“The Boxer” - Simon & Garfunkel

This is another song that is not just top 100, but perhaps in the top 5 most popular acoustic guitar songs. It’s not easy, but I believe every advanced guitar player gives it a go at some point. I have played/taught it for years along with “Dust in the Wind”, “Time in a Bottle”, & the rest of the folk/rock cannon. This versions special though cause of the melody (as if the normal way wasn’t tricky enough). I also went with a more modern strumming rhythm during the ‘Lie,lie,lie…’ part. I was trying to figure out how play it more like it is on Bridge Over Troubled Water, but then just said screw it I like it more like this…

I’m probably going to post a TAB of my version on here, as it differs pretty significantly from the one in the book. I tried playing it that way, but found the lack of a consistent bass rhythm kind of annoying. The alternating bass rhythm is really a big feature of the song, so I went with that - alternating mostly R-5-R-5 for all the chords. That allowed me to really focus on getting the higher strings to sing & hold the melodic rhythms - which are really unique and sad. Thought about the details in each lyric in realtime.

Oh also, this is capo at 5. Still key of C_Do, but the original is played using open position C. The capo at 5 makes C Do play the same as G Do for optimal use of the open strings. But it should sound like the same key as the record…. I hope so anyway.

ps. Sorry it took me a while to post this. I know I started off at a pretty fast clip, but things are pretty busy around here. Only so much time in the day. But along with not drinking, I do at least intend to stay on this resolution. I’ll try to do one of these like every 3 days or so. We’ll see.