Hey Friend,

Another point I want to make about learning songs on your own is, you can’t always rely on tabs or a video to be right - so you need to trust your own ears to hear what’s happening in a song.

We’ve got it good - great, in fact. There has never been a better time to learn music. 

Way back before modern times, if you were meant to be a musician, you started as an apprentice to a minstrel - the equivalent of a “professional musician.”

I’m not talking about the American minstrel show performances of the 19th Century (the notorious "black-face" shows), but of medieval times throughout Europe.

You were usually born or sold into the profession and spent your life on the road traveling from town to town.

Since an organ is not something you easily transport by wagon (you had to have the hook-up with a king or be in good graces with the Church), the instruments were usually light-weight like lutes and violins, early guitars and woodwind instruments like a flute or recorder of some sort. 

A “master” would teach you how to play your instrument, showing you the fundamentals and how to play the songs you would perform in the nightly show. 

These songs were not written down, but passed down from master to apprentice, parent to child, for generations.

This is the same way Folk music developed - tunes passed down from one generation to the next, taught on instruments you could carry. That’s why guitars and violins (fiddles) are considered Folk instruments.

Music was home-grown and Dad would show Junior how to play the fiddle so Junior could carry it on to the next generation.

And that’s how most of us learned prior to the Internet. Either you had a family member or friend who could play and agreed to show you, or you found someone with more experience and training to teach you.

Your instructor could show you how they were taught to play a song, or what they figured out based on listening to the song over and over again and picking out parts for each instrument.

Since the Internet has given us musicians an easy way to share our work, you can find a ton of instructional material - and a lot of it is really good. 

But unless these would-be instructors had access (whether direct or through a network of other folks with access) to the rocker that actually wrote the guitar parts or the song, you’re relying on their ability to be accurate in recreating the riffs.

I think anyone that takes the time to roll out tabbed work or a video does it with a spirit of helpfulness, an I, for one, commend them. It isn’t easy transcribing music when you can’t talk to the source. We’re all just trying to further the cause...

 

But without the ability to call up Slash, Eddie (Van Halen) or Zakk (Wylde) and say “Yo, man, how did you play that riff?,” you’re not 100% sure of the accuracy. 

And that’s okay.

As long as your rendition is executed well and is recognized as the song you’re trying to play, most of us would say you’re golden.

However, if you’re anal-retentive about playing songs as true to the original as possible (I unfortunately have that affliction), you must learn to trust your ears to analyze and guide you in learning the guitar parts, especially when there is no professional instruction available.

Because there’s so much stuff on the Internet, it can take a while to find a good version of the song. You have to be able to identify what sounds right and wrong. 

But if your ears are good at isolating and identifying riffs, you can quickly work things out without having to go on a major treasure hunt every time you want to learn a new song.

I’ll be offline all next week, so if you happen to email me, I’m not ignoring you...

I will have very limited access to email, and when I do, it will be for a very short time. I’ll be relying on public Wifi when available, and we all know how spotty that can be! 

Most of the time I’ll just be disconnected, taking a break from digital. Spending quality time with my family and letting the ocean breezes rejuvenate and clear my mind…

I’ll catch up with you in a couple weeks.

Peace~

Dave