Normally I don't listen to anyone else's music but my own. I have hundreds of original songs in my head, and spontaneously come up with new tunes all the time.
However, for some reason, the 1965 Beatles song Help! fascinates me. My housemate and my daughter both hate that song. There were times when I would listen to it all night with headphones on, sometimes slowed down to half speed, sometimes sped up to 1.4 or more. For about three or four years I would frequently play along to it on guitar for several hours at a time, many hours each day, day after day, week after week, month after month. I could "fake" the song and figured out the most tricks of how to play it the first few months, then after that sometimes it would be six months or a year before I would realize how to play another part closer to the original. I've also listened to and played along with many covers of this tune by other artists, including folk, punk and metal versions of this song, but I like the original version by the Beatles the most.
Help! is a short song, and in Windows Media Player when one sets it to repeat it lasts about two minutes twenty seconds including the time after it ends and before it starts again. This translates to about three times in seven minutes, or about twenty-five times an hour. In four hours I can play along to this song one hundred times, and I have done that many times. I think the longest I ever played it non-stop was six hours straight, playing my guitar along with it every time. I play John Lennon's rhythm part mostly but also play George Harrison's spiraling arpeggio riff at the end of each chorus (where John just taps on his guitar to keep time). Sometimes I play my own lead riffs.
In 2008 I wrote an essay about a possible metaphysical interpretation of its lyrics at Help as metaphysics. On December 13, 2009 I recorded myself playing to it for about the umpteen thousandth time in several years, and posted the result in a YouTube video. I haven't played the song nearly as much the past couple years as I did from 2005 to 2009, but in 2010 I had two revelations of how to better play the intro and the third verse.
I play the song a little better now than what is recorded in the folowing YouTube video, especially the music for the intro and the third verse. I also sing much better now than anything yet recorded of me or posted anywhere. I do like my original interpretation of the second verse in this cover version. My guitar plays some of the vocal melody while playing the rhythm. I really need some quality studio time with somebody who has good recording equipment and knows what they are doing, not so much for this song but for the hundreds of original songs I've written most of which have never been recorded yet. If you like the YouTube video, please give it a high rating. If you don't like, please don't give it a low rating, lol. Like I said, I plan to re-record it and get a better version up someday.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x31RbJ4pr3E[/youtube]
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"When you ride over sharps, you get flats!"--The Bicycling Guitarist, May 13, 2008
Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 03 Mar 2011, 3:47 pm, edited 5 times in total.
28 Feb 2011, 8:14 pm
I've been listening to it for about an hour now today...
