Most Difficult Music You Ever Learned

[Dabndug]

Charlie Parker heads (e.g. Ornithology, Anthropology, Donna Lee) at Charlie Parker tempo.

 

[TOOL460002]

The most musically difficult stuff is with my electronic duo jam stuff. My theory barely got refreshed a year ago and this dude is like "ya let's play a C#m Hungarian. Only has 57 sharps and 11 flats." For technical stuff, I like what I do. I keep pushing me.

EDIT: Used to be able tonplay YYZ and the main first half of Classical Thump. Those are fun.

 

[BoogieZK]

I'll play bass and sing on Tool - Vicarious for my job music day, it will be in June. I'll keep you up.

I also had to learn and rerecord a 30 minutes Prog song for one of my previous, we sadly never played it live but it was fun.

Then I joined a Zappa cover band.
Oh dear!

Indeed! I love FZ bass lines but i don't read either.... What a pain!

 

[Jogobass]

A prog band I was in a long time ago. They had a tendency to create songs they couldn't play yet, and then practice practice practice until we got it right.

 

[A Bass And Its Boy]

I played in the pit for Evita once, and the hitch is that I can't sight read in anything close to real time. I basically memorized the entire score with the conductor's edits (for a Weber score!!!). Which did free me up to really lock in with the conductor because I was making consistent eye contact.

The one anomaly was during "And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)"—most of the musicians were kinda struggling with the 7/8 time, but my band's drummer was also in the orch with me and we were in our prog phase of evolution, and we had a song in 7/8 with the same accents. So on that particular tune, the rhythm section was jamming.

 

[REV]

I played for awhile with a guy from the west coast of Africa. The music I had to learn had some very difficult (for me) melody lines that were sometimes 32 to 48 measures long. There were some great grooves with this music but just as things were really getting going he would go into this melody that I was supposed to double. I loved it.

 

[friskinator]

"Man, I Feel Like A Woman" by Shania Twain. Go ahead and laugh, but that arrangement is incredibly tricky for a pop song. Sit down with it sometime if you don't believe me.

 

[Hawk256]

When the first Mr. Big album came out, I rushed to get the book with the bass music laid out becuase I knew it would help me to get those songs down. Spoiler alert, it did not. If anything it made it harder because now I knew the actual parts and not just "yeah that sounds right." After some frustrating weeks I read an interview with Billy Sheehan and he was talking about how Paul Gilbert's pull off technique and style was so different and it took him a while to be able to double some of his parts. I knew then if a technique is hard for Billy, it's probably not going to come to me easily. And I was right. The only Mr. Big songs I ever played in a band were Green Tinted Sixties Mind and To Be With You so I never got to show off any of that hard work on stage.

 

[HardNHeavy]

Most songs by "Yes", Heart of the sunrise is one tough mother....ugh!

 

[40Hz]

It's gonna sound stupid, but George Harrison's Give Me Love has been a thorn in my side since I first heard it. And that was decades ago.

I can play through it by the numbers. But there's something about that song that I simply can't get any feel for. It's as if there's an underlying thread in it that I basically can't hear. Which by my own standards means I still can't really play it.

Frustrating.

 

[Dana R Gregory]

One of the most difficult songs I learned, but not the only one, was Highway Star by Deep Purple. I played it with a pick, all down stroke. My wrist was sooooo sore when I first started to learn it. Anything by Jaco would be difficult as well.

 

[redwood]

Industry Sandard by The Dregs. I've sill only gotten it about 99% correct, but man, that's a chops test for sure.

 

[biobass]

West Side Story.

 

[Gervais Cote]

Disco inferno……….but I will get it one day !

 

[ezstep]

A hundred years ago, but at the time,"Sir Duke" from Stevie Wonder.

 

[Deleted member 394181]

"The Trooper", Iron Maiden. Just to get the stamina. If I go to play it now and I get tired before its finished, it means I'm not playing enough.

 

[moderatelyfunky]

Hopefully, this TB member will see this and tell us a little about his home planet - sorry I can't remember who it was who performed it. Just amazing!

https://youtu.be/cwjyqoDdJeg?si=ZyjqsJ2Jq49SLgNj

 

[lordradish]

Heart of the Sunrise by Yes was a pretty tough one, especially to memorize. Recently learned ProtoCosmos by Tony Williams Lifetime. Not the hardest, but the time sigs/4 over 3 took me a while to get down.

 

[dustinymichaels]

The Latin Bass Book
A Practical Guide
by Oscar Stagnaro & Chuck Sher

The playing wasn't too hard, but initially I was struggling to get into a territory that was unlike what I would "normally" do.

 

[bulldean]

Living Color - Cult of Personality