How To Learn Songs From CDs
Many guitar players concern themselves with how to learn songs from tabs and sheet music but neglect to learn the art of learning songs direct from the CD or MP3 or whatever. This is a knack you really should cultivate, as much to further your understanding of music as to actually learn new songs to play on the guitar.
I am going to explain how to learn songs from CDs using an electronic guitar tuner with a visual interface that tells you what note is being picked up by your computer’s microphone. My own choice of tuner is the AP Guitar Tuner because it’s free and easy to use. Once you have the tuner installed on your computer, tune your guitar and play the CD while the tuner is still open on your computer.
As your CD plays, you will notice that you can see the notes reading out on the guitar tuner’s display. This is what is going to help you learn the song you are hearing. First, make sure your guitar is tuned to the sane pitch as the record. You can do this by picking a note you see occurring a lot on the tuner and play the note as you see it. If the two notes sound the same, you have got it right. It’s best to go for an open string note, so if you see E, A, D, G or B displayed on your tuner make sure it compares with the open string on your guitar.
You can use your guitar tuner to help you pick out the tonic chord of the song by taking notice of which note is displayed on the guitar tuner when the final chord of the song is played. Also many songs have the tonic chord as the very FIRST chord. If the song fades out instead of coming to an end, you are going to need to try another approach. Go back to looking for open strings in the song. As you become familiar with recurring notes in the song, you might get an idea of which chords are being used.
This video gives another way of learning songs by ear with emphasis on the fact that you will succeed in learning songs this way if you relax and experiment. Do not be in too much of a hurry to get the learning over with.
Related posts:
Posted in 
Tags: 
. . . or you can subscribe to the category that interests you . . .
