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Old 01-05-2015, 09:43 AM   #3 (permalink)
EPOCH6
V8s & 12 Bars
 
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Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: British Columbia
Posts: 955
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I took weekly guitar lessons for about 6 or 7 years but my teacher always avoided typical training styles and instead designed his lessons around the importance of training your ear. Throughout the week he would have me write down a list of songs, from any artists, of any styles I wanted to learn, and for the first year or two we would spend the lessons learning the songs by ear and then transcribing our own tablature for it. Every once in a while he'd give me a song I'd never heard before to see if I could learn it on the spot. Once he was satisfied with my ability to learn by ear we moved on to learning theoretical and improvisational skills. He would spend a while running me through the minor, major, and harmonic scales and then once I knew them by memory he would teach me dozens of solo licks in each box before asking me to come up with my own. Eventually we moved on to using loop pedals and drum machines to build backing tracks in particular keys at the beginning of each lesson and then we'd spend the rest of the lesson trading off improvised solos over our track.

I found that sort of teaching style immensely helpful. It was really geared towards developing your own style, developing a quick and accurate ear, and left a huge amount of headroom for improvisation and creativity while still learning the theory necessary to write competent and cohesive music. I think it is essential to develop aural skills before theoretical knowledge if you plan on ever using that theoretical knowledge in a productive and creative way.
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Originally Posted by Bobbycob View Post
There's 3 reason why the Rolling Stones are better. I'm going to list them here. 1. Jimi Hendrix from Rolling Stones was a better guitarist then Jimmy Page 2. The bassist from Rolling Stones isn't dead 3. Rolling Stobes wrote Stairway to Heaven and The Ocean so we all know they are superior here.
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