Fleetwood Mac's IMPOSSIBLE picking song

ah so ask any guitarist that ever tried this song and they tell you yeah almost broke my fingers it's time we talked about this never going back again by fleetwood mac written and performed by lindsey buckingham the movement the fingers have to make in combination with these almost impossible chord shapes it requires a lot of stamina and coordination so here's why it's pretty dang hard to get it down and you know what i hate most it's just a great song it's featured on probably one of the best selling records of all time so the driving force behind this entire piece is the thumb it's the foundation that throughout the entire song does exactly the same thing it jumps between the bass notes in a simple eighth note pattern one and two and three and four and etc and for those that pay attention yes i'm indeed playing in a drop d tuning with a capo and a good old fret 4. so this is a very common picking pattern in fact it's the heart of the legendary travis picking better it began as kind of a travis pick after troubles after merle travis i made a whole video about that and i talked loads about it in my acoustic guitar course called acoustic adventure so if you want to be real good at acoustic please check that out but the thumb it's child's play everyone can do that it's what's going on on top of that so first we alternate between a very cool d voicing like this and then you go to the a chord very briefly followed by a hammer on back to d and this is what the picking hand does so for this song the index plays the g string while the middle finger is playing that b string always but so far everyone can do this here comes the tricky bits so although this is not the hardest part of the song it's definitely a good practice for what's coming later so grab the fifth fret on that high e with the pinky and we're still playing a d chord by the way right now just a different voicing so just the fingers are doing this so you see there is a descending pattern grouped in threes going on from that ring to the middle to the index i do that twice [Music] but now if we put that thumb back in the mix [Music] so you hear this is rather tricky to get down the fingers play with a different feel than the thumb is the thumb a finger i don't know you know what i mean the fingers make a different rhythmic pattern on top of that steady eighth note thumb and it sounds pretty cool so the thumb is doing that and the fingers are doing tick tick and that is pretty awesome so paired with the first bit [Music] and this is literally just the first bar so luckily bar 2 is almost identical apart from that pull-off in the beginning from the d to a to a sort of a7 voicing over here and then back to the regular d voicing [Music] and we do that same polyrhythmic thing going on apart from the first middle finger on the g string [Music] so the first two bars here we are [Music] all right so this is magical right it sounds super cool and it's so rewarding to get this down but take it slow and you get there i'm sure okay so next up this is the most tricky bit of this song i guess so only the first chord shape already it's sort of an a13 but it's not made there's no major theory in the chord so it's it feels a bit neutral [Music] like this so the index fairing is barring on the first three strings fret two whether the ring finger is playing fret five on the d and the pinky fret five on the b string so this can be a tricky chord but it's not impossible so first that thumb it's making a movement between just the a and d string this time playing the root and the minor seven of the chord one and two and three and four and so on top of this we're playing those groups of three again but now it's five times [Music] so that's five times those groups of three just doing that so one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a and pair that with those thumbs playing the eighth note well there's a sort of polyrhythmic thing going on the accents of the finger are shifting on top of that steady eighth note pulse and it sounds super cool let's do it [Music] that's super cool right but this is the original tempo [Music] okay let's see if that's possible [Music] so you can just elongate is it a word can just make it as long as you want you can keep that same pattern going on and on the eighth note pattern just keep on playing the fingers doing that it's pretty great exercise but at the same time you're still holding that chord shape and it starts aching and you're like ah [Music] doing this longer than five minutes will just wreck your brain so just stop after five minutes take some rest let your brain make the connections it's better to go to sleep anyway because then the brain learns the best and the next morning do it again and you'll see you'll be a little bit faster so how does that all sound when you put it together [Music] there you have it and you end with [Music] so i don't want to anger the copyright rules too much so let's just skim over it so we do this cool sliding thing that sounds a bit like the jackass intro tune [Music] and then back to the oh well the thumb is doing the same eighth note picking pattern [Music] all right so now you think your brain is fried your fingers are aching your body hurts you're slapped in the face because you realize how difficult this song actually is and then you still have to get to the chorus and the chorus is for the fretting hand a pain in the well you know what i mean we grab the d major chord like this the highest voicing index finger barring fret seven on the d g and b string and that pinky going all the way up to eight nine ten difficult with the capo again a different voicing we're moving it up the vocals go up the chords go up there's more excitement in the chorus going on and that's what we love the thumb is going from that sixth to the fourth to the fifth to the fourth just that same basic eighth note pattern again [Music] and luckily the fingers do pretty much the same as in the first bar of this tune but now we briefly go to a d major seventh voicing so that ring finger is playing flat nine all of a sudden [Music] and now we get that same three over two polyrhythmic thing going on again the thumb doing the eighth notes and the fingers are doing a three [Music] but the most tricky thing right now is that pinky that's barring the first and the second string on that high fret so if you're practicing this and you want to get it down but you have to hold the chord shape all the time this is going to hurt your finger ah where's my stamina potion so the first bar now in the second bar we go to an a7 chord real quick [Music] like this voicing which is the five chord in the key of d so there's a cool tension resolution and i'm back to and then the last bar is the same as the first so the thumb is just doing this all the time same thing [Music] and that was the end let's go over it real quick to don't anger the copyright troll okay so b minor seven f sharp minor seven this is the f sharp because we're playing a drop d string right and then back to b minor seven [Music] pinky on that high fifth fret [Music] hammer on from a to d which brings us back home [Music] and that is the guitar because he just repeats this but he sings on top of this so as i was editing this video i realized i never played the whole thing one time in total so let's do that [Music] anyway if you're thinking about getting better at acoustic anyway you might want to consider to check out my acoustic guitar course called acoustic adventure it's a nice adventurous place where you can visit places like the finger picking lounge where you really dive into finger picking techniques like drive speaking seen in this video but we're also discussing strumming different picking techniques of course and we play blues from cool poppy finger style tunes it's all in there and uh yeah love you check it out links are below anyway so if you finally do get this piece down please let me know i would love to see it on instagram use paul davids and hashtag never going back again give it your best super rewarding if you do get it down catch you in the next one cheers [Music] you

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 6,250,791

Keywords: paul davids, acoustic, guitar, picking, lindsay buckingham, fleetwood mac, never going back again, song, difficult song, epic riffs, guitar riff, guitar riffs, acoustic guitar, Martin D28, Video, why is this riff so difficult, finger picking, big love, top 30 acoustic songs, top 10 guitar songs, acoustic guitar songs, difficult songs, impossible, picking piece, acoustic guitar intros, stevie nicks, breakdown, tutorial, lesson, guitar lesson, acoustic guitar lesson, music theory

Id: TeNyc9pXm1w

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022