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Beginners Guitar Lesson – Ear Training – Where Is Music?

By Mike Hayes | February 24, 2010

Where is music? Sounds like a simple question, but think about it
for a minute or two and you may not be so sure of the answer. Is
a CD music? Is a mp3 music? Surely a piece of written music is
music.

Remember the question was where is music … or more specifically
where does it exist?

Let’s take each of the examples given above and have a closer
look at then one by one:

* a CD is not music it’s a piece of Perspex, it only produces
musical sounds when it is placed in a CD player by itself it
doesn’t do anything probably the only practical use for it would
be as a drink coaster although with that hole in the middle I’m
not so sure of that.

* a mp3 file is exactly the same it does not produce a musical
sound until it’s loaded into a specific piece of software.

* a piece of sheet music is just a piece of paper with a
musician’s ideas frozen in time on paper once again the written
music is not music, it does not become music until it is
performed by a musician, it’s the musician that brings it to
life.

All of the above examples are storage and retrieval systems …
they are not music; I’m sure you could think of other examples,
jot them down … it’s important because you starts you thinking
about something that most people take for granted.

So where does music exist … give up?

The only place music exists is in your MEMORY!

Think of that for a moment, if I where to mention a song you knew
you would immediately hear that song being played in you mind, it
would be as if you had placed a CD in a CD player, that’s your
musical memory at work and the more we use this aspect of your
memory the better the musician you will become.

How is your musical memory is it working well or could it do with
a tune up?

A great place to start is by examining your listening skills. Do
you have a listening library of reference music? If not start
building your reference library, you could simply start with a
one CD, it’s not the size of your library that matters it’s how
well you know your library.

What has this got to do with guitar playing? … absolutely
everything, what you play on the guitar is a result of what you
are hearing internally, there’s two levels to reach with guitar
(a) to be able to play what you hear and (b) to make sure what
you hear is worthwhile playing.

The musical quality of your ideas are directly linked to quality
listening habits and how well developed your musical perception
skills are.

So the moral of the story is … “there’s more to playing the
guitar than playing the guitar.”

Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson, Ear Training, Guitar Tips | No Comments »

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