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Beginners Guitar Lesson – Ear Training – Your Reference Library

By Mike Hayes | February 25, 2010

Sometimes I’ll come across a student who is having trouble
learning to play guitar; as I did deeper to find the cause of
their guitar playing woes I often discover they either don’t
have a reference library of music to listen to or they haven’t
spent much time listening to whatever music they do have.

You may find this hard to believe but it happens quite often,
people wanting to learn to play a musical instrument when they
have spent very little actually listening to music.

It’s quite easy to teach a person the mechanical aspects of
playing a guitar however it’s an entirely different another
matter to learn how to play music on the guitar. It’s extremely
difficult to do something if you don’t know what it is that you
are trying to do.

Let me explain … let’s say we have a person who has never paid
any attention to music, they have never spent any time carefully
thinking about the basics of music; rhythm, melody and harmony.
If, in a moment of madness this person decides to go out and buy
a “top-off-the-line” Gibson Les Paul electric guitar what are
their chances of success?

I’d say very slim indeed, this person will still have the same
skills or should I say ‘lack of musical skills’ as they did
before they bought the Gibson .. nothing changed except their
bank account balance.

The situation I’ve described above explains the current worldwide
problem where people inspired by a recent concert and seduced
by clever marketing rush out and buy expensive musical equipment
only to be subjected to an avalanche of information more of which
could be accurately termed as ‘disinformation’, six months later
they are confused, frustrated and aggravated at their attempts to
master the guitar in five minutes (as promised by the marketing
guru’s) they invariably feel they just don’t have what it takes
and the guitar ends up in a garage sale.

You see, it simply can’t work because there’s nothing ‘in’ a
guitar, it’s simply a ‘tool’ for musical expression in exactly
the same way a computer or word processor is a tool for the
writer.

When you try to by-pass learning the language of music by
attempting to learn a musical instrument by TAB you essentially
cut yourself off from the rest of the vast blood bank of musical
thinking … all of the greatest musical works have been
carefully and accurately documented waiting to be discovered by
the dedicated music student … why spend your entire life trying
to re-invent the musical wheel.

Now the situation becomes even worse when our illiterate musical
friend has not a musical thought or musical idea in his or her
memory bank. Music exists in our memory that’s the only place it
does exist so the importance of developing your listening skills
is imperative if you want to be a great guitarist.

If you don’t develop your musical appreciation skills and
increase your ability to think musically all the practice in the
world won’t amount to anything … at best you will just be a
well-trained musical robot.

Can you see the importance of developing your musical
appreciation skills? If you don’t have reference points in your
musical memory how will you be able to produce quality musical
ideas … after all the ideas have to come from you, they can’t
come from the guitar.

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

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