Wish you were here

Wish You Were Here, by Pink Floyd, was last night’s guitar song. When the teacher handed out the sheet of music, I just looked at it and thought ‘oh you can’t be serious’. I had never seen anything like it. It’s this strange mix of tabs and sheet music and rhythm notation (which you don’t often see apparently) that was confusing my old flute-playing brain, but after a few ‘excuse me’s I think I have it. For example, there is this zero, with a line attached, which in sheet music looks like a minim, but that was putting too many beats in the bar and so I didn’t get it, but it is just a crotchet that is showing you that it’s a zero, which is why it’s open. Minims in guitar music have circles around them. This is good to know. I had quite a few ah-ha moments last night actually and it was a good lesson. I am not sure about this “hammer on” business though, and it all starts hurting your fingers.

We did the first guitar intro part, but we have the music for the second guitar solo also, complete with the string bending (who invents this stuff?), which is for next week. Here is the original song, listened to by 53 million other people, but here is an unplugged version, from a much older Pink Floyd, which is more what I am aiming for.