What are your favorite songs to play?
 

Hello,

looking for ideas and would like to hear what you love to play. :guitar:

Thanks.

Give us an idea of your skill level. Beginner? Advanced?

I welcome any and all songs from simple to complex.

Hi Bho,

My favorites keep changing. While I like playing instrumental pieces, they are a lot of work. And most people respond to songs that are sung, where the guitar is used for accompaniment. So I like to play stuff I can sing, by singer-songwriters who sing in my range, which is sort of baritone, maybe 2nd tenor. James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, Jim Croce, Paul Simon, Darrell Scott, sometimes the Beatles but with the song transposed to a slightly lower range.

Lately I'm enjoying playing Croce's "Time in a Bottle," the Beatles' "In My Life," Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind," Paul Simon's "Old Friends," and James Taylor's "You Can Close Your Eyes."

I like to memorize these songs; I think I do a better job when I can play them from the heart.

- Glenn

I tend to really love playing songs with more funky rhythm or complex strumming and timing. The songs I most enjoy playing are what I would call "sloppy" but soulful songs, as opposed to technically precise, sterile songs.


For example I love playing Good Riddance" by Green Day, "I see Fire" and "Sing" by Ed Sheeran, "Brandy" by Looking Glass/RHCP version, "Locked Out Of Heaven" by Bruno Mars, "Counting Stars" by One Republic, "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men, "My Sundown" by Jimmy Eats World.

For most of my life, I played 6/12 string acoustic picked songs like "Magic Power" and "Hold On" by Triumph and "Closer To The Heart" by Rush.

My tastes have evolved to a much more mainstream popular music style as I've gotten too old for it :D

eh devil's dream, blackberry blossom... and other fiddle tunes in a similar style. was a fingerstyle player for over a decade and only now getting into bluegrass flatpicking. trying to play simpler noodley songs made up of mostly eighth notes. pretty fun. heck, i just had to re-learn the proper way to hold a pick. i hadn't held one since high school which was nearly 15 years ago. :guitar:

Lately I have been in a Pink Floyd mood. Comfortably Numb, Wish You Were Here, Breathe, Mother etc...

I belong to several acoustic jams and song circles. Rarely does a jam go by without us singing John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery." That's a keeper, for sure.

...REALLY good songs...

Seriously, I truly play songs that I love, that speak to me, that move me... and, along with my original compositions, I play a lot of songs from my favorite songwriters through the past 150 years or so...

I play songs that I feel people should NEVER forget... even if they haven't heard them before!

Some current favorites and newly acquired pieces:

Sitting in Limbo (Jimmy Cliff)
The Road (Danny O'Keefe)
And When I Die (Laura Nyro)
Hold On (Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan)
Whispering Pines (Robertson/Manuel)
Honeysuckle Rose (Fats Waller)
Scrapple From The Apple (Charlie Parker)

...and like that! You get the idea...

You could run a parallel thread on the Show & Tell forum.

My favs these days are:

Ain't Nobody's Business (1922)
https://soundcloud.com/vern-equinox/...usiness-but-my

Send Me The Pillow That You Dream On (1949)
https://soundcloud.com/vern-equinox/...e-pillow-take2

And the Sam Cooke song in my signature, Bring It On Home To Me (1962), that for me has become a song that just makes sense in open G. Used to play in standard tuning but no more.

Here Comes the Sun (G. Harrison). Finger style or flat pick.

Right now, The Shadow of Your Smile, Under Paris Skies, Here's That Rainy Day,
Indiana, Sweet Georgia Brown, Charade etc. I like playing "for the people" while improvising.

Right now, "The World I Know" from Collective Soul and "Don't Think Twice" from Bob Dillon. They both put me in a good place!!

Songs I play regularly
 

- Romanza (with an improvised ending)
- Classical Gas (with an improvised ending)
- April Come She Will
- Vincent
- Blind Blake - Guitar Chimes - as a basis for improvisation
- Blind Blake - Wabash Rag
- Matteo Carcassi - Caprice
- Don't Think Twice
- Greensleeves
- Boureé

Songs or instrumentals only?