Anthony Garone chronicles 22-year long process of learning King Crimson’s Fracture in new book
The famously impossible song presents a monumental challenge for any guitarist.
Image: Make Weird Music Via YouTube
What’s the longest it’s taken you to learn a song? One week? Two months? A year, on and off? Guitarist Anthony Garone has gone above and beyond in that regard, taking 22 years to learn the piece Fracture by King Crimson and chronicling the experience in a new book: From Failure To Fracture.
The song is an 11-minute instrumental, which features some absurdly technical playing. Even King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp described it as “impossible,” and he was the one who performed it. The main challenge comes in the form of a movement three minutes in, where Fripp embarks on some incredibly fast string-skipping lines that continue for minutes.
When Garone was challenged to learn the song by his father, when he was 16. Despite the fact he practised for hours a day, it still was incredibly difficult to learn thanks to the lightning-fast string skipping techniques employed by Fripp.
After Garone attended a masterclass led by Fripp, he realised his approach needed massive adjustment, and that he would effectively need to relearn the guitar. Following some agonising amounts of practice, he started documenting his progress on his YouTube Channel Make Weird Music.
The new book documents the process that took him from a guitar-loving 16-year-old to being able to perform the piece in full and even taking on its sequel piece, FraKctured.
You can order From Failure To Fracture here.