Hey, been a while since I’ve posted.. I’ve been a bit distracted from this because I’ve just joined a new band. It’s a 5 piece doing covers of hard rock and old-school heavy metal songs. I’ve had about 30 new pieces to learn, and some of them are really stretching the limits of my technique. So I’ve been rather absorbed in that, and I thought it would make a good topic to write about.
One of the things about covering hard rock songs is that you’re expected to play the song more or less exactly as it was recorded, particularly the rhythm parts, which are often the most difficult parts of the song anyway. You can compare this with jazz or blues pieces, where the common approach is to just take the chord changes and the basic melody (or “head” as it’s often called), and then do your own version of it. Each approach is it’s own challenge. For learning songs as they were recorded, I’ve come up with my own advanced and super-complicated approach, which I’m feeling generous enough to share with you all. Maybe get out some pen and paper to take some notes, cos there is a fair bit to it.. alright, are we good? Here it is:
1. put cd in player
2. skip cd to song you want to learn
3. play the song and put it on repeat
4. pick up your electric guitar
5. play along for 10-20 minutes
Complicated stuff, I know. But it works. Give it a try and see for yourself.. you will be playing the song a little bit better just after a couple of runs through it. The first few times through you will probably just be working out where some of the root notes are for the basic chord shapes.. then you start to get a rough idea of some of the riffs. The whole time you are getting the structure of the song reinforced, and if there are any fills and solos you are wanting to learn, you get an ear for how they sound too. Tabs and sheet music are handy for when you are stuck on a part, but I think they are best used just as an aid for fingering and so on once you have a rough idea of the song already.
The real benefit of this approach is that you spend less time thinking about how you’re gonna play the song, and more time actually playing it. If you spend just 10 minutes a day playing along with one song, you will probably have a much better grasp of it than if you’d spent that 10 minutes poring over a tab, working it out riff by riff.
Sometimes songs are just too fast or complicated to just jam along to.. in this case you’ve got to slow them down so that you can learn to play them accurately at a slow tempo before gradually bringing them up to speed. I’ve got a little device called a “phrase trainer” which lets me slow down CDs without changing their pitch, and it rules for learning fast songs. I just plug it into my stereo. It was a christmas gift a number of years ago, I think they cost a couple of hundred dollars. One of my students has bought a computer program that does the same thing for about fifty bucks.. it’s called Riffmaster Pro.. now I won’t vouch for this program personally, because I have never used it. But they offer a money-back guarantee and a free trial of their software, so there’s no risk in just checking it out.
That said, it’s a mistake to only learn pieces you find really difficult – you will end up frustrated – and when you aren’t enjoying your guitar playing, you will start making excuses to yourself to avoid practicing. There are lots of great, catchy songs out there that you can probably play along to without needing to slow them down.. so pick a song from your CD or mp3 collection that you enjoy, and doesn’t sound too challenging, and figure it out. If you pick a song that challenges you just a little bit.. whether it challenges your hands or your ear.. then you will improve as a player just by learning it. And if you happen to like the song as well, it’s satisfying just to figure it out. Now that’s enough typing, I’ve still got heaps of songs to learn.. you should stop reading about guitar playing on the internet, and go learn one as well 
why would you wanna play other people’s songs? just develop your own voice
hey stevo, there’s a lot of ways to answer that one.. I think I’ll write a post on it.