Don’t Worry, He Won’t get Far on Foot

Don’t Worry, He Won’t get Far on Foot is a 2018 drama/comedy written and directed by Gus Van Sant. The film is based on the memoir by the late Portland based cartoonist, John Callahan.

This motif, by composer Danny Elfman, shows up a few times in the score as: The Phone Call, 12 Steps, Good news, and 12th Step. It’s unsentimental — which is a style of film score that I find fascinating. For a drama/comedy the score has to be light enough that multiple character tones can be expressed underneath.

When I’m personally writing, sentimental is much easier for me to achieve: I just finished the score to a short film about a women mourning the death of father — with whom she had a complicated relationship. Very sentimental, no humor at all.

Things get complicated when a composer needs to account for a comedic element, as Danny Elfman does in Don’t Worry, He Won’t get Far on Foot.

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How to play Don’t Worry, He Won’t get Far on Foot | fingerstyle guitar

This motif serves as a good étude for guitar. An étude is a short musical composition, designed as an exercise to improve the technique or demonstrate a skill. In this case the chord shapes are relatively easy, but the fingerstyle is unusual and swift.

The guitar tab is only a single page long, and I given you the general name of chord shapes above the tab — to help you get in position quicker. Don’t Worry, He Won’t get Far on Foot is essentially one long passage played twice.

Enjoy, the guitar tab is available below:

Don’t Worry, He Won’t get Far on Foot is played in standard tuning.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t get Far on Foot (Danny Elfman) for guitar