Learning Songs

February 15th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

  • This might be an unusual guitar lesson, but many tabs out there are wrong, and a lot of people have a hard time learning by ear. This lesson is meant to help you learn how to learn songs by ear.
  • Learn the basics first. Learn chords and main parts before little embellishments. You can learn those later.
  • Start off slow, and work your way up in speed.
  • Visualize yourself playing the song. It might sound strange, but it helps.
  • Record and listen to yourself, and let others critique you to get better.
  • You will want to equip yourself with the following applications to learn songs:
    1. PowerTab is a free tab application. It lacks a lot of features and there aren’t many tabs out there available for it, but it is free.
    2. GuitarPro is a better tab application. It has more features and there are many tabs available for it. However, it is not free. Update: TuxGuitar is a free GuitarPro editor and viewer.
    3. UltimateGuitar is a great source of free tabs.
    4. BestPractice is a free tool that will let you slow down mp3s and CDs.
  • Learn how to tune by ear. You don’t need to have perfect pitch, but you do need to know how to tune your guitar relative to a string. For example, you can put on the Metallica – …And Justice For All, and tune your low E string to it, and then tune the rest of your strings from there.
  • To find out what tuning a song uses, check the internet, but you should be able to just hear when the players hit the lowest note.
  • You can use tabs as a starting point, even if parts are incorrect. You can just figure out the incorrect parts later. But don’t be afraid to play the tabs differently. For example: 
    -------8-
-10-12---
---------
---------
---------
---------

    Is equivalent to:

    ----------
-10-12-13-
----------
----------
----------
----------

    It might be easier to play the same thing one way or another on different frets and strings.

  • Many metal bands record a guitar in each right and left stereo channel. You can turn off one channel at a time to hear the guitar parts easily. Combine this with slowing it down and it will be much easier to learn parts. A lot of is it trial and error as well.
  • Once you have learned a song, play along with your CD or friends. Just make sure you aren’t only focused on yourself. Be sure to really listen well to the backing track or your friend and analyze what sounds good and what sounds bad.
  • Watch videos of the song if you are stuck and try to figure out what they are doing.
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