Just finished my second run of B2B. Some people in the Discord expressed interest in doing the 100 First Songs pack alongside me in the near future, and I wanted to make a thread for them, or those who want to try some of the newer songs in the pack.
Foremost, this is not intended to replace the actual 50 Songs Challenge as it already exists, just to supplement it with the newer songs. My understanding is that the curator of that, @JT, has been absent for a while. The sheer amount of work they put into the original 50 has made it an irreplaceable resource, and I won’t be making new threads for any of those songs. Instead, I’d like to retain the same format with a thread for each of the ‘new 50’, as and when we get to them.
In a previous thread discussing a possible 100 Song Challenge last year, @DanaRazuri posted a list of the First 100 Songs and mentioned that this ordering was a rough approximation of difficulty. They welcomed others to make a copy of their own - so I have, here it is so far. It’s obviously a work in progress. After all, I haven’t even started the challenge myself yet! Feel free to comment alternate song placements, tags for what skills each song can help with, etc.
Regarding this as a ‘challenge’: as the default, I’m going to try the one-song-per-two-weeks pace of the original. Four years sounds like a mammoth undertaking, so I’m not going to think of it like that. Speaking for myself, I just plan to see how far I get while getting myself gig-ready. I intend to upload my takes for the foreseeable future. I’ll be starting (practicing Another Brick in the Wall) on July 6th - hopefully see some of you then!
If people want to do a new challenge together and it engages people to work on the same song, I’m all for that. A lot of the 50 song threads have been very quiet for a while.
My problem with expanding it to 100 is that the other 50 songs in the pack are mostly more of the same. Another Elvis song, another Ramones song, more Motown, more 70s classic rock etc.
Adding those songs to the 50 that you’re already doing just dilutes your progress without offering much in the way of new sounds or styles. However, there are a few newer, more diverse songs in there like Post Malone or MGMT.
My feeling is that enough people have started the 50 song challenge without finishing, that adding 50 more seems like a stretch. Maybe it’s better to keep them as an extra 50 to do once you’ve done the first 50.
But as I said, I’m all in favour of people working together for a common goal so I wouldn’t stand in the way of it.
For sure, that’s something I also noticed in a quick look around; the huge drop-off in thread views/posts the further in you go in the challenge. Such is always the way of these things, which is why I’m not going to be doing hard-set fortnightly updates to the main post or anything that detailed. After all, I’d rather be spending that time… practicing bass, haha.
I kind of see challenges like this as training wheels - get practice playing some things you’re less inclined to seek out of your own interest, move on when you’re ready (or life kicks you off the horse and climb back on whenever possible).
This is mostly due to folks deciding to play songs they want to learn vs. ‘have to’ learn. This was the case for me. Time is limited. A couple folks have made it through and got the badge, well deserved too, for the 50 songs.
We quickly found that a timed challege was not going to work, people were too busy for that as well.
