Maromaro

Clarinet Polka/Grandpa's Polka - early viewing

Added 2025-02-24 08:13:23 +0000 UTC

Hi there!

I wanted to do this one for a very long time. Some of you may know it as the "Charlie The Unicorn - Candy Mountain Song", others as the annoying radio jingle from "Lato Z Radiem". It's a fun little song, that's actually very hard to play on guitar.

First it's in F-major/A#-major most of the time which are totally awful keys to play on guitar. Then the main melody is a hard sweep picking lick which is also not intuitive. Another thing is that this is a very hard tempo to sweep pick, because this technique is usually used to play very fast arpeggios swiftly. But here, you must play it in this mid-tempo, and keep it very steady. This is the only way to make it sound good and have the vibe of the original. I was also trying to change the sweep licks into hybrid picking, but ultimately stayed with the sweep picking.

So in conclusion this song is playable and a great exercise in precise sweep picking, but you have to be 100% focused while playing it.