Tips for progressing

[Steve]

Hello everyone. My name is Steve and I would like to share some of my experience with you. Hopefully it will help some other musicians who feel overwhelmed.

I have been playing guitar and studying music for 27 years now. There are days where I feel like I found the holy grail and times when I feel like I haven't progressed at all. Music is a lifelong study with no end to what can be learned.

Here are some suggestions to help you get over the hump so to speak.

1) Spend most of your time working on your problem areas.

This is very easy to overlook. Most musicians practice what they do best and put the problem areas on the back burner.

Following the path of least resistance is natural, so be patient and discipline yourself. If you are having a hard time transcribing, then spend most of your ear training practice on this.

2) Go to YouTube and search for your favorite artist and practice transcribing..

3) Practice in all tempos up to 280 BPM.

4) Learn two beat rhythms (2/4) and name them by how many attacks there are in the two beats.

For example three attacks in 2/4 would be one quarter note followed by two eight notes. Another example of three attacks would be two eigth notes followed by a quarter and so on.

5) Try to internalize everything you learn.

6) Learn to play as many different styles as you can.

Thank you

Steve

[Patricio]

Dear Steve,

thank you very much for your post, I think will be really useful for a lot of musicians that feel frustrated and don´t really know how to get a "direction". My students have sometimes the same problem, and you know that the reason because no everybody play instruments is that take a really a lots of patient to progress in the way we want. I invite you to continue with your posts.

greetings,

[Steve]

Thank you very much for the reply I know how frustrating learning eartraining was in the beginning. For me it was a very slow process. I had to ask "Why is this so difficult". That question made me listen in a way that made sense for me. I can now get very high scores on a lot of the earmaster exercises. I will continue with this post and hope to help others learn how to listen more closely.

Here is a little story for you all.

I was using Guitar Pro to notate a guitar part. When I listed to the file, I kept hearing a very high pitched note that was occuring. It was ALMOST subliminal but I picked it up instantly.

I asked my friend if he could hear the high pitched noise when the D note on the B string was played.

He listened a bunch of times and could not hear it. He said I was going crazy and that I was too much into ear training.

Then I actually pointed it out to him in detail and guess what HE COULD HEAR IT! I wasn't going crazy, but because of ear training over the years my listening became more in tune.

I assure you all that if you keep practicing and DON"T GIVE UP, you will have a much more powerfull ear than you could have ever imagined.

I will do my best to share my ear training learning style and hope that this helps the rest of you.

BOTTOM LINE!!!!!!!! TAKE YOUR TIME AND DON'T GIVE UP. Earmaster is a very powerfull tool for eartraning and has changed the way I listen to music.

Thanks