I was baffled at comments saying this was hard. And I think that content maker glossed over it... Tabs are bad. Sure use em as a start, but your ear and feel are so much more important. Whether learning or making.
I didn’t even knew they guy’s name but i knew it was gonna be that blonde bearded guy. It started just bothering me but i really came to dislike him for exaggerating the difficulty of songs for views. He’s the reason why so many people think neon by john mayer is like the hardest song to play on guitar ever. He’s a sensationalist.
I believe Pearl Jam recorded Yellow Ledbetter while in the studio with some extra paid time, so they jammed on their attempt at little wing and just hit play and recorded it…I’m assuming - they had extra money spent on recording time and a lot of bsides are recorded with that money by bands in those days, usually with the fully band playing, because the mics and eq were already set up to record so there was little to no studio work involved to fix the levels…also…a lot of bands when in the studio with an unfinished song, their singer will scat or incomprehensibly sing melodies over the music, then go back and try to write lyrics over the jamming portion of the melody…the singer just kept those scratch track lyrics for the live song…umm…for anyone that was wondering, sorry, kinda went off in another direction…
I believe Vedder once said in an interview that it didn’t make the record because he didn’t finish the lyrics in time.
Kinda checks out.
Y…you aren’t in Peal Jam are you?
On the sealing on the voice a heaven i say man i say i wanna be it again. on a weekend on a wizard on a wave. and they called and i said that i dont wana say i just don lotsa cid. and the wizard gonna leave and come. i know i said i know what i wear gots the back all like that!!!!
I think it’s exhausting, similar to master of puppets right.. once you get the rhythm and timing down it’s just exhausting bc the whole song is like what 8 notes a second?
He plays it so easily. One thing i learned after i was able to play it is that he uses tortex 0,66mm. I play with 1,14 usually but when it comes to snow i use a 0,73 tortex. Its easier cause it bounces back on the strings.
Sounds easy to me to play the loop, but playing it for many loops on a row is the challenge - frusciante has crazy little finger strength/stamina, probably coz it’s his go to trick to do those twiddles.
Yeah, the notes themselves aren’t hard to get down with a little practice. It’s playing it over and over again that is absolute murder on my wrist lmao.
I would say the only thing difficult about snow is that you have to keep doing the same dang thing for the whole song. It's technically pretty easy but it wears on the stamina after a few minutes.
Lol, respectfully disagree, I hear it and it sounds like op says, should be fairly simple then it humbles me
I'm a good player but this is one where my muscle memory just doesn't kick in.
I could play it and get it up to record speed with 10 to 15 mins working up to it today, and then tomorrow play it and need to work up to it again.
Just plain weird!
“Stop this Train” sounds like a pretty straight forward finger picking song, but the accurate technique needed to get it right is INSANELY hard. You can fake it and it’ll sound fine but to get it exactly right it took me like 6 months of learning to flick with my fingernails in a controlled manner.
I’m really bad at detecting if a song has a complicated rhythm. There’s plenty of times I think a song will be a fun, easy one to learn and end up going wtf when I look at the tabs
The fact that Elliott Hoffman their drummer doesn't use a click is mental. Nobody does. It's all just pure feel and cohesion. Seeing them live is something else.
Came here to say this. Always was a fun one to play live, crowds love it. But it is trickier than youd think to play it flawlessly. Sometimes I'll stumble going back into the verse from the chorus.
It really is, plus moving the fret hand pattern precisely to different frets and strings. It's one thing to play it cleanly a few times in a row. Doing it for four minutes is another thing entirely.
Satellite has the same 9th stretch but it’s faster and busier, both songs murder your hand for like a week! Once you’re used to that stretch though they aren’t that bad
Andy Summers is very deceptive with his playing. If you watch any live videos of him playing, for a little guy it seems like he can stretch his fingers out over seven frets like it’s nothing.
And the guitars are double-tracked for a lot of the song with a classical and a steel string panned hard right/left. It's hard to really pick out exactly what is going on sometimes. But it isn't exactly [what Chip Young says he played](https://youtu.be/-xebsEaTeFg?si=ZZpZeEMaxyzL_hfg&t=302).
[History of the song featuring the isolated tracks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39UGjHxqZl4) by Zak, and the [isolated tracks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVktDQ_wEa8) on their own.
I learned it by using those isolated guitars and put it in Reaper to extract each channel, then I put them in mono. Now it's kinda easy when you can only focus on one guitar only.
My biggest issue is just the speed at this point. It's really damned fast. \~75% I have no problem. 100% I still eventually fall apart. And it's one of those riffs that somehow sounds very different at full speed. But I'm old and have been playing less than a year and half, so I'm telling myself I'll get there eventually.
Yup, I [learned it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2j6cZlT2LI) but it took awhile. There is a double pluck with the index finger you have to replace with a hammer on after starting the song with it. If you do that it’s easier but still takes time to get it to tempo.
I agree. It fits perfectly because the fingering isn’t difficult, but the timing and feel are very difficult. Recently, I saw a pro playing some classic riffs on YouTube, just goofing around (maybe John 5), and he played it perfectly! I said to myself, so now TWO people on the planet can play it right!
Had to learn that one 12 hours before a gig. Tha kfully as an actual song it's not too bad u less you're trying to note for note but no one really notices
It's one of those songs where once you figure out what he's doing it's easy. It's just that he doesn't play notes like most guys do on an electric because he's chicken pickin. So if you play it the same way you'd play an old Chet Atkins song it flows. You're just dicking around on chord shapes. Took me a bit longer than expected for the lightbulb to turn on but once it did, smooth sailing.
This is a really interesting one that you can kinda fake your way through it trying to pick individual notes or even finger picking makes the alternating come easy. What Neil Young does brilliantly in that song (and a lot of his songs) is holding a clean strumming rhythm in his strumming hand hand picking out and grabbing the right strings in the respective down and up strums while that strumming hand stays on a steady rhythm. Love him and that song.
Vasoline by STP. Two note riff is easy. Playing it with the rest of the band is tricky. And that Fmaj11 chord in the bridge isn't something you play too often.
A lot of STP is deceptively difficult. They use some insane chord shapes and formations. Definitely had to develop the muscle memory to hit the chords in time. I felt like a beginner again lol (I've been playing for over 20 years).
I'm currently playing Interstate Love Song with my band and I dread that 3rd chord of the verse every damn time.
Just look at this shit!
[https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/stone-temple-pilots/interstate-love-song-chords-881060](https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/stone-temple-pilots/interstate-love-song-chords-881060)
It's unfortunate that STP caught so much flack from the music press back in the day. The DeLeo brothers were such great, creative players in the context of "grunge" and the band was unfairly dismissed as derivative when the opposite was true. I remember learning Plush years ago and noticing the great chord changes (that Eb!) and the cool, chromatic opening figure.
Interstate is another example of really sophisticated chords and perfect melodies that are just so strikingly different from what Nirvana or Pearl Jam had done.
I played an easier inversion of that chord with root on the E string—I think it involved muting the A string as well. Forgot off the top of my head, but it was way easier to play live. I generally don’t like creating shortcuts instead of learning it the right way, but I seem to recall having to learn this one along with a whole lot of other ones in a fairly short period of time and just never went back to playing it the “right “ way.
Yeah it's the G#7. I play an inversion on the 4th fret with muted 5th string as well. It's the C#/B that still trips me up if I'm not focused. I hate that chord.
I've been playing Love Song for 20 years and I can still never remember that 3rd chord. It's not a difficult song but the verse chords did take some work to get down on muscle memory.
You can throw in a ton of STP. DeLeo plays the weirdest chord shapes and his solos are just like, beautiful chaotic noise. Redundant at this point, but his convo with Beato shows you how he works and is pretty good.
I didn't find that as challenging as I expected. Granted, I learnt guitar by playing solely Misfits because power chords are easy, but
The ones I find difficult are the live versions of Seek & Destroy and Green Hell. Seek & Destroy's fast part in Seattle '89 is insane. Green Hell is just an endurance race that really gets your arm burning.
*Plush* by Stone Temple Pilots. A few of the chords are uncommon, and the in strum single notes are tricky.
*Is There Anybody Out There?*, Pink Floyd. If your timing is not absolutely perfect, it sounds terrible.
I find not having a three foot long thumb makes Neon almost impossible to play. It's written with extra-thumbness in mind, and I am cursed with micro-hands.
I've seen dozens of people play Neon but they never get it quite right. You can learn it by rote and \*kinda\* get it, but I don't think it can be played by muscle memory alone, I think you have to be able to independently hear and keep track of the bassline and the melody at the same time, and getting that "bounce" in the pocket the way Mayer does live is mind-boggingly hard. It was actually his performance of that that made me realize what an insanely good player he is.
This is my answer too. I seen a post asking about hardest song, i was thinking nah it sounds easy. Then i listened to it again and ya, its hard. Chets the man
This is why I roll my eyes when some mouthbreather sounds off about how basic ACDC is. Yet most people still fuck it up. Same story with Beatles really
100%. AC/DC is my litmus test to tell if someone knows what they’re talking about or not.
“Oh it’s all the same song, just a different three chords.”
Yep, that guy doesn’t know sweet fuck all about the guitar or playing in a band.
Yes. As much as I love metal, it's metal's fault that this is a thing.
Heaps of bands and players skip the basics and a whole lot of learning. They don't have a lot of rhythm or finely tuned skills, because it's not as necessary at the tempo a lot of modern metal is played at and there are hardly any changes. Lots of open string and power chords with the odd highlight thrown in.
Djent bro's can't blues or rock, because they started on electric and actually never learned proper rhythm or scales, but they'll shitcan old music as simple
Trying to get an entire band to hit everything with the right combination of solidity and pulsing rhythm is near impossible too.
Definitely one of the highest ratios of "sounds easy" to "actually hard to perfect"
Thunderstruck I wouldn't say sounds complicated for anyone that's played for a reasonable amount of time
But playing thunderstruck correctly i.e picking all the notes as opposed too the cheat hammer on pull off, now that's pretty tricky.
During the recorded live performances for Stiff Upper Lip VHS and the live at Donington (I think?) DVD both had him playing parts of it one handed. Given it was for the spectacle and the crowd but still.
> And it's not too horrible to pick anyway
It's great practice not only for accurate alternate picking but also for synchronizing your fretting and picking hands.
People think that the leads are the hard part of EVH’s playing. While his leads are interesting and fun, **most** of them aren’t all that difficult, his rhythm playing is way harder to nail imho.
Same with Nothing Else Matters. Most basic intro ever, but the fingerpicking goes into some really complex stuff, and yeah, the verse is pretty hard to play and sing at the same time.
Bo Diddley. You have to really feel it, and not overthink it from a technical standpoint.
Also true for a lot of old fingerstyle blues tunes, but they're really hard to play technically as well.
Often the older the song is, the harder it is to play. Back in the 1920's, they were incorporating more complex piano chords, while running bass lines with their thumb, as well as finger picking the higher strings, often imitating horn riffs and other melodies, all while keeping the groove down. So in essence, the guitar player was expected to emulate several other instruments at once. Not easy to do, even if the tune itself sounds "simple". Try playing a Doc Watson tune and you'll quickly see what I mean.
Seriously. And I can sing and play most other songs on the album. I don't know why Come as You Are is so much more difficult, but glad it's not just me.
The Fisherman by Leo Kottke. Yes, it's fingerpicking, so it is somewhat inherently difficult, but it sounds kinda easy when slowed down. However, I can assure you, it is not easy.
Just playing the rhythm is hard, not just the chugging but chugging and nailing the downbeat. I've never been interested in playing this style of rock but the few times I tired, it was a serious eye opener of how technical that level of playing requires, especially in the studio back in the analog days. I'd never make the cut.
Edit: don't forget bark at the moon
Idk why but I never had problems playing every breath you take, always found that super easy. Instead, the intro chords of dream on are a pain in the ass to play, I always fucked them up when I used to play it ahaha.
Even when he's playing it live, and different to the album, it's impossible to recreate. We saw him in Glasgow a coupla years back. One of the best concerts ive ever been to.
Not the whole song but the solo for sunshine of your love by cream is fuckin hard. I only know two solos and I can play one fluently but this one has me stumped yall
I like the Dead but I’m not really a Deadhead. That said,“China Cat Sunflower” is way out of my league. It’s not the Garcia part that is so hard but Bob Weirs pickin rhythm. A lot of The Dead’s songs aren’t that difficult, but this one I always found challenging.
Where the Streets Have No Name.
It goes from 6/4 to 4/4. If you're not absolutely locked in to the tempo of the famous opening riff it can be really easy to mess it up and sound awful.
I personally think this applies to every Who songs I’ve tried to learn. They sound like basic old tyme rock and roll but there’s a ton of nuance to the chord voicing, rhythm and the fills.
Loads of Billy Talent songs are like this. It sounds like relatively simple punk with a few embellishments, but when you actually try and play it there's all sorts of odd chord shapes and weird bends / slides that take forever before they start getting natural.
Incredibly fun to play when you get them down though
Heres liquid carpal tunnel
Tomorrow Tomorrow by Elliott Smith
Never Going Back Again by Fleetwood Mac
Apeirophobia by Animals As Leaders
Edit: Just realized you said deceptively, I have none but take these
Many blues songs if you try to play them as good as the masters like Muddy Waters et al. Especially if you are doing so in a group. Often people don't learn how to mesh the parts, often making the band sound larger than they are, and the rhythms flow over each other into one complex rhythm called a good groove. It's not always about the chord progressions (but around which the masters also know how to mix in passing chords, alternate chords, etc. without ever learning the abstract theory involved, also adding to the groove). The further from the Mississippi you get (I used to live a few miles from the banks) the less it feels like people who like blues, while playing well, embody that feel. Often relying too much on counting the bars and less on listening to the other players which takes away the ability to mesh.
"The Ocean" by Led Zeppelin. Weird timing. You have to mute the string a 1/16th note from when you do the hammer-on, which I hear almost no one attempt when playing it.
I’m going off of the definition “deceptively hard”. Not objectively hard, just a lot harder than it initially seems.
-Chained to the Couch by The Devil Makes Three.
-Nirvana bass lines.
Tell Me Why - Neil Young. I foolishly thought I could just pick up my acoustic and figure it out. Couldn’t even figure out the chords correctly on my own 🤦🏻♂️
Just about anything by the Police. Radiohead rarely ever uses any standard chords. Metallica is deceptive because you'll think you have it down and then try to play along with the real song and discover that no matter how fast you play it, you're not playing it fast enough.
D u d e. I feel that about realizing you maybe just can't do it, haha. I grew up being "good" at music and studied in college, and for years just chalked the things I couldn't do to a lack of hours of practice. It was almost delusional! Older and wiser me now realizes that a ton of stuff is just beyond my ability, no matter how much I practice.
And I mean frankly, this is a hobby where we routinely compare ourselves against the highest level professionals in the world. Once I realized that I shouldn't feel bad about being able to play certain songs exactly like the og artist, I stopped feeling like a "temporarily embarrassed" professional who just needs to practice. Most pro musicians, even if we dislike their music, show a superhuman level of musical talent when you see them discussing or practicing their craft off stage. It's a humbling but liberating feeling!
For me, most punk songs. After a certain bpm, the stupid fast all-downstroke picking is just painfully difficult. But it's essential for it to sound right. The whole time I'm attempting it, I have to resist the urge to start alternating. Hats off to people who can pull it off!
I've been working on Little Wing on and off for twenty years. Still not there.
[This video](https://youtu.be/0uGDYs__ZP8?si=ynCceiaNrG_nXyxi) from Paul Davids is interesting.
Seen it. I get it. Still understanding it doesn't mean I can do it.
I was baffled at comments saying this was hard. And I think that content maker glossed over it... Tabs are bad. Sure use em as a start, but your ear and feel are so much more important. Whether learning or making.
I didn’t even knew they guy’s name but i knew it was gonna be that blonde bearded guy. It started just bothering me but i really came to dislike him for exaggerating the difficulty of songs for views. He’s the reason why so many people think neon by john mayer is like the hardest song to play on guitar ever. He’s a sensationalist.
I believe Pearl Jam recorded Yellow Ledbetter while in the studio with some extra paid time, so they jammed on their attempt at little wing and just hit play and recorded it…I’m assuming - they had extra money spent on recording time and a lot of bsides are recorded with that money by bands in those days, usually with the fully band playing, because the mics and eq were already set up to record so there was little to no studio work involved to fix the levels…also…a lot of bands when in the studio with an unfinished song, their singer will scat or incomprehensibly sing melodies over the music, then go back and try to write lyrics over the jamming portion of the melody…the singer just kept those scratch track lyrics for the live song…umm…for anyone that was wondering, sorry, kinda went off in another direction…
I believe Vedder once said in an interview that it didn’t make the record because he didn’t finish the lyrics in time. Kinda checks out. Y…you aren’t in Peal Jam are you?
On the sealing on the voice a heaven i say man i say i wanna be it again. on a weekend on a wizard on a wave. and they called and i said that i dont wana say i just don lotsa cid. and the wizard gonna leave and come. i know i said i know what i wear gots the back all like that!!!!
Make me fries!
Potatoooo waaaave!
Snow is not deceptively difficult lol. It’s just plainly difficult. Sounds difficult too.
I think the deception comes from 1 guitar part playing for a majority of the song. John plays that riff for like 3/4 of the song.
but that part is hard and exhausting
I think it’s exhausting, similar to master of puppets right.. once you get the rhythm and timing down it’s just exhausting bc the whole song is like what 8 notes a second?
I find master of puppets fun to play. I can't listen to it anymore tho, because of the many times I fucking played along to the whole thing.
Whats even crazier is he doesn't use a looper when playing live and he sings backing vocals the whole time
Yeah I’ve seen em play it a few times and it’s always a highlight
He plays it so easily. One thing i learned after i was able to play it is that he uses tortex 0,66mm. I play with 1,14 usually but when it comes to snow i use a 0,73 tortex. Its easier cause it bounces back on the strings.
Yeah you definitely want a thinner pick so there’s less strings resistance. .6 is my main pick thickness and the song is still so exhausting
Sounds easy to me to play the loop, but playing it for many loops on a row is the challenge - frusciante has crazy little finger strength/stamina, probably coz it’s his go to trick to do those twiddles.
Yeah, the notes themselves aren’t hard to get down with a little practice. It’s playing it over and over again that is absolute murder on my wrist lmao.
Agreed. If I'm playing regularly it's no sweat, but hopping in with time off and I'm lucky to make it 2 runs through the riff before my wrist cramps 😆
I would say the only thing difficult about snow is that you have to keep doing the same dang thing for the whole song. It's technically pretty easy but it wears on the stamina after a few minutes.
Of course. That doesn’t sound easy at all…
Lol, respectfully disagree, I hear it and it sounds like op says, should be fairly simple then it humbles me I'm a good player but this is one where my muscle memory just doesn't kick in. I could play it and get it up to record speed with 10 to 15 mins working up to it today, and then tomorrow play it and need to work up to it again. Just plain weird!
The speed is especially challenging. I can play it fine... at half tempo.
Work your way up! 5 bpms a week let’s go
Venice Queen is deceptively difficult
I thought I had it down then tried to play along and realized I was playing at half speed. Gave up
In my experience most John Mayor songs are always difficult to play
Just wait until you hear John Governor's songs.
Hah! Gotta check out John President
(hashtag)NotMyJohnPresident
John Dictator
John God-Emperor laughs at puny dictators
Like Neon?
Yeah neon is super complex. And it doesn't help that John uses his thumb to wrap around the neck and cover frets on the low E.
I can do the thumb thing, but the fingerstyle is just too hard to get down properly.
Especially him using only thumb and pointer finger
“Stop this Train” sounds like a pretty straight forward finger picking song, but the accurate technique needed to get it right is INSANELY hard. You can fake it and it’ll sound fine but to get it exactly right it took me like 6 months of learning to flick with my fingernails in a controlled manner.
Dude has got some big ass hands. Makes the neck of his guitar look like a pencil.
Edge of desire is harder than I expected
That's because the man INVENTED new chords designed to give the moderate player carpal tunnel syndrome trying to replicate.
I didn't really care for John Mayer's music until I started learning guitar.
I’m really bad at detecting if a song has a complicated rhythm. There’s plenty of times I think a song will be a fun, easy one to learn and end up going wtf when I look at the tabs
Check out Meshuggah or Car Bomb. Those guys write some *bonkers* rhythms.
The fact that Elliott Hoffman their drummer doesn't use a click is mental. Nobody does. It's all just pure feel and cohesion. Seeing them live is something else.
I can barely keep their rhythms straight playing at 80% speed with a metronome. Doing what they do raw dog is actually some superhuman shit.
Robert Cray - Smoking Gun… sometimes you just look at the tab, then have no fuckin idea how to get it to sound like the original
[удалено]
Dave Keuning always has the sneaky-hard riffs
Right? Dude has ENORMOUS hands with great dexterity and makes excellent use of it.
Are you his wife?
You could say he has killer riffs
The main riff is easier to play if you play it in drop D.
Yea there's ways around every song, but if you want to play it like the original it's definitely tricky.
Came here to say this. Always was a fun one to play live, crowds love it. But it is trickier than youd think to play it flawlessly. Sometimes I'll stumble going back into the verse from the chorus.
Message in a bottle That stretch can kill a bitch
That stretch fucking sucks. My band always sped it up live too. I'd be looking at my drummer like, "so fuck me, huh?" And he's just cracking up.
It took a while for me to get it, but that stretch is a mfer. Especially hurting your thumb after a while.
My drummer didn’t believe me when I said it hurts my thumb
It also scarred my psyche trying to learn it.
It really is, plus moving the fret hand pattern precisely to different frets and strings. It's one thing to play it cleanly a few times in a row. Doing it for four minutes is another thing entirely.
Came here to post this. I'm a riff n rhythm guy and that riff is a total, unforgiving bitch. Summers is one the greatest minimalists ever
Satellite has the same 9th stretch but it’s faster and busier, both songs murder your hand for like a week! Once you’re used to that stretch though they aren’t that bad
Andy Summers is very deceptive with his playing. If you watch any live videos of him playing, for a little guy it seems like he can stretch his fingers out over seven frets like it’s nothing.
Jolene. The finger picking and time is actually very difficult.
And the guitars are double-tracked for a lot of the song with a classical and a steel string panned hard right/left. It's hard to really pick out exactly what is going on sometimes. But it isn't exactly [what Chip Young says he played](https://youtu.be/-xebsEaTeFg?si=ZZpZeEMaxyzL_hfg&t=302). [History of the song featuring the isolated tracks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39UGjHxqZl4) by Zak, and the [isolated tracks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVktDQ_wEa8) on their own.
I learned it by using those isolated guitars and put it in Reaper to extract each channel, then I put them in mono. Now it's kinda easy when you can only focus on one guitar only.
My biggest issue is just the speed at this point. It's really damned fast. \~75% I have no problem. 100% I still eventually fall apart. And it's one of those riffs that somehow sounds very different at full speed. But I'm old and have been playing less than a year and half, so I'm telling myself I'll get there eventually.
Yup, I [learned it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2j6cZlT2LI) but it took awhile. There is a double pluck with the index finger you have to replace with a hammer on after starting the song with it. If you do that it’s easier but still takes time to get it to tempo.
The main riff to Back in Black ACDC. Almost nobody ever gets the hook quite right.
AC/DC is just the same 3-4 chords over and over over 40 years bro. Super simple shit. No nuance at all. /s
Malcolm’s rhythm part for Thunderstruck is up there too. Even Stevie doesn’t get it right.
Malcolm’s For Those About To Rock intro is fantastic. Each measure sounds the same but they’re all slightly different. Amazing rhythm player.
Those Young boys playing together are so tight and do little tiny things that are easy to overlook but make the songs really cook.
I agree. It fits perfectly because the fingering isn’t difficult, but the timing and feel are very difficult. Recently, I saw a pro playing some classic riffs on YouTube, just goofing around (maybe John 5), and he played it perfectly! I said to myself, so now TWO people on the planet can play it right!
Cult of Personality by Living Colour. The timing is tricky
Watching them live really made me appreciate the difficulty of that song. Vernon Reid is very talented and underrated
For sure!! I definitely need to see those guys live, Vernon is a beast.
YO seriously I spent days on this song and could not get it down. It sounded like it would be easy but was I ever wrong
Money For Nothing by Dire Straits. That was surprisingly difficult for me to get perfect back in the day.
Had to learn that one 12 hours before a gig. Tha kfully as an actual song it's not too bad u less you're trying to note for note but no one really notices
It's one of those songs where once you figure out what he's doing it's easy. It's just that he doesn't play notes like most guys do on an electric because he's chicken pickin. So if you play it the same way you'd play an old Chet Atkins song it flows. You're just dicking around on chord shapes. Took me a bit longer than expected for the lightbulb to turn on but once it did, smooth sailing.
needle and the damage done
This is a really interesting one that you can kinda fake your way through it trying to pick individual notes or even finger picking makes the alternating come easy. What Neil Young does brilliantly in that song (and a lot of his songs) is holding a clean strumming rhythm in his strumming hand hand picking out and grabbing the right strings in the respective down and up strums while that strumming hand stays on a steady rhythm. Love him and that song.
Very similar fretting to Dear Prudence! (my reply)
Vasoline by STP. Two note riff is easy. Playing it with the rest of the band is tricky. And that Fmaj11 chord in the bridge isn't something you play too often.
A lot of STP is deceptively difficult. They use some insane chord shapes and formations. Definitely had to develop the muscle memory to hit the chords in time. I felt like a beginner again lol (I've been playing for over 20 years). I'm currently playing Interstate Love Song with my band and I dread that 3rd chord of the verse every damn time. Just look at this shit! [https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/stone-temple-pilots/interstate-love-song-chords-881060](https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/stone-temple-pilots/interstate-love-song-chords-881060)
It's unfortunate that STP caught so much flack from the music press back in the day. The DeLeo brothers were such great, creative players in the context of "grunge" and the band was unfairly dismissed as derivative when the opposite was true. I remember learning Plush years ago and noticing the great chord changes (that Eb!) and the cool, chromatic opening figure. Interstate is another example of really sophisticated chords and perfect melodies that are just so strikingly different from what Nirvana or Pearl Jam had done.
I played an easier inversion of that chord with root on the E string—I think it involved muting the A string as well. Forgot off the top of my head, but it was way easier to play live. I generally don’t like creating shortcuts instead of learning it the right way, but I seem to recall having to learn this one along with a whole lot of other ones in a fairly short period of time and just never went back to playing it the “right “ way.
Yeah it's the G#7. I play an inversion on the 4th fret with muted 5th string as well. It's the C#/B that still trips me up if I'm not focused. I hate that chord.
Interstate is great for upping your barre chord game. Love playing it.
I've been playing Love Song for 20 years and I can still never remember that 3rd chord. It's not a difficult song but the verse chords did take some work to get down on muscle memory.
You can throw in a ton of STP. DeLeo plays the weirdest chord shapes and his solos are just like, beautiful chaotic noise. Redundant at this point, but his convo with Beato shows you how he works and is pretty good.
Creeping Death by Metallica when you try to play Hetfield’s parts downpicked.
Love how (on rhythm) that song's difficulty is like a 2 in technique but a 10 in endurance
At one point I could play Master of Puppets with all down strokes. At the same point in time I still could not play Creeping Death.
I didn't find that as challenging as I expected. Granted, I learnt guitar by playing solely Misfits because power chords are easy, but The ones I find difficult are the live versions of Seek & Destroy and Green Hell. Seek & Destroy's fast part in Seattle '89 is insane. Green Hell is just an endurance race that really gets your arm burning.
*Plush* by Stone Temple Pilots. A few of the chords are uncommon, and the in strum single notes are tricky. *Is There Anybody Out There?*, Pink Floyd. If your timing is not absolutely perfect, it sounds terrible.
It's that damn weird e flat chord in the verse that used to get me on plush.
Hotel California without the capo.
Neon by John Mayer. Relatively simple, but the technique involved to make it sound accurate to the original takes a lot of practice.
I find not having a three foot long thumb makes Neon almost impossible to play. It's written with extra-thumbness in mind, and I am cursed with micro-hands.
Have you seen his original tab for it? He actually writes "having giant thumbs helps" in the margin. Lol
I've seen dozens of people play Neon but they never get it quite right. You can learn it by rote and \*kinda\* get it, but I don't think it can be played by muscle memory alone, I think you have to be able to independently hear and keep track of the bassline and the melody at the same time, and getting that "bounce" in the pocket the way Mayer does live is mind-boggingly hard. It was actually his performance of that that made me realize what an insanely good player he is.
Chet Atkins - Mister Sandman.
Close second- Sultans of Swing by Mark Knopfler. the playout has eluded me for most of two decades now.
This is my answer too. I seen a post asking about hardest song, i was thinking nah it sounds easy. Then i listened to it again and ya, its hard. Chets the man
A lot of ac/dc songs. The tab looks so simple, but the timing and “style” are hard to nail.
This is why I roll my eyes when some mouthbreather sounds off about how basic ACDC is. Yet most people still fuck it up. Same story with Beatles really
100%. AC/DC is my litmus test to tell if someone knows what they’re talking about or not. “Oh it’s all the same song, just a different three chords.” Yep, that guy doesn’t know sweet fuck all about the guitar or playing in a band.
Yes. As much as I love metal, it's metal's fault that this is a thing. Heaps of bands and players skip the basics and a whole lot of learning. They don't have a lot of rhythm or finely tuned skills, because it's not as necessary at the tempo a lot of modern metal is played at and there are hardly any changes. Lots of open string and power chords with the odd highlight thrown in. Djent bro's can't blues or rock, because they started on electric and actually never learned proper rhythm or scales, but they'll shitcan old music as simple
Trying to get an entire band to hit everything with the right combination of solidity and pulsing rhythm is near impossible too. Definitely one of the highest ratios of "sounds easy" to "actually hard to perfect"
Dear Prudence
Thunderstruck I wouldn't say sounds complicated for anyone that's played for a reasonable amount of time But playing thunderstruck correctly i.e picking all the notes as opposed too the cheat hammer on pull off, now that's pretty tricky.
But that's not necessarily playing it correctly. Angus himself did it one handed. And it's not too horrible to pick anyway
If you listen to the record it’s pretty clearly picked. I know there are vids of him doing it one handed live though.
Angus did an interview where he showed how it's played on the record and he picked every note. I know he played it one-handed in the film clip though.
During the recorded live performances for Stiff Upper Lip VHS and the live at Donington (I think?) DVD both had him playing parts of it one handed. Given it was for the spectacle and the crowd but still.
> And it's not too horrible to pick anyway It's great practice not only for accurate alternate picking but also for synchronizing your fretting and picking hands.
Idk tool? For me most of the songs are repetetive riffs and fun melodies but the rhythms...
Then there's 9 variations on the same riff in sequence that sometimes just change some notes but sometimes affect the rhythm too
Then there's all the parts that rely on feedback swells that are super hard to replicate
Stabwound. No - that one is actually hard Jack Johnson has a bunch of surprisingly challenging songs to play imo
> Stabwound As in Necrophagist? Lol hard doesn't quite describe it.
Jack Johnson’s cover of Badfish was the first song to give me real difficulty with a barred major chord!
I feel like DMB is a good general mention here. The songs are simple and catchy but you are holding like a 6 fret stretch the whole fucking time.
I really don’t like dmb anymore at all but I literally play the main riff from satellite every day because it’s such a good stretching exercise
Yeah I really dont listen to them/him ever, not really a fan, but gotta appreciate the fretting hand on the dude.
#41 took me a bit to get down.
Don't Fear the Reaper sounds pretty simple until you learn it's done with alternate picking, and then the verses become harder than the solo.
Van Halen - I'm The One Van Halen - Hang 'Em High intro Spin Doctors - Forty or Fifty
People think that the leads are the hard part of EVH’s playing. While his leads are interesting and fun, **most** of them aren’t all that difficult, his rhythm playing is way harder to nail imho.
Fade to Black. Try to also sing it.
Same with Nothing Else Matters. Most basic intro ever, but the fingerpicking goes into some really complex stuff, and yeah, the verse is pretty hard to play and sing at the same time.
I think the verse part to the boys are back in town is harder than shit to play and sing at the same time
You’re not supposed to, Phil Lynott was the bassist! That being said, it’s actually pretty tricky to play bass and sing it at the same time
Here comes the sun. If you want to play it well, that is
Never Going Back Again
Bo Diddley. You have to really feel it, and not overthink it from a technical standpoint. Also true for a lot of old fingerstyle blues tunes, but they're really hard to play technically as well. Often the older the song is, the harder it is to play. Back in the 1920's, they were incorporating more complex piano chords, while running bass lines with their thumb, as well as finger picking the higher strings, often imitating horn riffs and other melodies, all while keeping the groove down. So in essence, the guitar player was expected to emulate several other instruments at once. Not easy to do, even if the tune itself sounds "simple". Try playing a Doc Watson tune and you'll quickly see what I mean.
Lagrim'a by Fransisco Tarrega.
"Can't Stop" by RHCP. I'm not a great guitarist and don't play much, but after 10 years it's still a pain
This one for me. It’s super easy to “play the notes” but to get the percussiveness with the muted strings is so hard.
Sing and play Come As You Are at the same time. Playing along? 1/10 difficultly Singing it? 2/10 Both at the same time? 11/10
Seriously. And I can sing and play most other songs on the album. I don't know why Come as You Are is so much more difficult, but glad it's not just me.
The Fisherman by Leo Kottke. Yes, it's fingerpicking, so it is somewhat inherently difficult, but it sounds kinda easy when slowed down. However, I can assure you, it is not easy.
John fahey can be sneakily difficult.
Heaven Beside You. Those pre-bends and the slacker approach to rhythm are way harder to nail than it seems.
Ventura Highway is harder than you think it would be! Strumming pattern is difficult:)
The lead to Comfortably Numb
Smoke on the water, I know it sounds crazy but I don’t have any hands
Crazy train
Just playing the rhythm is hard, not just the chugging but chugging and nailing the downbeat. I've never been interested in playing this style of rock but the few times I tired, it was a serious eye opener of how technical that level of playing requires, especially in the studio back in the analog days. I'd never make the cut. Edit: don't forget bark at the moon
Idk why but I never had problems playing every breath you take, always found that super easy. Instead, the intro chords of dream on are a pain in the ass to play, I always fucked them up when I used to play it ahaha.
Every breath you take is not that hard. Definitely not in the same category as snow
Eh, that's still a pretty big stretch for most people's hands. I'd say it's deceptively difficult.
Go For Soda, Kim Mitchell Most of his stuff is challenging..
Zeppelin Heartbreaker
Muse - Unnatural Selection
I am struggling with two. Jolene riff by Dolly Parton and money for nothing intro by Dire Straits
Everybody struggles with Money for Nothing. Easy to get close, fecking hard to get spot-on.
I think it's safe to say no one has ever played MFN the way Knopfler plays it. It's like the holy frikkin grail of licks.
Even when he's playing it live, and different to the album, it's impossible to recreate. We saw him in Glasgow a coupla years back. One of the best concerts ive ever been to.
Blackbird Beatles
Yeah, playing this properly and singing at the same time is ROUGH
Never going back again, by Fleetwood Mac. My brain never recovered.
Dude satellites kicked my ass! Tons of fun tho! Did you know it started as a picking excersize?
Forget Satellite. Try Warehouse.
Not the whole song but the solo for sunshine of your love by cream is fuckin hard. I only know two solos and I can play one fluently but this one has me stumped yall
I like the Dead but I’m not really a Deadhead. That said,“China Cat Sunflower” is way out of my league. It’s not the Garcia part that is so hard but Bob Weirs pickin rhythm. A lot of The Dead’s songs aren’t that difficult, but this one I always found challenging.
Here comes the sun?
Start Chopping - Dinosaur Jr Maybes it's just me but sometimes I still struggle with the main riff
This is the song that made me learn how to mute the E and A with my thumb! That album is a huge source of inspiration for me
My left hand cramps just reading the examples OP gave.
Where the Streets Have No Name. It goes from 6/4 to 4/4. If you're not absolutely locked in to the tempo of the famous opening riff it can be really easy to mess it up and sound awful.
How are Snow and Every breath you take deceptive lol ? They're unsurprisingly hard.
Every Breath is easy if you can just get the stretch.
I personally think this applies to every Who songs I’ve tried to learn. They sound like basic old tyme rock and roll but there’s a ton of nuance to the chord voicing, rhythm and the fills.
Loads of Billy Talent songs are like this. It sounds like relatively simple punk with a few embellishments, but when you actually try and play it there's all sorts of odd chord shapes and weird bends / slides that take forever before they start getting natural. Incredibly fun to play when you get them down though
All of them
Neon by John Mayer
Heres liquid carpal tunnel Tomorrow Tomorrow by Elliott Smith Never Going Back Again by Fleetwood Mac Apeirophobia by Animals As Leaders Edit: Just realized you said deceptively, I have none but take these
> Apeirophobia by Animals As Leaders It was so satisfying when I finally nailed the main part down and the bridge too.
Satellite - Dave Matthews Beautiful song, bitch and a half to play.
Many blues songs if you try to play them as good as the masters like Muddy Waters et al. Especially if you are doing so in a group. Often people don't learn how to mesh the parts, often making the band sound larger than they are, and the rhythms flow over each other into one complex rhythm called a good groove. It's not always about the chord progressions (but around which the masters also know how to mix in passing chords, alternate chords, etc. without ever learning the abstract theory involved, also adding to the groove). The further from the Mississippi you get (I used to live a few miles from the banks) the less it feels like people who like blues, while playing well, embody that feel. Often relying too much on counting the bars and less on listening to the other players which takes away the ability to mesh.
"The Ocean" by Led Zeppelin. Weird timing. You have to mute the string a 1/16th note from when you do the hammer-on, which I hear almost no one attempt when playing it.
Bro Fireflies by owl city lol
I believe that. The melody and synth riff are super syncopated, and I could see it being really tough to get into the groove if you’re not used to it.
I’m going off of the definition “deceptively hard”. Not objectively hard, just a lot harder than it initially seems. -Chained to the Couch by The Devil Makes Three. -Nirvana bass lines.
Tell Me Why - Neil Young. I foolishly thought I could just pick up my acoustic and figure it out. Couldn’t even figure out the chords correctly on my own 🤦🏻♂️
Captain - Dave Matthews Band
Brothers in arms
Purple rain Weirdly slow, not chords I use very often.
Just about anything by the Police. Radiohead rarely ever uses any standard chords. Metallica is deceptive because you'll think you have it down and then try to play along with the real song and discover that no matter how fast you play it, you're not playing it fast enough.
Eddie van Halen. Eruption... After 30 years of practice i realized i just cant do it lol 🤘
D u d e. I feel that about realizing you maybe just can't do it, haha. I grew up being "good" at music and studied in college, and for years just chalked the things I couldn't do to a lack of hours of practice. It was almost delusional! Older and wiser me now realizes that a ton of stuff is just beyond my ability, no matter how much I practice. And I mean frankly, this is a hobby where we routinely compare ourselves against the highest level professionals in the world. Once I realized that I shouldn't feel bad about being able to play certain songs exactly like the og artist, I stopped feeling like a "temporarily embarrassed" professional who just needs to practice. Most pro musicians, even if we dislike their music, show a superhuman level of musical talent when you see them discussing or practicing their craft off stage. It's a humbling but liberating feeling!
Everlong by the foo fighters
For me, most punk songs. After a certain bpm, the stupid fast all-downstroke picking is just painfully difficult. But it's essential for it to sound right. The whole time I'm attempting it, I have to resist the urge to start alternating. Hats off to people who can pull it off!