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Snow Covered Hills
I am having a dickens of a time with this, and I’m going slow! I can do the first 4 notes, then it goes to heck. I haven’t even gotten to the timing yet, I wanted to get the notes and fingering in order. But there is so much jumping around, fretting, slides, hammers, and pull-offs, I can’t tell if I’m coming or going. I can read tab, but then I have to look at the strings/frets to see where I’m supposed to go, then I have no idea what fingers to pick with. It doesn’t help that when finger picking my brain says “middle” and my hand says “index”. I am so discouraged with finger picking. I think I could break it down some, but I’m not sure how, since most of the measures start with a carry-over (tie, hammer or pull-off) from the previous one.
Also curious as to how most commenters on the challenges say how much fun they had with this or that. Do the ones that struggle rarely post or is it really that easy?
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7 Replies
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@BarbaraM I do think the comments are skewed a bit toward those who have gotten over the hump already. Personally I don’t usually post while I’m in the midst of my struggles and I had some struggles with this lick. I have the luxury of being able to do multiple sessions each day, so I divide and conquer the lick in chunks. Remember while you are struggling, you learn a lot more than while you breeze through things.
Here’s how I broke it up:
This morning I watched the first 4 minutes or so and played only the first measure. When I came back later on I added the slide. Then I realized that you go 0 – 3, then slide 3 to 5 and then 3 – 0 all on the B string. This is very symmetrical, just like the reflection in the Snow Covered Hills the [land] slide is a mirror: 0 – 3 <=> 3 – 0. So I had 2 the first 2 and a half measures memorized quickly because the first 2 beats of measure one are repeated from yesterday. Just have to add that hammer on the “3 And”.
Then, my next session I saw that in measures 4 and 5 you actually have 4 repeated “open to fret 2 hammers” on the D string. Just have a little bit in between to learn and that base walk at the end (open A – 2 – 3)
Not that I have memorized everything, but I’ve familiarized myself with the contents of the lick. Now I don’t have to keep my focus on the TAB that much while playing.
Hope that helps
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Thanks, Pete, that helped to look at it that way. Sometimes I can see the patterns right off, but the timing messed me up. That long tie on the 3rd fret of the B string was long gone silent before it was time for the slide! I tried it again this morning with your suggestions and it was a little better.
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I think the people that post about the “fun” are people/who have been playing for some years- the licks are rarely fun for me but I do think of them as brain expanders. Like Barbara, I break them into small chunks and sometimes never go past the first chunk- trusting that when this comes around again I will be able to move ahead. I really do not pass any judgement on myself- learning guitar is totally new to me and I just go with the flow…slowly!
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Yes, brain expanders! I remember this from last year, and I had trouble then too. I can count it just fine, but not play it at the same time. Yet! Gotta think of it as a challenge to be overcome, not a roadblock.
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Yeah, I both “had lots of fun” and struggled! I love finger-picking but it is at least five times harder than strumming! Especially when the string your thumb is thumping is adjacent to the string your finger is picking, it’s really easy to let the further finger fire first, even if it’s not supposed to. My biggest “hack” here is to listen to a measure of the play along, close my eyes and play it ULTRA slow, then repeat it till I’m up to speed. Often, I have to treat the transition between two mesures the same way (learn counts 1 through four-and of measure n, get it down, do the same for measure n+1, then treat count 3 of measure n through 2-and of measure n+1 as if it were its own measure, learn THAT, then I can practice those two together. Then add the next measure, etc. takes longer, but it’s usually the transitions that get me, especially if there is a hammer on or pull off or something that connects the measures!
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@petelanger great insight about the symmetry! Little mental pictures like that help me a great deal!
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@Bill1am that symmetry extends 4 more notes than I mentioned in the earlier post:
the mirror begins with a 0 -2 hammer on the G , followed by
the 0 – 3 <=> 3 – 0 on the B, and finally 2 – 0 back on the G
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