Calvin’s Hub

Early last year there was this great movie called August Rush about this young music prodigy who’s brilliant with the guitar. Well, here’s the real deal and his name is Sungha Jung from South Korea.

Check him out playing the theme from Mission Impossible:

Amazing huh? Notice his style of playing the guitar? Quite similar to what August Rush does with all those tapping and plucking. That technique is called fingerstyle guitar.

Fingerstyle Guitar?

Fingerstyling is a technique in playing acoustic or classical guitars where the fingers or fingernails are used instead of a pick. Not much strumming is done when fingerstyling.

Tabs are also different for fingerstyle since aside from chords, it also includes artificial harmonics such as for bass, hammering and pulling and using the body of the guitar percussively.

More on Sungha Jung

Sungha Jung is a 12-year old (almost 13) guitar prodigy from South Korea. Just like August Rush, he learned the guitar all by himself and doesn’t really need any tabs. He simply watch video clips from the internet and learn the notes and fingerings from them.

He doesn’t know how to compose yet or write tabs (unlike August) so composers around the world usually send him fingerstyle music sheets for him to play.

My favorite Sungha Jung videos

Remember the scene in August Rush where the kid got to play the guitar with his dad? This video of Trace Bundy and Sungha Jung playing Canon in D reminds me of that.

Here is Sungha Jung playing “Hit the Road Jack” with the man who inspired him, Ulli Boegershausen who’s a famous German fingerstyle musician. Nice to hear the bass played in an acoustic guitar.

Here’s him playing another classic usually played with a piano. Bach’s Minuet arranged by Alex Kabasser.

Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean arranged by Adam Rafferty.

One of his recent videos, Franki Valli’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You as arranged by Kotaro Oshio.

And one of my favorite songs, Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard, from the movie Once. If you know how to play the guitar and want to woo a girl, learn this song.

I know you can’t get enough of this kid so head to his YouTube channel for more videos. I’m gonna put them in my iPod Touch.

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• August Rush, a movie review
• Top 10 Facebook games for August 2009
• Having a real poker experience
• 5 reasons why I shouldn’t rush into get an iPad 2

Filed under: Vids around the net