Tabs
TAB: Torch Song (Preston Reed) Notes: (I tried to format this text file to be 66 lines per page so it would print politely. I don't have a tool to put in form feeds, though, so I have had to do it by counting lines. 7 pages? Hope it worked. - S.L.) This is a very mellow guitar solo from an underrated guitarist. I wouldn't quite put him in the Leo (Kottke) and Mike (Hedges) club, but he's a serious power picker and has some nice original stuff. This piece is off "Instrument Landing" on the Universal Master Series (UVLD-78000). My transcription is only about six months behind my promised schedule, and wouldn't have been possible without my Mac and sound editing software to slow things down while I plunked along. As Tori Amos said in some recent liner notes, "...it's bitchin' what these things can do." Preston uses lots of weird tunings - this one goes DADECD, according to an interview in Frets magazine a bunch of years back. He likes to use esoteric tunings. Why? Probably to make it tough for scrubs like me to transcribe his music. :-) There are many places where phrases could be played in more than one way. I have tried to consider hand position as much as possible and stay note-for-note; in some of the dissonant sections this gets a bit rough, but I think this is pretty faithful to the original. This is not an easy piece to just pick up and play... part A, in particular, is very free-flowing, often somewhat dissonant, and in no particular rhythm that I can tell. Best to listen to it if you can. The rest is in a very regular and slow waltz rhythm. Take your time. Be warned that there are a few fairly gnarly left-hand stretches in this piece - I'm pretty sure of the notes, but if anyone can find easier ways to phrase them, I'm all ears. The usual notation stuff applies: "^" indicates a beat, "h" is hammer-on, "p" is pull-off, "/" is slide, "" is a harmonic on string x (there are two of these). In addition, in particularly gnarly left-hand moves, I have tried to indicate how I fret the notes with the not-really-classical LEFT-hand "i,m,r,l" (index, middle, ring, little) indication stacked in the same order as the strings. For example, the notation: l m l i l r i m ...-8-10----+3----p1----... ...---------+-----------... ...-6-------+-----------... ...---------+-----------... ...-5-------+3--------1-... ...---------+-----------... means, in the first note "stack", finger the fifth string, fifth fret with your index finger, the third string, sixth fret with your middle finger, and the first string, eighth fret with your little finger, then drop the whole thing and slide the little finger to the tenth fret. Then, finger the fifth string, third fret with your ring finger and the first string, third fret with your little finger, pull your little finger off to fret the first string, first fret with your index finger, and finally finger the fifth string, first fret with your middle finger (which requires a bit of a wrist torque). I hope this notation doesn't unnecessarily complicate things - you can certainly ignore it if you can find better ways. In fact, you could even email suggestions to me!
I was originally going to break it up into repetitive sections, since there are sections that sort of repeat, but there are some very slight nuancial (?) differences that I wanted to preserve. The "sections" are, for the most part, sixteen-measure phrases, sectionA augmentedA being the only exception. This is a fine piece, easy- and pleasant-sounding, difficult to master (I sure haven't yet), and certainly worth the effort. I think guitarists of all levels could learn from this piece. Also, it was a hell of a lot of work to transcribe. Have fun, and let me know what you think! Steve Linberg [email protected] (preferred) [email protected] (ugh) /--------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Section A: | \--------------------------------------------------------------------------/ Note on section A: Don't panic, this is tricky but not impossible. The vertical lines separate "phrases," and the numbers below them are the time in seconds, to help give some idea of the spacing. This is only approximate; you should really try to listen to it if you can. If not, just wing it. Things settle down after this section. i m i m i m r r m i m d |--------------0---|---|--0/2-2------|---|--------7-5-|------0---| c |------------0-----|---|-------------|---|-0-0--0-----|--------0-|
E MajorE |---3--3--3/5------|---|5----------3-|---|------8-----|-7--------|
D MajorD |------------------|---|-------------|---|------------|----------|