Suggestions for Instrumentals

you might want to consider The Stumble by Freddie King. and his other instrumentals. they are all quite danceable and there's plenty of room to insert your own interpretations.

 

Seems like you got chops based on what you’re playing.
Something fun I like to do ( I do it very poorly) is take simple or traditional songs and switch the chording up a bit to give it a little different life and add more accent leads to fill in some of that vocal harmony. Tony Rice is probably the best I can think of at it.

 

I do this all the time on my acoustic mainly as a way to practice keep my head and my fingers in shape and my ears too
But also to record and perform at gigs I did a whole CD of instrumentals on a cheap classical guitar just to see if I could do it some are very similar to the ones that you have already listed

Current ones I'm working on now are:
Nights in White Satin
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
Jose Feliciano version of Light My Fire
Easy to be hard
And a whole bunch of Grateful Dead song I could probably do a CD of just Grateful Dead instrumental I'm working on that eventually
Sorry for the voice activation
Just keep doing what you're doing it's a lot of fun

 

Lots of material by The Shadows and Hank Marvin to look at. Also the Meters - Cissy Strut for example.

 

I'm trying to work on the spaghetti western surf sounding song Apache just on solo acoustic

 

The Beatles' And I Love Her is a nice chord/melody to work out.

 

You have some beautiful tunes in your list.
When I was in my early twenties Easy to be hard was a song I could play all night long, now that I’m soon to be 70 and have arthritis it’s not so easy anymore. I’ve pretty much give up even trying.

 

Buckaroo
Chaparral
Albatross
Walk Don’t Run

 

Yes!! Hideway... Clapton covered it.

man.. someone beat me too it.

 

Theme tunes can be fun. The Pirates had some with this :-

 

B52s
Cramps

 

Thanks a couple things:
I only play music and drive Uber now and basically I say that because I feel compelled to play a lot of guitar because it's now my income also I love to play

I play hours every day because sometimes I just don't know what else to do so playing instrumentals keeps my brain active and maybe fights off aging I don't know

Lastly with respect to my real technique, I'm only a two finger finger picker thumb and forefinger or thumb and middle finger
So I never really playi Melody and Rhythm independently of each other it's always give and take

And the songs I pick sort of have to fit in my limited technique simple and solid is what I shoot for

 

I’ve been working on a chord/vocal melody of Dirty Work by Steely Dan the last couple of days. It’s simple but has some nice changes. I’ll still add vocals once I get it down.

 

Blister in the sun
Viva la vida

 

A couple Neil Young instrumentals:

“Dead Man”
“Emperor Of Wyoming”

 

Let’s straighten it out
Bleedin’ heart

Both slow enough for me.... easy lyrics to remember, glorious places to solo....






Edit... oh yeah, old love, again, easy lyrics, slowish and fine places to try a solo....