I’ve been learning guitar, following Justin Guitar lessons, since late June 2023. I love the course and the community (which I actively participate in). If I look back over the last year and a bit, I can see the improvement I have made. I’m currently at the end of Module 10 (Grade 2).
However, I have a problem that makes playing along to songs quite difficult and Justin always says learn songs. A few years ago I suddenly lost about 95% of my hearing in the left ear. This was long before I took up the guitar. Fortunately, I have perfect hearing in the right ear meaning that I do not have a difficulty hearing enough sound in terms of volume. So playing guitar alone is fine. However, it means I cannot locate where sounds are coming from (you need 2 ears for spatially determining where sounds come from and distinguishing different sources of similar sounds!) and it means that if there are many different sounds it can be difficult to distinguish between them. For example, when having a conversation with someone in a noisy room, it’s difficult to distinguish the voice of the person I am talking to from the other voices in the room because I cannot pinpoint the voices spatially, so they sort of merge onto one big noise.
During guitar practice and learning songs, I have been watching Justin song lesson videos and using Tabs (mostly Justin’s). I then try and play the song from what he taught and from the Tab. This works Ok to a certain extent except that it would help and be fun to actually play along to the song and it would help with keeping the rhythm. Rhythm is really something I have to work on a lot more and constantly work on. However, playing along to that song’s recording is quite difficult for me, especially if there is a guitar part in the song already. It’s hard for me to distinguish the noise from my guitar from the rest of the music because spatially they sort of merge together. For this reason, it’s difficult to keep in good time. When I do that, I drift out of time quite a lot.
I tried 2 things with little success. 1. To play my guitar louder so I can really hear what I play, but then I can’t hear the recorded music properly. 2. The opposite: to put the music loud and my guitar volume low. Then it’s easier to keep the rhythm but I can’t hear properly what I am playing to hear the faults.
I am sure if I recorded it, it would sound terrible.
One thing I have been wondering is whether I should really bother trying to play along to recorded songs, or whether I should just continue playing alone and try to keep rhythm using a simple tool like a metronome or perhaps a drum machine which is easy to distinguish from my guitar sound. I also saw that some looper pedals have drum sounds as well and since this is a tool I would like to have in the future I thought about that. But I really would like to play along to songs and eventually even play with other musicians, if possible.
I also wondered whether it possible to get backing tracks that only have drums and bass as that might help me separate in my hearing what I am playing from the overall rhythm of the song.
First of all nice to meet you, Ian, my name is Hec, I do not have hearing problems but I may be able to help if I speak to one of the lads who I help in learning to play the guitar at my local community, He too has hearing problems but still plays and sings and on occasions he will stop and inform us he needs to alter whatever he does so he can achieve what he is doing, I have never given it a thought until I read your post, this must be very frustrating I meet up with my class on Fridays and I will ask toni how he copes and if he can give you any advice, please leave it with me I can’t promise but I will ask the question for you cheers HEC.
I have perfect hearing, but honestly I sometimes still find mentally separating the audio from my guitar from the recorded guitars difficult.
That is exactly what I do after I learn the song. As in, I’ll initially practice with the full track to get a feel of how it should be played (“absorbing all the good stuff” as Justin would say), but once I feel that I have a handle on that, I switch to practising with the everything-minus-guitars track. If you search for “<song name> without guitar” on youtube, you might be able to find such a track. If not, you might need to do the stem separation yourself, but that’s a whole different topic.
A suggestion would be to try the Moise.ai website. It separates the different instruments from a song into different tracks. So, you could remove some parts like the guitar, the bass, the drum or the vocals . Or decrease/increase the volume of some instruments.
In other words, it may help you to build your backing track to fit your needs.
+1 for Moises. I pay a subscription each month but I think from the free tier you can definitely see if it gives what you want. It’s available as an iPhone / iPad app or Web App or PC app (the PC app seems to be the version that gets least development) whereas the iPhone and iPad apps get regular updates. As @math07 has said you can use it separate pre-recorded songs from your library and make adjustments to the levels as required. You can also loop sections if there’s a particular section you’re struggling with. I do all of my practice with Moises
@DeltaTyne if you speak to your friend you would have to explain that I have one perfect ear and one completely deaf ear. It’s not a very common thing. Most people with hearing problems loose certain frequencies in one or both ears and that can often be partially rectified with a hearing aid. In my case, nothing can be done with a hearing aid as the nerve is completely dead. Actually many people who don’t hear well in one ear can still spatially determine sounds because some sound is transmitted through to the ear through bone but in my case with the nerve damage that’s not the case.
I’m going to have a look at Moise.ai. That sounds interesting. I didn’t know it exists.
Hi Ian my friend has replied. Hi HEC you could ask Ian if he still has conductive hearing in his right ear. If he has you can hear the guitar better by playing with your chin on it (electric). It may work with acoustic I have never tried. Otherwise, I would suggest having your amp between you and the music you are listening to. Or headphones if they have mixed amp+music, if noise isn’t a problem they can turn it up. When I was first learning, I rarely used an am, I would play with my chin on the guitar, I understand your frustration I had to make a lot of adjustments when my hearing failed me, these are just a few of the things I found that helped me I pushed on because of my love for the guitar. You know it helps me Hec so without too much tech these few tips may help Ian hope he finds the right help cheers Toni. So Ian I do hope there might be a little help there cheers HEC
ooo ok just read the damaged nerve bit Ian but it was worth a try I do hope you find some help and I like you have never heard of Moise, ai mmm well best of luck Ian
I have the more common high frequency hearing loss, and wear hearing aids. I find Moises invaluable for separating tracks and changing levels of individual instruments to work around my hearing difficulties.
Moises has additional features that are also extremely useful for practice…tempo reduction, section looping, and key transposition are the ones I use the most.
Another thing you might try - feeding the recording and the guitar signal (from pickups, or a mic’d acoustic) into a mixer, and using headphones to send the combined signal to your good ear. This would give you a lot of control over the relative levels.
Honestly I don’t know, I tend to pick 5 track separation and treat the guitars as one track which for my purposes is good enough. My guess would be it will vary as to how distinct they are.
If you use iPhone or iPad then the easiest way is to try a subscription for a month knowing that it’s really easy to cancel subscriptions that are done through the App Store. That said maybe there’s another Moises user who does use the 6 track option… I know there’s a few of us on these forums