So, your good friend and playing partner just called and said: “Hey! I just heard this GREAT song! We should try it; it doesn’t sound all that hard. I think we’d KILL it!”
So he forwards you a copy of it or maybe a link to a You Tube video of the artist performing it. You give it a good listen. And he’s right – great song, fits what you do stylistically and you can tell it will be fun to play. You listen to it again. But this time, just a hint of a shadow of a doubt creeps in. And then your negotiation with yourself begins.
OK, yeah the song sounds pretty awesome but can we sing like that? It seems to be a bit of a stretch, key-wise. Can we change the key and find one that’s more comfortable to sing in without losing the overall vibe? And those chords… They don’t sound too fancy but I’d better do some research on that. How about the bass and percussion? Can we do without those things and still have the song sound good?
And so it begins. Even though it’s a pretty new song it’s already easy to find some arrangements of it online. Trouble is, when you try what’s been posted it just doesn’t sound…. right. So you dig deeper and find another arrangement and that one doesn’t sound much better. And guess what? You’re right! Those arrangements are, at best, sketches of what the artist does on the recording. Maybe in your younger days when you first picked up the guitar it would have been OK, but those days are gone. You’ve been playing long enough to want and need to be as accurate as you can, otherwise you’ll never be quite satisfied with your finished product and even after putting in some serious time and effort you end up abandoning the whole thing. Or you default to the ol’ “That’s just my take on it! No reason I can’t make the song my own, right?!?” But you’ve been playing long enough to know that’s kind of a cop-out. Based on past experience you know the only way to make that justification palatable is to learn it as close to the original as you can, and THEN start experimenting with variations.
I spend a lot of time listening and searching out new songs for my students. Or new/old songs that I remember from long ago that still have something to offer in terms of advancing their skill. Sometimes students suggest songs or artists I’ve neglected or introduce me to music that I end up loving. But most of the time it’s musical detective work, which I love to do. Inevitably though, those questions I posed above are factored in. I still ask myself those questions too, as it relates to music I want to learn that has little to do with what I teach. So here are some of the answers I’ve come up with over the many, many decades I’ve been picking up a guitar.
I start with a foundation. That foundation is composed of determining what is absolutely essential for a song to sound as close to the original as possible. That doesn’t mean every little thing, although that would be nice sometimes. Often it’s more like including signature lines, otherwise known as “lead lines.” In many cases they are absolutely necessary if there’s any hope the song will be recognizable. Think of the classic guitar line from the wonderful Motown song, “My Girl.” It just has to be there. Or the signature line from Mark Knopfler’s “Sultans of Swing.” The intro to the electric version of “Layla” is another great example.
But being even more basic, an absolute necessity is determining the meter sign. Is this song in 4/4 (it usually is) or perhaps ¾, 2/4 or 6/8? For me that’s pretty easy, but I know for many people it is not. I tap my foot and count beats. I can hear instantly where measures begin and end but I know most people struggle with that, especially when they first start learning guitar. Why? Simply because most people have never thought much about the beat of a song and even fewer people have ever tried to count beats. It’s not their fault. I’ve said many times in this space that rhythm is the most taken for granted musical skill of them all. We all have natural rhythm in the form our heartbeat beating. Some people are fantastic dancers (not me!) and they are most certainly responding to the beat. And most everyone can clap and keep time to a song.
Unless you have previous experience with a musical instrument you’ve probably never thought about rhythmic structure at all. But when you play the guitar, or any instrument for that matter – and I’m including your voice – you must be locked in to the beat. When you discover that not only must you count beats in the beginning to give each chord the correct amount of time, and then count identical groups of beats that we call measures it can be really, really frustrating. So your first task in learning that new song is determining just how long you need to stay on each chord before you change to the next one.
Here's a hint. Try to ignore just about all other musical elements and listen to the bass. In most popular music the bass plays many notes “on the beat,” that is, assuming you’re in 4/4 time (four beats to each measure) you can depend upon the bass to play one note per beat, or sometimes in certain types of music like traditional country music, on beats one and three. Of course they often do much more than that, but in the beginning stages of working out a new song count the beats by way of the bass part. Bass players often play the “root” of the chord (the single note that is the name of the chord) on the first beat of a measure. When you hear that note again, assuming you’ve counted with beat one assigned to that distinctive note it’s not all that hard to determine where a measure begins and ends. Then it’s a matter of determining how many rhythmic sequences – measures – a chord receives before a chord change occurs.
Even though those basic sketches of songs you can find online are often incomplete (or sometimes, outright wrong) you should use them as a starting point. Write out at least a verse and a chorus or enter it in a word processing program. Then put in the chords you see right above words where new chords are found, at least according to the person who posted the version of the song you’re trying to learn. Next, put a number next to each chord name to indicate how many measures you’ve counted out for each chord to receive. Now you have a basic sketch of the song. But naturally, you want more. Don’t get discouraged. What you’ve done is put together the skeleton of the song. We’ll put some meat on the bones in my next entry!
Peace & good music,
Gene
So he forwards you a copy of it or maybe a link to a You Tube video of the artist performing it. You give it a good listen. And he’s right – great song, fits what you do stylistically and you can tell it will be fun to play. You listen to it again. But this time, just a hint of a shadow of a doubt creeps in. And then your negotiation with yourself begins.
OK, yeah the song sounds pretty awesome but can we sing like that? It seems to be a bit of a stretch, key-wise. Can we change the key and find one that’s more comfortable to sing in without losing the overall vibe? And those chords… They don’t sound too fancy but I’d better do some research on that. How about the bass and percussion? Can we do without those things and still have the song sound good?
And so it begins. Even though it’s a pretty new song it’s already easy to find some arrangements of it online. Trouble is, when you try what’s been posted it just doesn’t sound…. right. So you dig deeper and find another arrangement and that one doesn’t sound much better. And guess what? You’re right! Those arrangements are, at best, sketches of what the artist does on the recording. Maybe in your younger days when you first picked up the guitar it would have been OK, but those days are gone. You’ve been playing long enough to want and need to be as accurate as you can, otherwise you’ll never be quite satisfied with your finished product and even after putting in some serious time and effort you end up abandoning the whole thing. Or you default to the ol’ “That’s just my take on it! No reason I can’t make the song my own, right?!?” But you’ve been playing long enough to know that’s kind of a cop-out. Based on past experience you know the only way to make that justification palatable is to learn it as close to the original as you can, and THEN start experimenting with variations.
I spend a lot of time listening and searching out new songs for my students. Or new/old songs that I remember from long ago that still have something to offer in terms of advancing their skill. Sometimes students suggest songs or artists I’ve neglected or introduce me to music that I end up loving. But most of the time it’s musical detective work, which I love to do. Inevitably though, those questions I posed above are factored in. I still ask myself those questions too, as it relates to music I want to learn that has little to do with what I teach. So here are some of the answers I’ve come up with over the many, many decades I’ve been picking up a guitar.
I start with a foundation. That foundation is composed of determining what is absolutely essential for a song to sound as close to the original as possible. That doesn’t mean every little thing, although that would be nice sometimes. Often it’s more like including signature lines, otherwise known as “lead lines.” In many cases they are absolutely necessary if there’s any hope the song will be recognizable. Think of the classic guitar line from the wonderful Motown song, “My Girl.” It just has to be there. Or the signature line from Mark Knopfler’s “Sultans of Swing.” The intro to the electric version of “Layla” is another great example.
But being even more basic, an absolute necessity is determining the meter sign. Is this song in 4/4 (it usually is) or perhaps ¾, 2/4 or 6/8? For me that’s pretty easy, but I know for many people it is not. I tap my foot and count beats. I can hear instantly where measures begin and end but I know most people struggle with that, especially when they first start learning guitar. Why? Simply because most people have never thought much about the beat of a song and even fewer people have ever tried to count beats. It’s not their fault. I’ve said many times in this space that rhythm is the most taken for granted musical skill of them all. We all have natural rhythm in the form our heartbeat beating. Some people are fantastic dancers (not me!) and they are most certainly responding to the beat. And most everyone can clap and keep time to a song.
Unless you have previous experience with a musical instrument you’ve probably never thought about rhythmic structure at all. But when you play the guitar, or any instrument for that matter – and I’m including your voice – you must be locked in to the beat. When you discover that not only must you count beats in the beginning to give each chord the correct amount of time, and then count identical groups of beats that we call measures it can be really, really frustrating. So your first task in learning that new song is determining just how long you need to stay on each chord before you change to the next one.
Here's a hint. Try to ignore just about all other musical elements and listen to the bass. In most popular music the bass plays many notes “on the beat,” that is, assuming you’re in 4/4 time (four beats to each measure) you can depend upon the bass to play one note per beat, or sometimes in certain types of music like traditional country music, on beats one and three. Of course they often do much more than that, but in the beginning stages of working out a new song count the beats by way of the bass part. Bass players often play the “root” of the chord (the single note that is the name of the chord) on the first beat of a measure. When you hear that note again, assuming you’ve counted with beat one assigned to that distinctive note it’s not all that hard to determine where a measure begins and ends. Then it’s a matter of determining how many rhythmic sequences – measures – a chord receives before a chord change occurs.
Even though those basic sketches of songs you can find online are often incomplete (or sometimes, outright wrong) you should use them as a starting point. Write out at least a verse and a chorus or enter it in a word processing program. Then put in the chords you see right above words where new chords are found, at least according to the person who posted the version of the song you’re trying to learn. Next, put a number next to each chord name to indicate how many measures you’ve counted out for each chord to receive. Now you have a basic sketch of the song. But naturally, you want more. Don’t get discouraged. What you’ve done is put together the skeleton of the song. We’ll put some meat on the bones in my next entry!
Peace & good music,
Gene
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