Have you had one of those days where no matter what you do, the guitar will not cooperate? Of course you have! Well, I’m pretty sure today is my turn. Here’s the deal; my guitar won’t stay in tune, my 9 volt went dead and my left and right hands have decided not to cooperate with each other. I know these things happen and I shouldn’t get frustrated but I am. I’ve been advised by many that when this happens, it’s time to put the guitar down and walk away and play another day. So, as I write this, the guitar is sitting on it’s stand, put to bed, mocking me. Must resist the urge to pick it up…..
I’ve been practicing my guitar a ton lately and sometimes it feels like I’m never going to “master” the pieces that I’m trying to learn. Sometimes I think that I have gotten it down and then a complete mind fart happens and I can’t remember how to play it and have to re-learn. After thinking about this a bit, I realized that I go through, what I call the four stages in learning a song.
Stage 1: Learning
This is the initial site reading of the song, either by tab, regular notation or just jamming along with it on CD or iPod. I the progress to a point where I can play the piece fairly well with the music in front of me. Depending how many times I’ve heard this song, I can progress pretty quickly in this stage.
Stage 2: Fixing and Polishing
This is where I need to sit down and work on certain parts that might have given me trouble during site reading. I still don’t have it memorized and maybe not playing it at a slower tempo. By the time I’m finished with this stage, I’m playing it at tempo and it’s pretty much memorized.
Stage 3: Re-Evaluate and/or Re-Learn
I hate this stage! This is where I think I have it “performance ready,” I’ve been playing it practically perfect time and time again for a few days. I’m confident that it’s ready to go and then I start to stumble and begin to forget or mess up parts of the song. What’s frustrating is that sometimes it’s a part that I never had trouble with, ever. I’m not playing as well, my articulation and tempo is all messed and I can’t seem to get it right. It feels like what I learned just fell right out of my head. Here is where I have to take a step back and re-learn the song, sort-of-speak. I will play the song slower and make sure my fingerings are correct and use a metronome to work on the rhythm. If I have a recording, I will listen to it over and over so it’s ingrained in my head.
Stage 4: Performance Ready
Finally ready to go. It’s memorized and even if I go a few days without playing it, I can perform it without worrying too much about stage 3 coming back. Here is when I can take some artistic licenses with the piece and try to make it a bit my own.
Why does stage 3 happen for me, it’s hard to say. I have heard that lack of sleep can inhibit your ability to memorize/learn a piece. I have also heard that maybe I never learned it properly in the first place and I was just practicing my mistakes over and over again. I’m thinking that might be what’s troubling me. I focus so much on one section of the song, I neglect other sections. I find it helps to record my practicing so I can make notes on what to work on. I just have to get past watching or hearing myself play not-so-well, at times.
So how many stages do you have? Is it two, four five, more? What techniques do you use to overcome your stage 3?
Had an interesting conversation with a friend last weekend. We were watching YouTube showing each other different guitarists that we dig. I showed him some Michael Hedges and William Ackerman videos,
which then led us to a conversation about open tunings. I explained to him that Hedges and Ackerman used/use alternate tunings almost exclusively.
When I pointed this out, he seemed unimpressed and maybe even lost a bit of interest once I mentioned open tunings. The first thing he asked was why not just learn/write the song in normal tuning; adjust yourself to the instrument instead forcing the instrument to adjust to you. Interesting point but I had to disagree and explained that many of these songs would be impossible to replicate in standard tuning and if you could play it in standard tuning the mood or feel of the piece might be adversely affected. He nodded as if to agree but not totally convinced. His background is as a progressive metal guitarist and in his experiences, he has witnessed some players tune to an open tuning and just bar everything for every song. To him, that is a shortcut or cheating. I agreed with him to some extent but that person still needs to have rhythm and a feel for the changes, so there is some sort musicianship going on there. We went back and forth a bit more and I think he has more respect for alternate tunings but I don’t think I’ll see him playing any open C tunings any time soon.
So are alternate tunings cheating? I don’t think so. It’s just another tool at our disposal we can use to enhance our music and to, at times, make it easier for us to play. If we really want to nitpick, we would have to call capos, effects, amps, computers,etc… cheating as well. I guess I’m a cheater and glad I have all these resources to cheat with. How about you?
I’ve seen on twitter and other forums that guitarist (including myself) lament over [ad#125-125-floatright] the fact that they don’t have their guitar with them. Well, your lonely days are over! All you need is buy an iPhone and jailbreak it. Below, is a video of someone doing their best to play us a Beatles medley with their new guitarpod and I’m sure that you can see that our steal and nylon stringed companions won’t have to worry about getting replaced by this “Guitar Hero” for the iPhone. Anyway, I could see someone eventually getting pretty good at playing the iGuitar and will have a nice little gimmick in an act or at parties. I also see a nice little tool that could help you work out a melody that was stuck in your head or working on chords. Will this be enough for me to hack my iPhone? I think not. My iTouch….. well….. Nah. I’ll just stick to playing the real thing.
Been working on Tommy Emmanuel stuff lately and thought I would share some of the available tab that I have tried. Some of these are pretty accurate and are almost the same as the stuff in my TE Note for Note book. Anyway, hope this helps in your quest to learn Tommy’s music.
Freight Train/Trambone: Pretty good transcription from, what seems to me, the “Up Close” DVD. Very similar to the “Note for Note” transcription which was based off of that DVD as well. Choose the acoustic power link and you will need Power Tab to read it.
Dixie McGuire: Another transcription that is close to the “Note for Note” one. I used the Power Tab version from the Ultimate Guitar Archive. It is worth noting that the “Note for Note” version was a great help filling in a couple of fingering holes that the other missed. The same goes for Blue Moon.
Those Who Wait: Great transcription and pretty accurate to the “Only” CD version. I then used that to adapt it to the “Live One” CD and the PBS Sierra Nevada version. He really never does it the same way twice, it seems. Anyway, choose the Ultimate Guitar Archive link and the Guitar Pro and Power Tab versions are both good versions.
Borsalino: Currently working on this myself an it’s the best version I can find and is accurate enough. A few of the fingerings are wrong and the transcription is incomplete but if you have a video version of Tommy playing this live, you’ll be able to figure it out. Used the the Guitar Pro version from the Ultimate Guitar Archive.
Angelina: My first Tommy E. that I learned. I didn’t use this tab myself, I used the transcription that was in December 2005 issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine, which is the best Angelina transcprition out there. I would use the Guitar Pro tab but there is a high rated ASCII version of the tab but I’m not a big fan of that kind of transcription. Hint: If your trying to figure it out yourself, it’s in drop D tuning with the capo on the 2nd fret.
Blue Moon: Once again this is very similar to the “Note for Note” songbook. I used the Guitar Pro transcription that could be found at Ultimate Guitar Archive. Still struggling with this song, got the notes down but the feel is lacking.
That’s a short list on the Tommy E songs I have been working on. Of those, I could probably perform Dixie, Angelina and Those Who Wait without too much trouble. I would still say they need some polishing. So if you need to Tommy E songs to work on, I hope this helps. If you can afford it, I would strongly recommend getting the “Note for Note.” Not only for the great transcriptions but there is some useful information on Tommy’s playing and his influences. Like it says in the book, you need to learn about what influenced him if you really want to play like him. Anyway, I hope this helps and if you find any good transcriptions, please leave a comment.
my guitar a ton lately and sometimes it feels like I’m never going to “master” the pieces that I’m trying to learn. Sometimes I think that I have gotten it down and then a complete mind fart happens and I can’t remember how to play it and have to re-learn. After thinking about this a bit, I realized that I go through, what I call the four stages in learning a song.
