Jimi' chord) that is difficult for me to achieve in a timely fashion.

 

[tommytikl]

I have heard...

I have heard that Slashes guitar part of "Sweet Child Of Mine" by Guns N' Roses is a very challenging piece to play.

 

[GuitarPeteTklr]

Hmmm...

For me, it would have to be somewhere between "Pull Me Under" by Dream Theater or "Ready To Strike" by King Kobra. Those two are on my all-time challenge list. There are many others I have had some difficulty with, such as "Turn Up The Action" by Dokken...the muted "open A string gallup style timing" was a BEAR to transition into the chord fragments in a timely manner.

I am sure there are other Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, Tony McAlpine, John Petrucci, or George Lynch works I have failed to mention here that can be equally, if not more challenging. I have found you need to be as much an athlete as a guitarist for these type of undertakings.

Next challenge? "Erotomania" by Dream Theater...off their "Awake" CD...projected target time for mastery...six weeks? 😱

Dave, ever try to sing lead vocals while playing the riff to "Spirit Of The Radio" by Rush? 😱

 

[the_Baron]

is it difficult to play keyboard to Iron Butterfly's "inna gada na vida" - pardon the spelling.

 

[The Pianist]

Well, being a music student at Uni now (and before now even) many of my pieces are really hard being one of the best ways to get better I guess. Felt somewhat strange hearing Dave say his hardest piece on the bass took over a month to get right. Many of my pieces take up to half a year to properly learn... but it is a completely different context. I have to learn about 40 minutes of repotoire in a year for assesment, its expected that I will take months to learn some pieces. As far as bands go, most of the songs we ever did were nailed within a week (provided the second guitarist got the rhythm right the first time)

Anyway... hardest piano pieces:
*Rachmaninov, Prelude 12 (Opus 2 I think, can't remember) in G minor. That took quite a while.
*My own piece, 'Swing to a Different Beat' took ages and despite my large hands, I still made it difficult to reach some chords.
*This year I am learning Debussy's Pour le Piano which will take aaaagggeess. Its about 10 - 15 minutes and the Toccata is a killer. I'm not entirely sure even if I am good enough to pull it off. But, that is why I am going to Uni.

Dave: Ever listen to a band called Primus? The bass player is totally sick and many of the bass rifts are awesome. He is also a great soloist... during the live recording of Tommy the Cat, the guitarist pretty much leaves the stage because half of the song is a drums and bass solos.

Krokus: I can't remember the ending to schism right now (I have to listen to it before I sleep now), but what about the drum solo to 46 & 2 or pretty much any of Ænima? (Not that I've actually tried them myself, they just sound hard to me. I am a drummer in my spare time, so I think I know)

 

[red indian]

Dear oh dear!!!........

.....wake up and smell the coffee guys!! only "The Pianist" seems to grasp what "difficult" is. The hardest thing I learnt on piano before my disbility finished me was "Carnival" a suite by Schuman. No wonder the guy broke his own fingers trying to make his hands work better!!

As usual in this type of thread it falls to me to tell Americans about their own rich, undervalued and underexposed jazz heritage. You guys want to have a listen to Art Tatum playing "Tiger Rag" the "pianist" will really dig this i think. I once heard it used as a music quiz question on the radio, the question was "how many hands?" it sounds like at least three!!

Try and album called "The trio" by Oscar Peterson its a live recording made back in 1972 (pablo) it has a track called "Blues Etude" probably the ultimate "have a go if you think you are hard enough" music track. Breathtaking, consumate bravura, just for the sheer hell of it! I remember having many goes at trying to imitate it. Peterson in his hey day was the Mike Tyson of jazz piano players.

While your at it lads, have a listen to the bass player neils pederson,on the same album and bear in mind he is playing "steam bass"!!! there must be only about 10 guys in the world who could play like that on an "electric plank".

Try your chops on this lads:-


B^ D7 / G^ Bb7 / Eb^ / Am7 D7 / G^ Bb7 / Eb^ F#7 / B^ / Fm7 Bb7 //

Eb7 / Am7 D7 / G^ / Dbm7 Gb7 / B^ / Fm7 Bb7 / Eb^ / Dbm7 Gb7 ://


Its otherwise known in the trade as "giant steps" if you can solo on this at 100 mph in all twelve keys you have arrived! have a listen to Tranes original recording wich features a "ship wreck" piano solo by Tommy Flanagan.

Hope this post was not too rude or annoying for anyone!!

 

[The Sean Man]

"Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor" for the piano. And that was after only two years of lessons. My teacher thought I was nuts. But being a horror movie nut, I just had to go and learn it.

The Sean Man

 

[grippedchimp]

Hmm... in the popular music sense, Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" on guitar took me several months of hard practice to get it right, and me hands hurt too. Most Jeff Buckley and Muse tunes qualify too. I've learned jazz and classical tunes on piano and they are hard too, though they were "simplified" versions. I'm no muso like Red Indian. MUSO!!!

 

[Dave2112]

Pete, I've actually had little problem doing lead vocals and basslines together with Rush material. I was in a Rush tribute band a few years back (Anthem) and was quite used to it. I learned how to play bass listening to Rush albums when I was a kid, so it just got ingrianed. I did have a bit of a problem nailing it with "Turn the Page" off of "Hold Your Fire". Even Geddy Lee said he had a problem getting it down pat when they first wrote it. The bass is all over the place, but not in a distinct pattern (Big Money is kinda like that, too) and the vocals are sung in a different time signature.

Pianist...I LOVE Primus! I once got the pleasure of seeing Primus open for Rush (Roll the Bones tour '92, Binghamton NY) and it was awesome. Geddy Lee and Les Claypool did this "dueling basses" thing that was unreal. Plus, you gotta love any band that can do songs like "Wynonna's Big Brown Beaver" from albums like "Sailing the Seas of Cheese". 😀

 

[The Pianist]

To Red Indian: Hehe, you gotta remember not everyone here is as amazing as we are 😛 . But you've also gotta remember that there is a big difference between genres and whether you are playing solo or as a group. Jazz pieces arn't things you can really learn to play so far as a large proportion of them require you to have a background in improvisation (instantaneous composition).... but I'm preaching to the converted here.

As I said before, Rock Pop songs are rarely difficult to learn... though any bass part by Primus and Drum part by Tool can be sometimes be next to impossible (Both bands I quite enjoy and are often technically great). The hardest group song I've had to learn so far was Ben Folds Five "One Angry Dwarf"... the hardest parts being the solo (if I wanted to copy his, not improvise) and memorise so I could sing unhindered over it. All in all though, the piece wasn't technically that hard, just difficult to coordinate some of it. I am however, composing a rockish piece (a little reminiscant of A Perfect Circle) that at the moment sounds easy to play as it flow quite freely and all... but has many time changes which might be difficult to coordinate in the band if everyone isn't paying attention. I'll find out in a week or so.


Indian... I'll have a look out for those pieces... they sound good. I am mostly listening to Dave Brubeck and Chick Corea at the moment.

 

[drew70]

is it difficult to play keyboard to Iron Butterfly's "inna gada na vida" - pardon the spelling.

No, actually that one's pretty easy. Now the keyboard solo in Sugarloaf's "Green Eyed Lady" is another story. Been trying to get that one down for a lonnnng time. The parts of it that stick to the regular (diatonic?) scale aren't too bad, but the spots where it departs from that scale are really tough.

 

[red indian]

Top blokes indeed.......

....old brubeck and corea. I once did a short tour doing an all Brubeck programme, my hands were never quite the same afterwards!

All Chicks stuff is fantastic, I love the "Electric Band" with Dave Weckle and Pattituci. Have you come across Jeff Lorber? "Lava island" is one of the best, I transcribed one or two for my band when i could still play, some very tricky stuff.

 

[Flatfoot]

Let's see, the 1st clarinet part of Barber of Seville, the Planets... what else is really fast and high-pitched... wow, my memory's shot for all the pieces I've played. I'm gonna have to go rummage through my old music to see what I used to struggle with.

 

[dskodj]

Back when I was a musician, the most pain in the ass thing ever was learning the string part of Pink Floyd "Comftorably Numb" on the keyboard. You shoulda seen the guitarist with the guitar parts lol...he was having a more rough time than me...but it all turned out great in the end 🙂

 

[Dave2112]

Hmmm..."Comfortably Numb" was one of the easier pieces I did on keys. I guess it's a matter of what style of fingering you're used to. It's basically a walk-down of the prominent chords in the section, although the second of the first two "reverse-arpeggios" skips a note. I found it easier to walk it down from the middle finger to the index to the thumb, then walk the index over the thumb. It seemed smoother than using a four-fingered roll. It's a little wierd when you first try it, but after two or three times, it's a cinch. Give it a shot, might save you some time.

The guitar parts, I hear you on. I never attempted it. Too much for me. I'm not the world's greatest lead player by any means. I'm more of an acoustic/rhythm type guiter player, although I seem to have this knack for figuring out tricky chord progressions that some lead players have a tough time with. I like to keep my rhythm playing interesting and not rely on barre chords all night. It kills me when guys figure out barre chords and maybe an F,G and C, never learn anything else, then say they've been playing for ten years! We got a lot of those in high school. I've been meaning to concentrate more on my lead playing, but always seem to get sidetracked. I can hold my own on blues soloing and the like, but I'd never be strong enough to be the sole guitarist in a band unless it were an originals band with my own material.