Ben's Log

[btam]

Hey All,

So on the advice of Shane here in the forums, I’ve been working on working playing “music” using the scales I’ve been learning e.g. improv. It still sounds very much like scales but I did my first improv against a youtube backing track was great fun.

Anyway @sclay I tried to limit to one pattern and had some issues so I’ve applied your concept of limiting to play with the notes and rather than using patterns as that mechanic, I focused on two strings only first E and B. I’ve only just opened up the third string G this week.

The two ways I’m practising are:

1. Improv and just noodling to see what works and what doesn’t sound great.
2. Playing a known melody and trying to play it by ear.

The second part I’m finding is actually harder because I have to FIND the key first and then play the tune which has little give in playing wrong notes where as improv I have found is very forgiving if you stay in the scale note!!! Even sliding around chromatic notes outside of the scale is forgiving if you skip along!

There are two major hurdles at the moment, finding the key I’m using to play melody quickly and larger jumps on the fretboard - 4+ intervals onwards get a lot harder exponentially to land.

Here’s my video recording update, errors and all! No backing track so there’s no where to hide!

Cheers,

Ben

[btam]

Merry (late) Xmas all and happy new year!!!

So I haven’t posted for the last 4 weeks because I’ve been struggling to learn something and practising away everyday still

So I finally made a mini break through and through I’d share it because I’m quite a visual person, and my ears / feel just don’t hear or feel what a lot of material online instruct me to do. As a beginner it’s just not there…

The challenge I’ve been having is finding the Tonic / Key of a song so it’s easier to apply learnt knowledge and understand where I am on the guitar neck faster when learning a new song.

Here’s a recording to track my progress and explain my approach if anyone’s interested. Its more of a visual PATTERN MATCHING method rather than relying purely on ears to hear “happy” or “sad” etc.

Also a slight bit towards the end of me dipping my toes into chord melodies I guess. It’s supper basic but progress nonetheless

ENJOY.

Ben

[sclay]

Hey Ben,

Happy New Year mate. Hope it was great.

I enjoy your little forays into this stuff. It reminds me of myself, particularly in my initial 2-3 years. And I’m still at it very much today. We are always learning from everybody.
This sort of self exploration you are doing, and trying to work out things yourself, is enormously beneficial in my view. It will continue to be a great asset as you get more time on the guitar.

One tip if I may re general navigation; octave shapes. These form the core framework of the fretboard. Learning those very well will, over time, provide the logical franework upon whuch everything else is built; scales, triads, chords, and arpeggios.

All the best
Cheers, Shane

[btam]

Hey Shane,

Thanks for the commentary. I’ve definitely been looking at ways to know the fretboard better. The octave thing is definitely on my to do list because I was watching a clip / interview of some prodigy who was saying to obtain more freedom, they practise playing the same thing across 3 different octaves.

For now I’ll stick to just trying to jump around the fretboard with longer jumps using the root notes as a guide. But it’s in the backlog of things to do at the moment.

Honestly though, all this stuff I’m doing is a leap of faith that eventually I’ll learn songs increasingly faster and play off the cuff simple to medium complexity tunes I hear with chords over the top somehow.

Hope it’s not a pipe dream haha

Ben

[sclay]

@btam

Hope it’s not a pipe dream haha

Hey mate,

With your application, and the direction you’re heading in, it’s no pipe dream.

Cheers, Shane

[btam]

Hey All,

I’ve read quite a bit in the background of other peoples learning logs. Something I’ve noticed is a lot of it’s really structured (I also tried to do this at the beginning). For a lot of you that works which is great.

I’ve also read some logs where some of you struggled with concentrating on practise, which I’ve been lucky to avoid that feeling so far. I wanted to share something I do just as another perspective in case it helps anyone reading this.

My practise is quite unstructured probably 50% of the time. Sure there are times, when I sit there for like an hour and just do one thing. But half the time, I kind of mix everything together and do a “freestyle practise” sort of thing. It’s more for trying to internalise what I learn and have a bit of fun with it.

I feel it’s quite relaxing for me. I’ve put an unedited clip of my practise session, errors and all of what I mean.

Unedited practise - have fun with it - therapeutic

Something to note, as I play, all I’m trying to do is visualise the frettboard the whole way and let my ears guide a fair bit. There are plenty of times when I lose track and have to reset.

[btam]

Hi hi,

Back again, another progress update - still enjoying learning the guitar as I did from day 1 (in fact it’s getting more fun since I am building options on how I play). This time it’s really just a recording more for me so I can look back and compare.

I’ve been still striving for my holy grail of playing by ear to be able to replicate what I hear and free play / improv. So here’s my second go at it. It kind of just clicked about 2 days ago and started merging the three things I’d been working on individually:

1. Knowing the notes on the fretboard
2. Scales
3. Octave locations

Anyway here’s my clip, one take, mistakes and all and just doing what is recommended I think in some of the material on the site to “take an idea and play with it”.

I find it really hard to get the perfection that you guys get to when posting play throughs so I’m just exposing what my practise and state of play looks like as is.

9.5 months in - Playing by ear / Improv - Take 2

Thanks for watching / reading!

Ben

[btam]

Hey All,

No clip today… I don’t really have anything super different to show this time and have just been working things out on how to be more familiar with the fretboard still. I’ve just been playing different bits of melodies all over the neck and trying to mix some triads here and there. But I do have some mental notes that I’ve slowly been weaving in as part of my “exploration practise”.

1. I’m getting better at jumping between octave notes and using it as a map within the 5 scale position root notes.
2. I’m starting to figure out which chord is the main CAGED chord that fits over each of the 5 patterns to help give options to recognise where I am faster.
3. I’ve started to use (i think it’s called) the L Shape pattern because I’m struggling to figure out where I am fast enough when I move horizontally along the fretboard at larger distances.
4. I’ve been just exploring a basic chord progression and trying to play it everywhere on the neck to see if it helps with recognising shape sequences.
5. I’m still practising the scale patterns a little and just making sure i start on all the different root notes.

I think 1,3 and 5 put together seems to give me a lot more freedom. Still working on it though.

Also have been just following youtube play along chord songs here and there so it’s not just all technical practise.

Cheers,

Ben

[btam]

Hey All,

Update with a vlog on how my progress looks.

Recording of my progress:
Breaking out of pattern boxes

So this update is all about my journey to visualise and free play a bit on the guitar. There are kind of three things that enabled me to get to where I am so far:

1. The CAGED scale patterns
2. Recognising the root notes and octave jumps (@sclay thank you for the tip)
3. L Shape box

I think the L shape is more used to find the chords at set intervals and it also is a step towards the 3nps method a little I feel.

Putting it together, I’m starting to be able to mix it all together which feels pretty fun and good.

Cheers,

Ben

[btam]

Just a slight update on my learning journey. Question also for anyone that may want to chime in below

As a reminder, my primary long term goal is to play by ear. One of the things I’ve been working on is being able to navigate the fretboard which has progressed quite well. But I’ve realised that without the starting point (the key) it’s all for nought because then I’m stumbling around until enough notes are hit to recognise where I am.

I tried doing it the “sounds like home” way, but it just doesn’t gel, because all I hear is the melody, so I came up with another “cheat” way that only works with the guitar in hand.

So I evolved my method of doing pattern recognition… whole step and half steps… WWHWWWH. If i play on one string, that pattern repeats so i know the first W in that sequence is the root note / key.

The issue I was having is that it’s still too slow to listen to a song and play, by the time a large portion of a song finishes I’ve barely identified the key properly. Usually to play the melody I would use at least 2 maybe 3 strings because my muscle memory just naturally goes there somehow.

So after applying that sequence to the high E strong, I then applied the same sequence on the B string and internalised the relative distance using the scale patterns. The positions of the half steps give away the scale pattern i’m using AND the key. This is nice because it allows me to attempt to play the basic melody of a song quickly on the fly (albeit very basic)

I’m essentially using the half step as markers on the fretboard just like i would also use octaves i guess.

The concern I have is this deviates from how people find the key, by LISTENING. I’m just playing the notes and LOOKING for the pattern. Is that going to be a problem long term? My approach ONLY works if i’m holding a guitar in hand. I feel like its good enough, but is it a bad shortcut is what I’m wondering…

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Cheers,

Ben

[btam]

Hey All - I just ticked over the 1 year mark of learning guitar!!!

1 Year of learning guitar - What my improv looks like - YouTube
Summary of below - improv and putting all my skills to the test as best as I can…

The good news - I probably enjoy it more than when I first started in new found aspects. But the excitement / honey moon period when I first put the guitar in my hands and strum a few of the strings has well and truly worn off.

Some reflections
I think I’ve gone down a very different path to the general way which is to play your favourite songs. Not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but I don’t really go out of my way to listen to music. In fact I don’t generally listen to music and just hear what’s played on the radio if it’s on or a movie or someone else playing their favourite tunes. Having said that, my ears tell me when I hear something that’s cool and think to myself that’s a great tune.

To that end, I’ve focused on building skills to play what I hear and 3/4 of the last year has been fretboard visualisation and being able to mix chords and individual notes together. I’m happy with where I am, but my “song repertoire” really needs A LOT of work.

My second year is going to continue my current journey but probably intentionally put more focus on learning songs end to end and spend more time strumming chords to music to build comfort, basic timing and polish transitions more - one day I hope to turn on the metronome more I guess as I do see and feel the importance.

Anyway - clip at the top of this post of my 1 year putting everything I’ve learnt together and just trying to “play guitar” no backing track, no polished song… just playing.

Cheers,

Ben

[btam]

Just logging another learning journal entry.

I noodle a lot but figure I put down how I’ve been noodling to try play more horizontally and start to mix triads in while working through intervals.

It’s definitely picked up speed to find notes to a melody which is great but probably need to listen more carefully because I miss a lot of detail on how the melody goes. It definitely feels like I’m getting somewhere which is nice.

How I guitar noodle to practise the boring stuff

Happy guitaring all.

Ben

[sclay]

Hey Ben,

Another enjoyable watch of what you’re up to. It’s a worthy endeavour.

I must ask though, have you delved much into the pentatonic scales? These scales are the basis of much music.
The reason I ask is that once you get a little familiar with the full 7 note Major/Minor scale, moving to the pentatonics can help to drive fretboard knowledge, and musical and practical competency.

By dropping the 2 notes of the full 7 note scale, and using the pentatonics as the foundation, you’re removing the 2 semitones, and the tritone interval between them. These are harder to handle, as they have the potential for much greater tension and harshness if you slightly miss the mark.
This makes the pentatonic much more musically ‘friendly’; you can then, over time drop these additional notes into your playing here and there to create more melodically intricate lines.
So in the Major, it’s the 4 and the 7 that gets dropped to form the 12356 of the Major pentatonic; and the 2 and b6 for the Minor to give the 12b345b7 of the minor pentatonic.

Apart from being able to more readily create melodies with the pentatonic, you can move across the whole fretboard with much greater ease, as it’s always a 2 fret gap on every string.

So, you’re currently working from the ‘top-down’ so to speak, trying to handle all those 7 notes.
Working from the ‘bottom up’ from the pentatonic, may be just the thing that starts to open it all up for you.
Just a thought, as each of our journeys is unique, and you’re going pretty well at it.
All the best.

Cheers, Shane

[btam]

Hey Shane,

Always appreciate the feedback. Definitely helps provide perspective.

I’m embarrassed to say I skipped learning the minor let alone the major pentatonic and went straight from the other end as you say with all 7 notes.

It’s on my to do list to go back because even though I can sorta see the whole scale, my fingers aren’t familiar with the interval hops for either the minor or major pentatonic and just learning the theory doesn’t help me apply when playing because it’s not in muscle memory.

I’ll be going back to it like my other exercises of “adjusted” scales that I learnt bits and pieces E.g. playing in thirds or laddering runs like 1234, 2345 or 135,246 etc. I started doing them but got side tracked with my obsession of trying to play melodies by ear on the highest two strings and opening the fretboard as wide as I can upfront.

Everytime I think I’ve got a good grounding, the application has so many variations like your other tip on jumping octaves. I find all those exercises to be super beneficial when I can just get to a level of comfort where I can just “muck around with it”

I’ll report back as I go, but I dare say you’ll see an update from me at some point revisiting those because I need all the variations as options to free play…

On the side in my promise for year 2 to focus on songs, I’ve set aside dedicated time to learn some songs from tab… so slowly working on that too.

Cheers,

Ben

[sclay]

All good Ben.

We are very fortunate here that in Justin’s teaching method, he put the Major Scale front and centre (as it should be), and taught it first. Most other teachers start with the pentatonic, which I think is a mistake.

You will very likely find that, given your work on the Major Scale, you’ll pick up the pentatonics pretty quickly; and it’ll become your default scale.

Cheers, Shane

[simon_plays_bass]

@btam

The concern I have is this deviates from how people find the key, by LISTENING. I’m just playing the notes and LOOKING for the pattern. Is that going to be a problem long term? My approach ONLY works if i’m holding a guitar in hand. I feel like its good enough, but is it a bad shortcut is what I’m wondering…

It’s an interesting way of learning Ben i.e. focusing on your ear. I think most people get to that later in in their musical journeys. I wish I’d started ear training earlier.

Picking the key without playing anything is impossible for most of us. There are a few people with perfect pitch, but not many. Some people are probably better than others at guessing.

Recently I’ve stopped trying to find the key, if the purpose of my session is to Jam along to the song. I just look up the key, then play. The reason is that my main use case for playing by ear, is if I’m at a Jam night and get asked to join with someone on bass. The one thing I will be told for every song is the key we are doing it in. So when training for this particular scenario, I might as well know the key. So when practicing, I’ll pick a song for which I don’t know the chord sequence, look up the key, then play the song and Jam to it. I can get through more songs and I’m training my ear for the actual use case. I would think transcribing purists may well think this approach has deficiencies (it does), but it’s working for me.

Cheers, Simon

[btam]

Hey @simon_plays_bass

Thanks for sharing, all these snippets help me shape the direction I’m going.

I haven’t posted anything of late, because I’m just expanding on very rough improv at the moment to figure out what to record / document next. Interestingly enough I don’t really get bored. The heavy downside is I learn very few songs.

@simon_plays_bass

I can get through more songs and I’m training my ear for the actual use case

Reading how you do things makes me think I need to do more listening to a song and just imitating it. There’s something I can’t quite figure out why this is so much harder to do than just playing to a backing track or no backing track at all.

@simon_plays_bass

Recently I’ve stopped trying to find the key,

On the point of finding the key, I can at least report back that I can now find it but it’s not the way I imagined when I first started trying.

When I emulate a melody this is the exact sequence that happens in my brain that my fingers follow:

1. Randomly find the notes to a melody of said song.
2. When I play enough, I recognise the scale SHAPE e.g. shape 1,2,3,4 or 5.
3. I then get a feel for where I am on the frettboard.
4. I know the note in the shape of where the key is (but I still do not know the key itself)
5. starting jamming more freely to the backing track.

Then at a very far distant next step:

6. Then I have to stop, then think what is this root note and go… oh… it’s umm… A major… or G# major… or whatever.

The interesting thing is that step 6 never actually helps me. Yet.

I think you’re direction is right, the end game is more about being able to hear play what sounds like it will fit. however, the more I do this the more skills i feel i need to learn to make “playing a song by ear” even possible. Here’s the exact order of things I’ve worked on to date over the last year so far and we are just talking normal 1,3,5 chords. Haven’t learnt any other chords still:

Open Chords - all of them
Scales - all positions, major (alternating picking)
Ears - play nursery rhymes by ear
Triads - major, minor
Theory - recognise the note i’m playing (or at least be able to work it out, all strings)
Scales - internalising 1 finger and melody improv
Ears - play anything you think of (single note melodies)
Scales - muck around with chromatic notes and how they sound / feel
Scales - internalising all root notes (major scales)
Triads - Diminished
Scales - internalise jumping positions e.g. 1-> 3 or 2->4 or 5 → 2 etc
Theory - Intervals and playing the triad in place of scale notes
Improv - Double stops within the triads
scales - minor pentatonic (free play mix in with full scale)

Free play every practise session trying to mix it all together.

At the moment, I’ve gotten to the point where i’m getting more variety with improv and integrating all the above. I can only do it it for strings high E, B and G at this stage, but knowing triads then helped me integrate full bar chords as well.

Sorry for the long post,

Chees,

Ben

[btam]

Hey All,

As I’ve said before, my 2nd year resolution is to try apply more time to song learning. In my case it’s by ear. I figure all the talk on the chat is one thing, but showing where I’m at is another. So here’s a recording of learning a song by ear off the bat.

It was pretty daunting, but I took a sneak peak at this song for about 10min on the guitar yesterday and thought it was within reason to try with my current skill level of “reactive playing”.

If anyone’s interested in the process, I walk through my current thought process and application of specific skills as well as missing skills I currently don’t have. If not, the final landing point is at the very end after learning the song for 25min.

Beginner - Learning a song by ear - Leaving on a jet plane

Cheers,

Ben

[sclay]

Hey Ben,

I watched through most of your video here. You’re going hard at it man, as always
Always interesting.

May I suggest a major shift in approach, as an alternative.
Try locking into the harmony first,rather than the melody, in order to learn the song.

ie. the chords, and the resulting chord progression.

This will give you the overall structure of the song, and the key, or at least the progression, fairly quickly.
You can then drill down to the melody; but now you’ll be forearmed with the knowledge that the notes of the chords you’ve discovered will form the basis, and in many cases all, of the melody.

You’ll have a musical map to accompany your ear.
The scale, the chord, the note all become fruit from the one tree.

You’ll also much more readily be able to spot passing notes, ‘outside’ notes etc that often create much more variety in a song (Not so much in this particular song though).

You are still very much using your ear doing it this way, but you’ll be using it much more intelligently.

In Leaving On a Jet Plane, its chord progression is the classic I-IV-V progression in G, throughout the whole song. It’s that great melody that travels through the chords that has made it such a timeless classic.
And because you know it’s in G, you can use G Major scale in one position to start mapping out the melody using your ear.

Cheers, Shane

[btam]

Hey Shane,

I don’t disagree with you. I actually tried that first and am finding it SUPER HARD to figure out the chords without dumb luck.

I’ve tried to listen for aggeess and the melody is just so much easier to hear on my ears.
I tried the following for ages without much luck in no particular order (might have to try again):

1. I watched Justin’s live demonstration maybe a month back which covered my very first approach using the Low E and A string as the reference?
2. I also even tried learning the intervals and applying the major minor “formula” to help me figure out the chords from the individual scales starting from the high E and B strings.
3. I tried using the triads from the melody and extrapolating to the full bar chord from the CAGE"D" system
4. I tried learning the order of the CAGED chords and mapping out the scale beneath it

None of the above seems to make my ears click to a simple tune. The only thing I haven’t done is just “try all the popular progression” because it felt like I’m purely guessing. I suppose if I did that my ears would find it faster and get accustomed maybe but it’d still be a guess based on familiarity.

I’ll try again. But quick question - should I be applying a chord change ever “bar” so to speak like on the 1? when do i know there’s a chord change on say beat 2 of a typical 4/4 time tune?

To be honest in the last year. chord finding has been my no.1 biggest frustration even from when I posted my first try at twinkle twinkle little star at the very start of my guitar journey.

Cheers,

Ben