[moomin]

A story. Many years ago, my guitar teacher set me a challenge to learn the guitar solo to “Time” by Pink Floyd. At one point, he pointed out that what I was playing was much more easily played with a more efficient fingering. I responded by saying “But that’s not the fingering he’s using, take another listen.”

Which is to say: this sounds fun, but the expressivity of a guitar is rarely captured by a MIDI file, which makes it hard to get this “right”.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Yeah, I've seen a lot of bickering over what the "correct" fingering is for some songs that produce the same notes. For example, the repeated two-note riff at 0:17 in Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit [0]. In the top tab for it on UG [1], it's tabbed as:

    E---1
    B-1--
    G----
    D----
    A----
    E----

But there are TONS of people in the comments saying it should be:

    E----
    B---6
    G-5--
    D----
    A----
    E----

Both are going to play C F, but there's so much fighting over which one is correct, and while I know due to the different thickness of the strings, there's going to be a very subtle difference between them, but I bet most untrained ears won't be able to tell, especially without having the two of them played back-to-back.

As a guitar noob, I know I'd be more inclined to play the 1-1 version over the 5-6 version. It's going to be a lot easier to finger.

[0] https://youtu.be/hTWKbfoikeg?t=17

[1] https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/nirvana/smells-like-tee...

[moomin]

In my case, it was a lot easier to work out, since you needed to accommodate note-sliding. But there’s a lot the difference in strings as well.

I suspect an experienced guitarist would probably opt for 56, though for the exact same reason: it fits your hand shape. Sometimes what’s easy changes with experience. :)

[Sohcahtoa82]

I'm not experienced, and I'd go with the 11 because I can do it with just one finger.

I need to play more Rocksmith. I want to know how to play, but learning just feels so tedious.