Nashville Guitar Guru | Guitar Lessons in Nashville, TN

Dave Isaacs, Nashville guitar guru and master teacher

Blog: The Perpetual Beginner

Guest post: jamming and playing by ear

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The following post on playing by ear is courtesy of Alex Bruce and GuitarTricks.

Learning to play by ear is a really important skill for guitarists.

It furthers your understanding and knowledge of your instrument, prepares you for a whole range of situations, and makes you a better, and a more rounded musician.
It isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do, however, it’s a skill you can actively cultivate and slowly but surely improve. If you practice the right things and get into good habits, your ear gets better and better.

Here are some top tips to make sure to set off – and continue – on the right kind of paths with this aural development. Good luck, and have fun!

Keep it simple

There is so much that you can deduce just by asking yourself “What do I actually hear?” And thinking critically about your response.

A note played in the 2nd string doesn’t sound exactly the same as the very same pitch on the 4th string, for example, the tone produced is quite different.

Is this a high note, or a low note? Played hard or soft? Is it the only note being played or one of several? How is it being played? Is there vibrato? Is there a bend or slide or legato technique present? Is the note sustained, or played staccato?

The difficult thing with this stuff is figuring out which specific note or chord is being played – is it an A or a B for example?

But these questions above should be fairly simple to answer, at least after a few attempts and some practice.

So the first lesson here is to keep it simple! Assess the background information, as so much useful info is readily available

Chord types

It’s important to develop your ability to recognize whether a chord is major or minor, at first, then later whether it’s a major7, minor7 or ‘dominant’7. (Then much later, to more advanced chords too)
This is something that really helps you when figuring out chords in a progression by ear. Knowing whether a chord is major or minor is half the battle when doing this, and when combined with knowledge of what key the song is in, really narrows your options of what chords could possibly be in the chord pattern.

To get started with this, consider major chords as chords that sound upright, complete, happy, bright and resolved, and minor chords as ones that sound sadder, ‘lower’, still complete but more melancholic, melodic and less final.

Get together with a musician friend and take turns to test each other on this (and all the other elements of ear training) to make it a fun challenge.

Rhythm transcription

This is about cultivating the ability to determine, by ear, the rhythm of a riff or the rhythmic strumming pattern of a chord progression.

This is often the final piece when learning a song by ear – you may have figured out the chord pattern but the strumming eludes you. This is a very common situation, especially with complex instrumentations, or music where the guitar isn’t mixed front and center and is therefore harder to hear with absolute clarity.

Practice this with as many songs as you can, and it’s also a good idea to learn basic rhythm notation, if you don’t already know it.

This means that you can practice rhythm transcription – i.e. Hearing a rhythm, then notating it roughly and briefly. By doing this, you make it something you can immediately play without repeated listens to remind yourself of the vibe. Simply consult your transcription!

Improvised soloing / backing tracks

This is a great tip, because it contains multiple benefits simultaneously. Besides being fantastic ear training, it also trains soloing, technique, improvisation, and is fun too!

Put on a backing track or a song and attempt to play over it. Ideally one which doesn’t reveal the key it is in, as figuring this out is part of the process.

There are many ways to figure out the key, from rudimentary trial and error, to complex thought processes, and you’ll probably develop one that mixes various methods over time, as most guitarists do.

A really nice one is to find a note that works (as in fits / sounds good over the backing) then spread out from there.

  • What is the next note on that same string that works?
  • Go one string either side – which notes work nearby?

And so you spread out from there and within a minute or so you have a full position of a scale that you can solo with.


Jam!

The most important thing to learn from guitar lessons.

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Whether you take guitar lessons or are learning on your own, there is one skill you absolutely must learn. And I think a lot of people, including many guitar teachers, are missing this point.

Don’t take lessons just to learn songs. Take lessons to learn how to learn.

Most people want to learn guitar so they can play their favorite songs. That’s wonderful and important, because loving the music you’re learning to play is highly motivating. And the sooner you can feel like you’re really playing songs, the more likely you are to keep on playing. I introduce songs in my lessons right from the beginning, but choose them based on the vocabulary and skill they require. Just like with anything else, success is a whole lot more likely when you start simple and build from there.

After a while, the average student/hobbyist has built up a vocabulary of chords and a repertoire of songs they can (mostly) play. Sometimes this is enough of a start to allow you to keep learning on your own. After all, one of the great things about learning guitar is that a handful of basics goes a really long way. Five chord formations is enough to allow you to play hundreds of songs, and upping that number to twelve gives you basic access to thousands more.

This would suggest that the sequence of learning should go like this:

1. Learn the basics
2. Learn songs to see how the basics are applied
3. Apply that knowledge to learning new songs

The problem is that so many people miss number three. It’s easy to get stuck on number two – these chords, in this order, with this rhythm. That’s enough to play most songs in a basic form, enough to sing to. But at some point, your focus needs to shift from the basics of the song to the process of learning itself.

Most people go to a teacher when they’re looking for guidance on what to practice. But learning HOW to practice is the most valuable lesson for the long term. Not just how much time to spend on each thing you do, but how to identify, break down, and resolve problems and challenges.

Effective practicing comes from knowing exactly what you’re trying to fix.

I really do mean “exactly”. Is a finger missing consistently? Which one? What does your hand need to do that it isn’t? Why not?

Resolving these questions takes a solid understanding of the mechanics of guitar playing, and of how your hands and mind absorb information. Once that’s in place, every problem has a solution, because you understand how to teach yourself. This is what all pros learn how to do. When you start to do this at even a basic level, your lesson time can devoted to really growing your skills instead of learning things you could probably handle on your own with some dedicated effort. Best of all, it’s a skill set that you’ll use for your whole musical life, and keep you growing in the process.

For more on how to be your own teacher when you practice, check out this short e-book, The Perpetual Beginner’s Guide to Effective Practicing.

2019 Holiday Guitar Lesson Specials: Buy 4, Get 1 Free

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Give the gift that every guitar player needs – guitar lessons! Whether you want to buy guitar lessons as a gift, save money by pre-purchasing lessons for yourself, or commit to a fun New Year’s Resolution aimed at improving your guitar skills, we have a special holiday offer that may be right for you.

Introducing the Perpetual Beginner Project.

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The driving idea behind “The Perpetual Beginner” is that everyone can learn to play well, but that many people struggle and don’t fully understand the reasons why.

This can lead to frustration, stagnation, and a nagging sense that you just “don’t have it”. But whether you have “it” or not, you can play better than you do today when you approach your work with the right mindset and a conscious practice method.

 

Skilled players get stuck in ruts too, but experienced musicians know how to work through their problems in order to move forward.

The Perpetual Beginner Project is a collaborative look at how this happens for all of us: the process of identifying challenges, finding solutions, and doing the work to make it happen. Underlying all of this is the need to feed the love, to stimulate the desire and excitement that made you want to play in the first place.

To participate in the PB Project, start documenting your progress on video. I’ve started a Facebook group also called The Perpetual Beginner to give us a platform to post these videos and have conversations about them. Most of all, the idea is to put the ideas in the book into action: recognizing mental, technical, and psychic “blocks”, and finding a way past them.

I’ll be posting practice videos of my own as well. My goal is to share my own process in real time as I work through the music, demonstrating how I go about solving problems and (hopefully) showing clear improvement as I do. As much as I may have learned about music over the years, there will always be new things to explore and old things to improve. My hope is that by sharing these things with each other and having conversations about them, we will all be both inspired and elevated as we continue the never-ending process of becoming a better musician.

 

Getting the most out of your guitar lessons

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When you start working with a new teacher, the first few lessons are often a preliminary feeling-out process. It can take some time to get a complete sense of how they work, how knowledgeable they are, and whether their approach speaks to you.

I always make a real effort to make a connection in the first lesson: to find out what the student is really interested in and needs most, and show them something that can make an immediate difference. To some degree, that’s the job description in a nutshell. You should expect a teacher to want to know your specific goals, or to help you set them based on your musical interests and current skills. But what about what a teacher should expect from you? What can you do to help them guide you down a successful path?

The obvious answer is, practice. But there’s more to it than that. Here are five points that will really help you get the most out of your investment in formal lessons.

 

1. Communicate your interests and goals.

What kind of music do you enjoy most? What would you really like to be able to do? If you haven’t thought about these things, you should. Everyone puts the most effort into the things they enjoy most, so help your teacher find what those things are.

 

2. Recognize that you should always learning more than just how to play a song.

Ideally, everything you learn should help prepare you for the next thing you’re about to learn. Learning a song should also teach you something bigger, whether it’s a specific technique or a musical pattern that will also be used in other songs. Recognize that a good teacher uses songs as illustrations of a specific approach or concept. When you view the music this way, you’ll get a lot more out of the effort you put in than just memorizing a new song.

 

3. Take every opportunity to play.

Simply put, the difference between people who get better and people who don’t is in how much they play. The more time you spend practicing and playing, the faster you’re likely to improve. If you’re a busy person and find it hard to find time to practice, find small windows throughout the day to play for just a few minutes. Even if you can only pick up the guitar for a moment, do it.

 

4. Be clear on the difference between playing and practicing, and do both.

Detailed and focused practice is very powerful, and you should spend some time every day working very slowly on something you find challenging. Slow practice is mentally challenging, and it can feel less satisfying when a song becomes an exercise. But that detailed work is what allows you to solve problems. Think of “practice” as time spent on things you can’t do yet, and “play” as time spent on things you can. One builds your skills, the other feeds the love. Both are essential.

 

5. Be rigorous in your evaluations. but gentle in your judgments.

Many people don’t set a high enough standard when they practice. You need to do more than just memorize fingerings: you need to know the music and be able to execute it cleanly. So if you’re buzzing, missing notes consistently, or tripping over your fingers, you’re probably going too fast and letting mistakes go uncorrected.

At the same time, though, there’s a difference between judging a performance and judging your potential. Self-talk matters: it’s ok and understandable to get frustrated, but don’t let a challenging song convince you that you don’t have what it takes to learn. Recognize that learning to play is a process that takes time to unfold, and do your best to be patient enough to enjoy the journey.