“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

 

In the previous and initial submission of this series, we covered some beginning theory: the major scale and its application in major and minor chord construction. Some Glibs commented with expressions of frustration with wanting to play guitar but lacking in natural ability. In my humble experience, some of such frustration may be due to an aspirant’s lack of knowing how to practice in such a way as to more quickly get to where they want to be. Hopefully this article will address that issue. So let’s cut the Gordian Knot.

If you can’t play it slow, you can’t play it fast.

If your “practice” has so far consisted of looking at a chord chart and trying to play along with a recorded song just as it is on the god-forbid-it’s-2020-CD or iTunes or YouTube or Spotify or whatever, let’s correct that first. I’m going to assume you’re starting with strumming open* chords to your favorite tunes – as do most peeps – for this article, but the following techniques apply to any level of playing – barre chords, solos, riffs, lines, melodies… For now, let’s play chords on an easy song, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, and dive straight in, addressing problems as they arise.

Links to the song and a decent chart. Fortunately, our lives are easy on this one, for the chart and song are in the same key, and the chart looks like it’s correct (this is not always the case).

The Steps

  1. Listen to the recording of the song.  Get a feel for it.  Hopefully you already know it well enough to sing along, to tap out its rhythm.  As a beginning guitarist, simple and familiar songs are what you should learn first.
  2. Guitar in hand and chart in sight, play along.  But damn it all, you can’t make those chord changes fast enough and you’re not strumming in time.  No worries…
  3. Bust out your metronome and tap out the tempo, the beats per minute.  The hell you say?  No metronome?!  Stop the tape!!!
  4. (To Be Continued.)

The Metronome is Your New Best Friend

Seriously.  If you want to be good, you will get a metronome.  I don’t know any professional musicians who don’t practice with them.  I’ve known some wannabes who claim to have a metronome in their head.  Whatevs.  They never do.  There are few things more annoying than playing with someone who can’t keep a beat – and usually don’t even realize it – because they don’t practice with a metronome.  There are myriad apps to put on your phone, some are free.  Get one with a tap function; that’s important and I’ll explain in a bit.  Below are an example of a phone app and an image of the “real” one that I use.

 

The tap function allows you to use a finger to tap along with the song. The display will show you the beats per minute, shown above as 71 in the app and 120 on the Boss. I’ve just tapped out the linked Knocking on Heaven’s Door and it’s around 70 bpm. But, we know we can’t play that fast. Well, your metronome will not only allow you to tap the bpm, you can also manually set it to whatever you want. How much slower we set it will depend on how well you kept up with the recorded song. My rule of thumb is to initially drop it down by 20% or so, so maybe we try 55 and see how that works. And maybe now’s a good time to modify The Steps.

The Steps (Revisited)

1. Listen to the song and get a feel for it.
2. Using your chart, try to play along. If you can’t, go to Step 3.
3. On Your New Best Friend, aka your metronome, tap out the song’s bpm.
4. Manually set the bpm to a slower speed.
5. Now try to play along to the metronome only.
6. Repeat steps 4&5 until you find a speed at which you can play along to the metronome.

Make sense? “But, but,” you say, “There’s this trouble spot I always mess up on, no matter how slowly my bestie clicks.” I hear ya. For such speed bumps we might need to bail on the recording and the metronome and work on just that problem area, which very well might be the whole song, and that’s ok. Work on it in this loose fashion until you feel you’re ready to try the metronome again at a slow speed. Let’s move on…

7. Play along to the metronome at this slower speed until you can do so without messing up most of the time.
8. Increase the bpm by 2 or 3 and play at that speed until you’ve got it down.
9. Repeat step 8 until you’re playing at the recording speed, 70 in this case.
10. Now try to play along with the recorded song. If you start stumbling again, “go to 11.”

“How come I can play with the metronome at 70, but when I play with the recording I start messing up again?” Because now you’re hearing the vocals, the other instruments, and all of their random (maybe intentional) rhythm variations are throwing you off.

11. Turn off the recording and go back to your metronome. Increase the bpm by 2 or 3 above the recording’s until you’re playing comfortably.
12. Repeat step 11 until you’re playing ridiculously – for the song – fast or until you’ve reached your current limitations.
13. Now go back and try to play along with the recording. It should be much easier.

For every song I play live, I always practice at 105% of the recording’s bpm. This extra speed gives me the headroom, when playing live at the normal tempo, to respond to the dynamics of the band, the stress of playing live, and the off (sometimes likely) chance that the drummer gets excited and increases the tempo in the middle of the song. Even if you’re not playing in a band, you’ll find practicing faster than needed to be beneficial.

For a solo or a difficult riff, I practice just that part gradually faster and faster, always with the metronome, until my fingers or the guitar physically can’t keep up. Then when I’m practicing the whole song that includes the solo or riff, I’ll drop back down to 105% of the recorded bpm.

Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

Just thought I’d throw that in there. Think about it.

So, how about you try a couple of other simple songs, but that have more difficult chords in them? Use these to learn how to work out trouble spots, while the rest of the song is relatively much easier.

 

Nights in White Satin

Song. Chart. It’s the F chord that’ll throw you. (And it’s in 6/8 time. I’ll leave you to it to figure out how to get your metronome to deal with that time signature. Hint: you could tap the 1&4 beats and not change from the 4/4 time signature.) I’d use the F chord voicing on the left below to match the recording, but the one on the right will pass if it’s easier for you, and it will add a little color. Follow the steps. You got this!

 

Black Velvet

Now we’re pushing it, but I want to introduce you to a new thang. In the recording this song is played with the guitar tuned down a half step, meaning the strings are tuned to Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Bb & Eb. But you don’t have to do that! Download an app onto your phone called Amazing Slow Downer. Import Black Velvet into your phone’s songs, then select it in your new app. There’s a slide bar called Pitch that adjusts in half steps (called semitones in the app). Move the slider up to 1.00 and it’ll modulate the song so that you can play along with your guitar remaining in standard EADGBE tuning. Trust me. The app screen should look like this…

 

And see the Speed slider? Slide that up or down to change the song’s bpm without changing its pitch. Now you can play along with the song at any speed. Your bestie will be jealous, but welcome to 2020! (You’ll still need the metronome for lots of things and for ease of use.) And rather than use your metronome to play an isolated trouble spot, try the loop function of the app.

Black Velvet chart. Ignore the sus4 on all chords that have it, and just play the root’s major chord (e.g. play B instead of Bsus4) and it’ll work just fine (I know I said otherwise in the previous article, but, yeah.). Likewise you can ignore the 7 extensions. Play the F voicing as I’ve got it on the left above. The tricky chord in this one is the B, as it’s easiest played as a barre chord. If the high F# note doesn’t ring out cuz your fret hand ring finger is muting it, fuhgeddaboudit, that’s actually normal. The B barre chord…

 

Now get to practicing. Follow The Steps. And know that there are lots of apps and software for desktops that are metronomes and “slow downers”. I mostly use an app on my Mac called iRehearse 2. And if you need to grab sound-only mp3 files from YouTube videos there are apps for that, like YouTube to MP3. But no tech is gonna substitute for putting the time in practicing

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Open Chords will be defined in the next theory article.