Uh-oh. Was asked to learn and play the national anthem..

[DaveAronow]

You cant ruin the National anthem by playing it straigh and keeping it simple. You CAN and easily potentially WILL ruin it buy trying to inflict your "vision" of musical art on the poor unsuspecting and captive audience. Im not saying YOU are not capable of turniung it into something fresh and awesome, but the further you deviate from straight, the more potential there is to have people not "get" your vision of it.

 

Play it extremely straight, and simple, do a great job of it, practice it a bunch, and the audience will appreciate you for it. They are not musicians. Most of them are not going to get what you are doing anyway. That is such a known song, all they are going to kjnow is either, wow!! They did a good job on that because it sounded right, oir they will say, holy balls, that really blew. That sounded nothing like the Star spangled banner that we all know and love so much.

 

Ask yourself how many times you personally have heard the National Anthem butchered, and then try to remember the things that the "artists" did that butchered it. Most of the time it will either be simply an aweful vocalist, or some off the wall BAD renditon of the performers artistic vision.

 

K.I.S.S.

[El Glom-o]

If you play it around here, be prepared for some of the audience shouting out the "Oh" in the last part of the song.

[cBc]

just don't do this

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FhndWwWt8I

[MichaelSaulnier]

I gotta go with quietly, tastefully strum the chords... let the singer have the last bit, and let HIM decide what key he wants to sing it in.

 

All eyes will be on him... if you do your part right, no one will even remember you played anything.

 

Good luck.

 

M

[_pete_]

 

just don't do this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FhndWwWt8I

 

 

I knew what that was gonna be before I clicked it.