Tom,
You AND your Dad have plenty to be proud of. For one thing, you both have each other to be proud of! Secondly, you have yourselves to be proud of. Let me tell you, Tommy Emmanuel is one of the best guitarists in the world BAR NONE! He’s STUPIDLY GOOD!!!
I’ve seen him perform three times in person, and I was lucky (and bold) enough to go up and meet him! He’s a REALLY nice guy, but GODDAMN when he plays, he’s just an ANIMAL!!! Wow! Anyways, all that being said, your Dad did an outstanding job with that Tommy song (“Locomotivation.”) Your Dad has a great ear to be able to figure that out without any transcriptions. I’ve always maintained that stuff like Tommy’s (or any difficult/fast/intricate fingerpicking) is WAY harder to transcribe than something like (everyone’s favorite whipping boy, even though I LOVE THE GUY —>) Yngwie Malmsteen’s
music. My reasoning is that the “crazy-fingerpicking” stuff is more “harmonically-dense”
than the fast “linear” flatpicking-stuff (like YJM’s.) Anyways, the only thing I heard that was slightly (and I mean SLIGHTLY and this is just splitting hairs and in NO WAY is a slight or any level of disrespect!) different from the original, is that I think Tommy has a tendency to “Palm-Mute” his bass-notes more aggressively (for a slightly more
tight-staccatto result.) Other than THAT, I thought your Dad “KICKED THE ****” out of this song, both in his transcribing and in his performance!
GREAT JOB Tom’s Dad!!!
~Bill Meehan~
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