For Guitar Players

[Paul Wolfe]

I am curious, when you sit down to practice or play something by a favorite guitarist, do you work on whole songs or do you concetrate on solos?

I was looking at the threads at .tk and there is a section devoted to copying Randy's solos, but not entire songs. Personally, I find it more enjoyable to learn entire songs, but that may be because I don't play fast, intricate solos too well.

In all the years I've played guitar, I always held the attitude that Iwould never be able to play a Van Halen or Rhoads solo, so I have always avoided learning the solos to songs. Now that I am teaching my sons to play, I've gone back to some of my favorite songs and started learning the solos (and I'm not as bad at it as I thought I'd be).

So, I'm wondering what songs you find the most enjoyable to learn and satisfying to play. And also about your experiences with learning these songs.

[siro_angel]

I work on sections first then go on from there Like easy bits first then the harder bits...

Simon

[Paul Wolfe]

That makes sense... the reason that I am going back to learn the solos is so that I can show my boys good habits in learning the songs. I'm also planning on teaching them to learn songs from sheey music rather than tab, now that I've figured out how to print songs in Guitar Pro 5 with just notation... I feel thay should have that knowledge at a young age.

[cableguyxx]

[RR-ElectricAngel]

When I first started playing guitar I wanted to play every song I heard. When I became a guitar teacher I wanted to know what licks defined guitarists. Once you can read music everything changes. Believe it or not there are really only a limited number of ways you can play a scale or create certain chord progressions which sound good. I no longer care about who invented what lick as much as whether or not a certain lick is reflective of my style. There are many guitar players I completely respect but do not find a connection with on an artistic level. Steve Vai is incredible but I do not find his style as being close to my own style. Still, there are ideas he uses that I can learn from. Joe Satriani is also that way with me. I love his use of Pitch Axis Theory though I hardly ever use it in my own songs. Solos are only the icing on the cake. The riff or "groove" is still the most important for me...

[Paul Wolfe]

Once you can read music everything changes.

This is SO true. I recently forced myself to learn intervals (minor 3rd, major 3rd, Perfect 5th, etc.) as they occur on the fretboard. Once I learned how to start at any given note and go up (or down) by a given interval across the strings, everything else kind of fell into place. Now I can play a scale starting on any note at a position (say B harmonic minor starting on the B note at the 9th fret of the 4th string, for example). I can also build chords anywhere by knowing the intervals used in them (I.E. a major chord being the root + major third + minor third). It took about 3 months to get it down once I applied myself, but it's made things much clearer.

So as I teach my son's, I'll be emphasizing that stuff so they can get the most out of their playing as early as possible.