How to Learn Songs on the Guitar the Hard Way

What? Why the hell would I want to do that??? I’ll tell you! There are practically two ways to learn to play the guitar. Get lessons and start playing. When you receive lessons, you are told what to do in small chunks that make learning easy. All existing guitar learning systems use this model. Shards may be less noticeable, but they all involve mastering some item and then moving on to the next item until you become a pro. This method works pretty well and you can accomplish a lot doing it, so I’m not criticizing it at all.

However, when you start playing, you are deciding to use a technique known as “playing by ear”. This involves getting a guitar and listening to the songs you want to play and just learning them by trying to copy the notes until you get it right. This is by far the hardest way to do it, but the rewards are immense. The best way to really learn to play the guitar is to use it to make the sounds you want to make! Before you get overwhelmed and think I’m crazy, don’t worry, I’ll give you some tips below on how to make the “hard” road a little easier. Many, many guitarists learned to play by ear, but the truth is that most will employ a combination of techniques to master the guitar. This is what I recommend.

So how do you go about doing this? First put a good method in place. Find out what kind of lessons you can afford and work around your schedule. It would be amazing if we all had the time and money to get a private tutor. One-on-one teaching from someone who knows their stuff and can show you what to do is nearly impossible to beat, so if you can do it, definitely do it. Now for the rest of us, you’ll have to find a lesson system. Find one that will work well for you. Online or in a book or maybe at a local community college are good options. It doesn’t really matter the lessons as much as you are willing to do them! The best guitar lessons are the ones you actually do! Now go make them! Well, after you finish reading this article anyway.

Next, work on a regiment of playing by ear that works for you. Even doing a daily “find the note” drill with nursery rhymes can help you improve your skills. Once again, the best way to play by ear is the way you will actually play.

some methods

I’ll call the first method find the note because it sounds like child’s play and that’s the best way to do it. You know the songs; They have been instilled in you since you were a child! Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Happy Birthday, Mary had a Little Lamb, etc, etc, anything you can easily hum. Well do that or find the song online and start singing or playing it. As it repeats, place your finger on a fret and play a note each time you hear the first note of the song. Is it the same note? No, try the next fret. If you can tell if the note is higher or lower, move in the right direction. If not don’t stress it, that skill will come to you as you learn, just know for now that further up the fretboard and neck is a higher note and the reverse is lower. Once you have the first note, look for the next note keeping in mind that the next note will most likely be within the first 12 frets.

The following method is similar but uses some cool technology so you can do it more easily with “real” songs. Connect to the Internet and get a slowdown tool. Roni Music makes one for $50 called Amazing Slow Downer. He can use his own or find a different one, it doesn’t matter, as long as he slows down your music file without changing the pitch. The critical part is that it doesn’t change the pitch. It doesn’t help if it’s slower if you’re learning the wrong notes! Again, you’ll be playing the game of finding the pitch, but since you can slow down the song so that each note goes on for a long time, you’ll be able to search for the note for longer. In fact, many of these tools will even let you loop just a section so he can have it play the first two notes or even a single note for as long as he needs to find it. Technology is cool!

So there you have it, some really great tips on learning to play by ear. Now get up from your seat and start rocking!

Rock on!