"Young Man, Young Man, Look At Your Shoes," by Peter Lang

Friends:

This month I'm excited to present another fine Peter Lang solo from his first record.

"Young Man, Young Man, Look At Your Shoes" should appeal to most here, it is simple enough for more beginner fingerstyle players to find accessible, while having enough melodic and harmonic interest to grab more advanced players for a quick study.

It is constructed of 5 brief melodic ideas, I hesitate to call them sections because each is so brief, but they do all feel like unique sections to me. The transcription here corresponds to Lang's recording on The Thing At the Nursery Room Window . In this recording the piece is played in it's entirety three times through. I made the decision to not write out each repeat, as I believe he intended to play it the same way each time through. The coda serves only to show the slight difference in the measure that ends the piece.

In my YouTube performance, I mostly play this based on the album version, but I steal the form of the way he played this in later live recordings (repeat entire piece only once and repeat the last section). I like the feel of the swung eighths as we hear on the album recording, the later performances with straight eighths lack the charm of the early recording, in my opinion.

Conveniently, there is plenty of video footage of Lang playing this later in life, so all of his right- and left-hand fingerings could be documented in the score. Some may find his right-hand fingerings unconventional, especially the frequent use of the index finger where it may seem more reasonable to use the middle. I would say play it as you wish, but it is always fun to try to get in the head of the composer and understand why they might have made some of these choices. There are a few minor variations on each repeat, but again, these only occur in bass notes and I believe them to be unintentional. There are two instances where I feel the variations are worth noting. First, the strummed chords in measures 1 and 5 sometimes start from the 5th string, other times they start from the 4th. Second, the bass note on the second beat of measures 23 and 27 is played differently every time. I went with what he plays on the first instance. Sometimes he will play the low C here, sometimes he plays the 1st fret 3rd string. I actually prefer the sound of the open fourth in these instances as you will hear in my recording.

Embarrassingly, I left out my favorite bit of writing in the whole piece, the movement of the bass in measure 29. It's really good, don't be like me!

I'm performing this on my 1973 Bozo, it is interesting to compare the body differences to the later builds now that I have two of these. The earlier body design is much deeper in the upper shoulders, I personally think this trait should have stayed! Also, this features a tuning that Lang used in a few other pieces, CGCGCD. Think of it like open C with the top string tuned down to a D. In my recording, I am tuned to the same pitch as he is on the record which it two half-steps lower than usual, so the guitar sounds in Bb F Bb F Bb C. If you favor a low setup you may find it hard to get a good sound when tuned this low and might have to use concert pitch instead.

Most of this information is reiterated in the lesson video, as well as some tips on the more detailed bits and slow play throughs of the passages. You can access it here:

https://youtu.be/YzwCDTMLjoI

As always, the score is attached below. I hope to see everyone back next month for more great music.