Battling Into the Mystic! Guitar Technique Challenge.
Noodling with this Van Morrison classic the other day I zoomed in on the atmospheric horn riff that crops up to take the song to another level. The video below is lined up at that point if you're not familiar with it:
The original's in Eb but dropping it a semitone down to D allows for a decent version on guitar in dropped D tuning (just tune your low E string down to D).
Here's a rough and ready rendition of what I came up with though that's not really the purpose of this post.
What is the purpose of this post, is a tricky combination I ran into when trying out a few different fingerings. So tricky that after 40+ years of playing guitar I can't do it!
Here's a vague tab for what I play in the video above. The problem we'll be zooming deep in on is the two consecutive pull-offs
You can see I've no real issue playing that part in the video above however you can also possibly see that I ditched the D chord to let myself get through that part comfortably. I experimented with leaving the D chord down but found I was unable to get the second pull-off to ring because my index finger on the G string was muting the B string as a result of the 3rd finger movement. That a few minutes investigation didn't allow me to crack it then became a source of annoyance and I've set myself beating this one as a challenge. I'll return with some deeper insight and some measurements in true Taplature style to track progress from my current score of XXX (can't do it 😔), hopefully to some sort of success.
The current state of play leaves the fingering I'd like off-limits as I haven't worked out yet how to do it!