Quote:
Originally Posted by Noodler
...I know what you mean Stratrat. Someone asked me to write down the strumming for Time of Your Life by Greenday. It is so much easier to listen and copy than to write it down!...
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To be honest, I wouldn't know where to start and wouldn't bother trying. Even if you could get the strums and chord changes perfectly synched on paper, somebody would have to know the song well enough to have the "feel" of its rhythm to be able to play it - and if they can "feel" the song, they shouldn't need it written down. Besides which, there are little nuances like only hitting certain strings on a strum in either direction, muting either the up or down strum.....by the time you wrote it all out, a song would resemble a small novel!
I'll admit that I'm often guilty of resorting to tab to figure out songs - but once I have the chords or riffs, then it's time to listen to it, feel it, and learn to play it - the rhythm, the strumming pattern, etc. Like I said before, I think it would be much more difficult to look at a "strum chart" of D's and U's and try to interpret them on the fly.
I've never played Greenday's "Time of Your Life" - but I know the song and as I "listen" to it in my head as I write this, I can feel how I'd strum it. It's even quite possible that you and I would strum it differently, as there's more than one way to play any song.