Crystallizing Goals

In a presumably recurring theme (I didn’t bother to check the archives), I’ve been taking stock of my long term goals. Neil Peart’s passing brought the importance of a few key figures into stark relief and made me reassess where I was on the path. I’ve said it many times, as far as music is concerned, I’ve always held certain artists and typically key songs of theirs as benchmarks or milestones that I wanted to master before I felt “satisfied” as a musician, at least in a technical, facilitative sort of context. In music, it’s a fairly short list of the usual suspects comprised of individuals and/or bands. 

Mastering all (musical) parts of a band’s songs can be a heady achievement, at least in the genres I prefer. I don’t delude myself into believing this will be easy or is foreordained. It’s the process of pursuit as much as the achievement that I find valuable. All that preamble aside, the point of this post was just to update my list and perhaps use that as a new metric or at least a means of quantifying where I’m at and where I’m going. So, without further delay, here ‘tis.

Songs

Band                                    Song                                 Parts

Rush                                    Tom Sawyer                    Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keys
The Spirit of Radio
Xanadu
La Villa Strangiato
Subdivisions
YYZ
Limelight
Natural Science
Digital Man
Freewill

Yes Heart of the Sunrise Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keys
And You And I
South Side of the Sky

Honestly, as far as band covers go, this list will keep me busy for years. I’m relatively close and capable of the guitars on all of these, but I’ve got a long way to go on drums, bass (especially Rush) and keys. I put this list as just a reminder to myself and a sort of update to similar lists I’ve created in the past. My philosophy towards musicianship is to always have a song that is several levels above your current ability that you are pursuing, even if very incrementally. 

My “secondary” list here is for songs that are primarily focused on one part, as opposed to entire band covers. 

Band/Artist Song Parts

Eric Johnson Cliffs of Dover Guitar
Van Halen Eruption Guitar
I’m The One
Hot For Teacher

Tommy Emmanuel Endless Road Guitar

There are many other songs I would like to add to my repertoire and that’s still the ongoing plan. This list is just sort of a condensed focus on the songs I not only love and want to play, but also the songs that will hopefully help me inculcate the components of these various musician’s styles that I admire. 

Like the tale, the list grows in the telling (or passage of time) so this will likely change going forward, but it’s actually still fairly close to the first lists of this nature I made several years ago.