>>New Target and Pay Per Lesson - The Only Living Boy In New York - Simon & Garfunkel

[familyman4]

Hi everyone,

Today's Target and Pay Per Lesson release is now live, The Only Living Boy In New York by Simon & Garfunkel.

The Only Living Boy In New York is a song written by Paul Simon and performed by Simon & Garfunkel. It is the eighth track on their last studio album ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’.

This lesson covers the chords, the strumming, the progression and breaks down the guitar riff, in the 2nd instrumental part.

The arrangement is done in the key of G, where the guitar is capoed on the 4th fret. It includes easy strumming in double time, several passing bass notes and a few hammer-ons.

For vocal reasons, I prefer to play the song in the key of D and I figured that other female vocalists might wanna do the same. For that a segment of playing in that key is included.

Enjoy this level 3 song!


http://www.totallyguitars.com/target-so ... .html#song

[davidrfinn99165]

Many thx Ness... one of my all time favourite songs.

Thx especially for the section on the guitar riff.....i'm afraid I cheated and went straight to the riff section haha !! Great stuff !!

I think Paul generally plays this live using his 12 string ( i'm assuming he just took one guitar to the Barnes & Noble event) so I'm thinking that maybe that is also what i hear on the studio version. Though it could be layering, reverb and echo, I'm gonna go for the 12 string.

Interestingly this was another song where the early songbooks all had the wrong key and therefore the wrong chords... I'm pretty sure the original BOTW songbook has it in C, and even tuning down a half step to get to B doesn't get the authentic sound for the intro. It took me ages to get to playing it in G at capo 4 and suddenly eureka, there is the signature sound of the studio version.

Wish we'd had TG back in those days... it may have been a tough business model 25 years befote the internet, but still....

[michelew]

I just watched both playthrough - beautiful ... Especially the Key of D version. Magic, haunting... Gorgeous.

[thereshopeyet]

Vanessa

Another great song for the TGVanessa touch !

Dermot



:ohmy:



Link About - The Only Living Boy In New York - Simon & Garfunkel

[neverfoundthetime]

That's my fav S&G song too, nice Ness!

[guitardude7]

Thanks for the great lesson again, Vanessa. This is such a great song. I did have a pretty accurate tab of it one time in a songbook but the one that is out now on the various sites (sheetmusicdirect, etc) is not the same one. It has the run down C C/B Am Am/G shown differently and a lot harder to play and some other differences. Also, they tab out all the strumming which is sometimes hard to follow versus someone showing you and giving you a strum pattern which you can then vary occasionally. I really love that you show the chords for different keys in your lessons a lot and in this one you even showed the riff in D. Nice

[TGNesh]

David: One of your all time favorites, cool! Well I find it such a gorgeous pearl among their songs. I don't know why it stands out for me, but it's just a beautiful song. You went straight to the riff? Haha! :laugh: I can imagine though, if you're comfortable strumming and those basic chords, it should be really easy then. Indeed, the riff is definitely nice to add. And yes, Paul indeed generally plays it on a twelve string, which sounds fantastic of course. You're right about those songbooks as well, they all show it in the key of C or whatever, didn't find any of them in G. Pretty weird I'd say. TG in the days with no internet :laugh: :laugh: ! Thank David!

Michele: :cheer: Thanks so much sweet friend, just thrilled to hear that!

Dermot: Very glad you like my touch Dermot! Great vids btw :laugh:, many thanks!

Chris: Actually you were the one who reminded me of this gorgeous song. You played it at Andrew and Sonia's place, which i suddenly remembered last week. It's just so nice to get such songs of my chest. Anyway, i of course had hoped you would like it, even though you're already playing it. Thanks Chris!

Steve: Really pleased to hear that Steve! Sometimes I think I go way over board with the amount of info and options/posibilities and such (my lessons are getting longer and longer :blink: ), so yeah great to hear it's appreciated! I'm also glad that you get the point of strumming. I'm reluctant to be too specific about it, since it can and should be varied and random, depending on the song of course, but I do want to give a starting point for students to work with. As I mentioned to David, I'm surprised that most songbooks write it out in another key. Especially nowadays, it's not very hard to find out how he does it. Oh well, many thanks for tuning in Steve!

TGNess B)

[lcintokyo]

I wanted to add my thanks to Vanessa for this lesson--I've been hoping this would get added to the TG catalog for some time now...

Keep 'em coming, please!

-Luke

[TGNesh]

Hey Luke, how awesome to hear from you! Glad to hear you like this addition to Target. I would agree, it really should be in there. One of my favorite Paul Simon songs, so it was nice to get to it.

Thanks for tuning in and leaving me a note Luke, appreciate it!

Ness

lcintokyo wrote:

I wanted to add my thanks to Vanessa for this lesson--I've been hoping this would get added to the TG catalog for some time now...

Keep 'em coming, please!

-Luke