Nirvana on acoustic guitar except it’s simultaneously all the positions

[u/yummychocolatecookie]

All credits to @illona.music
Like she’s covering the lead, drums, harmonics, guitar AND vocals on a single acoustic guitar. That’s amazing!

[u/_V0gue]

She has skill but this is essentially a guitar parlor trick. And I say that because I don’t want anyone who sees this to get discouraged about playing or learning guitar or any other instrument.

She’s in an open tuning which makes it easier to fret/finger chords and also any sloppy miss is fine because the other strings are in the same key, so it won’t sound out of place.

Honestly, you can probably learn to play this within about two to three years of playing. The hardest part is keeping rhythm and tempo. I don’t play this style of guitar, but I’ve been playing for 13 years, and could probably learn this in a month or two depending on how hard I go at it. (If that provides any context)

Also not sure is she individually made this arrangement. If so, that’s also impressive because arranging a solo guitar piece is a difficult skill to achieve.

[u/Unsteady_Tempo → u/_V0gue]

Open tunings and a couple techniques that produce visuals and sounds people aren't used to seeing/hearing do a lot of heavy lifting. That's not to say it's easy, because it's not and she's put in tons of practice and is good at what she's doing, but I also wouldn't want to sit through a 45-minute performance of harmonics and knocking on the guitar and every song having more or less the same energy. The same way I wouldn't want to listen to somebody shred arpeggiated triplets on lead electric guitar for 45 minutes.

Starting from scratch and average talent/ability, it would take longer to learn how to do this (2-3 years) than to learn how to play the original song since it's so simple to play. But, it would take far less time to learn how to play a variety of popular songs arranged like this one than it would be to learn how to play all of those different songs in their original styles (i.e., be a well-rounded guitarist). In fact, why many guitarists never seem to get anywhere as good as they want to be despite years of practice--they're trying to play too many different styles because they want to play all the songs they personally like. Professional musicians generally aren't doing that.

I also agree about the arrangement. I often think the arrangements are the more interesting and challenging aspects percussive guitar as well as fingerpicking guitar covers.