How to Learn New Songs Introduction Most people think playing guitar is something you do with your hands. Well, I will never deny that you need your hands to play guitar, but I can assure you that playing guitar is something you do with your head in the first place. I would say: 90% head and 10% hands. Playing guitar is a highly intellectual process! This may sound strange to you, but if you read on you'll find out what I mean. It's important for every guitarist to know how the learning process works, as it will make it easier to learn new songs in an efficient manner. Playing with your head It does not matter if you're a fresh beginner or a routine player with 50 years of experience: every guitarist who learns to play a new song will go through 5 successive phases: Phase 1: Learning the melody Phase 2: The short term memory phase Phase 3: The long term memory phase Phase 4: The technical phase Phase 5: The mechanical memory phase. What does this all mean? Phase 1: Learning the melody This is the phase where you listen to the song, most probably like it, and decide you want to play it. Learning the melody (including the most prominent chords and harmonics) is important, as the melody will act as a 'road map', which tells you where you are in the song during your learning process, where you have to go to, and how far you have got! Phase 1 is the easiest phase. All you need to do is listen, and given the fact that you like the song, that will be only a pleasure. There is no need to remember the melody in high detail with all its intricacies, just the main theme will do. Phase 2: The Short Term Memory The short term memory phase is the phase you're in when you first sit down with a sheet of tablature, a CD, or a video tape. You have the material, you know what song you want to learn, you know what you have to do. I assume that your goal is to be able to play the song without looking at musical scores or tablature (in my opinion that is the only way to play music, although I know some people don't agree with me on that one!). As soon as you try to play the first notes of the song, you will have to remember exactly which fingers of your left hand go on which fret on which string, and which fingers of your right hand have to play which string at what exact moment. That is quite a lot of information to remember, even for one short bar of music. In order to remember all of that new information, your brain will activate your short term memory. That is the same part of your brain you use, for example, to remember these digits: 987 698 172. If you look at these digits for some ten seconds, you will be able to reproduce them with your eyes closed. But after you leave this web site, you will have forgotten them in a minute. If you make serious work of it, you will remember them also tomorrow. But even in that case odds are high that you will have forgotten them by next week. Moreover, if you will have to remember the digits 876 234 940 as well, along with s34 8g5 9yz, you probably mess up the first series of 9 digits by the time you can reproduce the last series. Why do I tell you all of this? Because it is exactly what happens to you when you try to play your first bar of a new song. You have to remember a lot of things, will eventually manage, but then, after learning the second and third bar, you realize you cannot play the first bar anymore. Frustrating, isn't it? No sir, it's perfectly normal. Just like you most probably don't remember any of the digits I just wrote down AT ALL tomorrow morning, you will quite likely also not be able to play ANYTHING of those three bars of music when you wake up the next day (and don't look at the tablature). So what can you do about that? Two things! First: keep on going. Something remains in your brain anyway, and has already started its way to your long term memory. That's the part of your brain that remembers your own birth day and your own phone number (not your wedding anniversary - just kidding ;-). Even if you change your phone number today, you will probably still remember it in a year from now, with just a little bit of effort. If you pick up your guitar the next day and try play your new song again, you can tell that something has remained in your brain, because even if you cannot play the music without looking at the tablature, you will recognize the tablature, as well as the position of your fingers when you look at them and play the first three bars again. Moreover, this time you will learn the same bars much faster, so you continue to work on bars 4 and 5. This process will go on and on for al the remaining bars you have to learn. This is a tedious process, it actually is hard work, and thanks heaven at least you already know the melody, which will sometimes help you in reconstructing what you have to do (e.g., when the melody goes up, your fingers will not go the lower frets). Second: LOOK at your hand and RECOGNIZE SHAPES and SYMMETRY. What do I mean by that? For example: play a simple D-chord with your left hand: D major What is easier to remember: - index finger on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string - ring finger on the 3rd fret of the 2nd string - middle finger on the 2nd fret of the first string or this: Both descriptions allow you to reconstruct the chord. The first description is what the tablature tells you. The second description is what you see with your eyes. In fact, the latter is much easier to remember. This is because your visual memory, your memory for shapes and pictures, is much more powerful than your short term memory, which you use to store 'incoherent' information. Therefore, you should always look at your hands when you learn to play a new song, and look for shapes and symmetries that your fingers make, for example: - I play the two strings in the middle - my fingers make a triangle, not in the middle of the strings but one string down - the chord is a straight line of three strings plus one string higher up - I play the 5th string, and then the three strings next to it, and then the 6th string, and then again those three strings I played earlier - I have to move my left hand way up the neck for the next chord, but my ring finger remains on the same string etc. etc. The symmetries do not need to be perfect, the shapes don't have to make sense, as long as you look and try to find as many visual reference as you can. You will find that these visual references are remembered much easier, and along with the melody, which tells you more or less where to go, this will give you a solid back bone for the next phase, which is... Phase 3: The Long Term Memory After a while, you know the song well enough to move your fingers over the fretboard, at the correct frets, while your right hand plucks the right strings. Since you know the melody, you can tell that what you are doing is right, or if you make a mistake. At this point, your long term memory has become effective. The information you need to play has been transferred from the short memory into the long term memory, which is much more reliable. This process does not happen overnight. You will experience a transition phase, where you do remember certain sections of the song, and suddenly have to look up other pieces in the tablature. But eventually all of the information will be available in your long term memory, and you will be able to play the entire song, without looking at the tablature or musical scores. Most probably, you cannot play the song smoothly yet. You will play with unintended pauses and hick-ups, incidental buzzing strings or other mistakes. But you are aware of every mistake you make, because you know what it all should sound like. This is where the fun starts, because now you get the feeling that you are really getting somewhere. Other people may recognize the song you play, and the more you play, the better it all goes. However: beware! Even though your long-term memory works much better, and you may feel quite satisfied by now, your current achievement is very fragile! All it takes is a few days without playing guitar and you will be back to zilch. Your long-term memory needs to be 'refilled' all the time in order to really store the information well. So make sure you keep on playing the song at his time, every day, as much as you can. Phase 4: The Technical Phase Although you can play the entire song now without tablature or musical scores, certain chords, certain transitions, and certain other moves you have to make are going wrong all the time. You will find that at some places you make the same mistakes over and over again. Some chords hurt your fingers, sometimes you have to stretch your fingers more than they like. Certain chords will be new for you, and you mess up every time. Certain moves you have to make with your right hand are moves you never made before, or things just go too fast. You will have to overcome all of these technical hurdles, and in doing so, you will be working in phase 4, the technical phase. This is the phase where you expand your basic guitar technique, which will make you a better guitarist, and which will also make learning the next song easier for you. In order to overcome the hurdles here, there are again two things to be aware of. First: in particular for your right hand: repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat all those sections you can't play yet. Play forever, REFUSE to give up. Look at your hand, concentrate, repeat, play again, try again, and again, and again. At a certain point you may reach a feeling of despair, you may even feel dizzy. THAT IS A GOOD SIGN because it means you are working hard at it, and the 'panic feeling' in your brains is actual you mechanical memory that starts to get programmed. It's a sign of progress! With your left hand things are a little different, because sometimes the fact you can't play certain things is because your hands lack the force or flexibility. That is something you cannot force, it will come with time. If your left hand really starts to hurt, give it a day rest, and work on another section of the song. Second: never, NEVER think that you can't do it. Never think in terms of your on limitations, never think like: Oh well, I will never be able to play like that anyway. Once you start thinking like that, you pull up your own barrier and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'll give you an example (which for me was also an important life lesson). In my early teens, I learned a lot of basic guitar techniques from listening to records. I spent weeks on the floor of my little room, with my record player, listening to Simon and Garfunkel records. I could play many songs pretty much the way Paul Simon did. However, one of the albums, The Sounds of Silence, had a guitar instrumental named Anji, played by Paul Simon. I clearly remember thinking: I may as well not even try to learn to play that song, it's way too difficult! So I picked Kathy's Song, Feelin' Groovy and Scarborough Fair instead. Then, I also remember very clearly that one day I thought: I don't care how difficult it is, I just start doing it, who cares. So I sat down with my old record player, and got to work. Guess what: One month later I impressed all my friends at school playing the song almost flawlessly! The lesson: never underestimate yourself. As soon as you decide where your limits are, you will never overcome them. So always keep all options open! I can't emphasize this enough to you. I meet so many guys who say: "I'll never be able to play like that...!" Don't ever say that, don't even think in those terms. This does not mean that you should say: "OK, in that case I will play better than Tommy Emmanuel one day." That's not the point. The point is that there is no end in learning to play guitar. There will never be a day that you say: "Good! I'm done! Now I can play everything on guitar!" Playing guitar is an endless road, and therefore you should learn to enjoy the ride. There is no sense in looking forward to the end station, because there is no end station. But every time you play you will get better. There is no limit. The only limit is the one you will reach when you give up. Therefore you should REFUSE to give up. That takes a certain mentality, and I think it's just this mentality that makes guitarists different from 'normal' people. Remember that, next time you're spending weeks trying to play a new, impossible lick: "Normal people would have given up a long time ago!" One more important thing. Sometimes you will get stuck because of what you think is a technical barrier. For example, a chord that you have to play, all of a sudden high up the neck, and you can't immediately get all of your fingers right. Or a lick that just goes too fast, and you just can't do it. However, very often, the reason you can't play it has nothing to do with your technique. Often it's just between your ears. I'll give you two examples. Once I had a hard time playing this version of the F major chord: F major This is a great chord to follow up C major, in stead of the more traditional F major versions, but you have to swing your left hand high up the neck, and just get all fingers at the right position at once. I couldn't do it, one of my fingers would always land at the wrong spot. It took me many, many days, without luck. Then I realized that the chord I wanted to play was actually nothing but a Dmin7: ...plus my little finger added to that, on the 5th string. The Dmin7 chord was a chord I could play effortlessly. So what I did then was a mental re-interpretation of the F major chord I could not play. Instead, I played a Dmin7, which would take me about a nanosecond, and in the short time after that I would add my little finger, which was easy because my Dmin7 gave me a steady foundation to move my little finger around. Guess what? Immediately I could play the F major chord without effort! So even though I thought I had reached a technical hurdle, that was not the case. My hand could do it, it was just my brain that was not thinking right. See how playing guitar is a highly intelligent thing? ;-) Another example. There was a riff of 19 notes that had to be played very fast. I started with the first few notes, and played additional notes, one by one, as I was making progress. At a certain point I could play the first 7 notes, and I could play the last 12 notes. But I had to pause in between. I could not play all 19 notes at once. Again, it took me weeks! No luck. So I could play this: 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.................................. and I could play this: ..............8.9.10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19 ....but I could not play all the notes at once. There always was a jump in between I could not make. Then I started to concentrate on playing the first 9 notes. After a day I could do it. I still could play the last 12 notes too. So then I could play this: 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.............................. and I could play this: ..............8.9.10.11.12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19 But I still could not play all the notes at once! Think about it. It does not make sense! If I could play the first 9 notes, and I could play the last 12 notes, then my hand should be able to play all 19 notes too! At first, I got stuck between the seventh and the 8th note, but not anymore. So what did I do? First, I repeated the two riffs at infinitum. Then, I would play the first 9 notes, and when I reached the end, I would pretend those were the first two notes of the second part! This sounds simple (or silly), but I can guarantee you: it is hard work! You have to fool yourself, and you have to switch your own thoughts and interpretations at exactly the right moment in time: "these are not the last two notes of the first 9, but these are the first two notes of the last 12, which I can already play". I had to think quickly, because these notes al went very fast. But guess what: all it took was some mental concentration, and then all of a sudden I could do it! Phase 5: The Mechanical Memory Phase By the time you reach the end of phase 4, the technical phase, you will finally be able to play the entire song up to speed. It's a funny experience, now that you manage to play things, without too much effort, that you could not play at all some time ago! However, whenever you play, it is still the melody and your long-term memory that guide you through the song. This means that, when you're playing, you have to concentrate. You have to remember what you're doing all the time. After a while, however, and after playing the song many more times, you will find that some sections almost start to happen automatically. Any move you make with your hands seems to trigger the next move, and the next one, and so on. You will be able to play some sections and some licks and riffs without thinking. It will not happen with the entire song, just with bits and pieces of the song. But as you go on, these sections become longer, and there will be more of them. This phenomenon indicates the start of the mechanical memory phase. You have played the song so often now that your brain has decided to transfer the required information to your mechanical memory. That is the same part of your brains that you use when you write your signature, when you ride a bicycle, or when you tie your shoelaces. Do you remember the trouble you went through when you first had to learn to tie your shoelaces? Even today, could you produce written instructions how to do it, from the top of your head, without touching your shoelaces? "Make a loop with the left shoelace, hold it between your index finger and thumb of your left hand and make sure the loop is as large as possible and your fingers holding the loop touch the top of your shoe, then wrap the right shoelace around the loop, counterclockwise, bla bla bla..." It's quite a complicated process! Still, you can do it in two seconds, without thinking. You can read the newspaper or talk to someone while you tie your shoelaces, it doesn't take you any effort anymore. That is because part of your brain has been hard-coded to generate all the moves you need to do it. It has become an automatism, controlled by your mechanical memory, which, for moves you often make, is far more efficient than your long-term memory. Your mechanical memory gets programmed by just one thing: repetition! So now that you have passed phase 4, and you can play your new song in its entirety, you're not done yet! What you have to now do is keep on playing the song, to get as much as possible in to your mechanical memory. Why? Two reasons. First reason: Once specific moves have been programmed in your mechanical memory, you will never forget them! Just like you will never forget how to swim, or how to ride a bike. You may become a little rusty after twenty years, but you won't forget. As long as you are only in phase 4, even though you can play the song from start to end, even flawlessly, you will forget most of it if you stop playing the song. A few months will probably do. Second reason: the more you can depend on your mechanical memory to play the songs, the less effort it will take. Just like the way you can talk while you tie your shoelaces, you will be able to do anything else while you play your song. This means that you can actually listen with attention to your own music, and concentrate only on embellishment, adding 'feel', anticipate on what others play, or improvise. When your mechanical memory reproduces the song, it's as if someone else is playing, and you can use your full awareness to do anything you want. Playing songs from your mechanical memory is the highest level you can reach. Once you can do that, you will play without being nervous, and without making mistakes. You will be able to play without thinking. But mind you: even the best guitarist don't make it 100% to this level. There will always be little sections and bits that require use of their long-term memory, and which are needed to connect the automatic parts of the songs they play. But once they get into the next automatic part, their hands will move by themselves. Each move generate the next one, automatically, like a machine. You may wonder if it's really true what I tell you. Well, there is one way to find that out. Get your guitar, and play it as much as you can. You'll see...! Take Home Messages Playing guitar is something you do with your head. Considering all the things that happen inside your brains, it should not surprise you that learning a new song is often not something you can do overnight. You should never become frustrated when it takes you a loooooong time to learn, it's normal! Learn to enjoy the ride, as there is no end station anyway. When you learn a new song, be it from tabs, a CD or a DVD, always cut your task into doable doses. Choose a brief section of the song, and work on just that. Ignore the rest for the time. Repeat and repeat and repeat, then go to the next section. One day later, you will have forgotten everything. That's normal too. Don't give up, get back to work. Even when you finally master the entire song, you will still forget it quite rapidly if you don't continue to play it. Only when the song is programmed in your mechanical memory, it will stay there forever. But that may take a long time, and requires many, many repetitions! BACK