Guitar Listening (Ezine Article)

 

A man named Franklin P. Jones once said something along the lines of: "You are what you eat". When I was playing my guitar the other night, I thought of something quite remarkable: "You are what you listen to".

Just like how devouring too many potato chips can make you fat, the music you listen to determines what kind of a guitar player you become.

The ability to listen is very underrated amongst the guitar community. Most guitarists spend all their time learning licks, guitar solos and perfecting your guitar chops. No one, however, talks about listening with as much enthusiasm. You may hear a guitar student spending hours getting that sweep-picked arpeggio right, but you never really find guitarists say they spend hours of their day simply listening.

And by listening - I'm don't just mean listening to the same old guitar players, bands and songs you've always been listening to. That's unlikely going to make you improve as a guitarist. The kind of listening I'm talking about has a lot more meaning than that. It's what I call - the art of listening. I feel that there are 4 rules when it comes to listening that will make a huge difference to your guitar playing.

Rule #1 - Be A Time Traveller

Rule number one is to be what I call a musical time traveller or a musical historian. Often times, a lot of beginner guitarists simply listen to what's currently popular, or the so-called classic heavy metal / rock songs that everybody seems to know. This, I feel, simply fails to go beyond the surface of being a good listener.

The following statements which I am about to say may offend a lot of guitarists and you should first of all understand that it is only my personal opinion. It saddens me these days that people think that the guitar revolves around the likes of Hendrix, Slash and Eric Clapton and so forth i.e. that the development of guitar playing has stalled since the times of these greats. Whilst these guitarists have certainly contributed a great lot to the guitar playing universe, they are by no means the only ones to have done so.

The reality is, the guitar universe has moved light years beyond since the days of Jimi Hendrix. What was considered breathtaking and original guitar playing then now seems rather boring. What annoys me is that we have more gifted musicians and guitarists than ever before but these guys simple fail to be acknowledged by the majority of people. By gifted, I don't just mean good guitar chops - I mean guitarists who also have great composition skills too.

Likewise, you can also make the error of listening to just the new stuff and miss out on some old goodies. Shredders - if you think Paul Gilbert is the god of shred, jazz guitarists such as John McLaughlin and Pat Martino have been leaving audiences jaw-dropped decades before with their awesome picking speeds. You think Eric Clapton was the best blues guitarist? Check out his influences. Guitarists such as Buddy Guy and Albert King helped lay the foundations of modern blues playing and should deserve a good deal of attention as well.

In fact something which I highly recommend you to do is to do a biography search on your favourite guitarists and find out who their influences are. If these musicians were able to influence and form the playing style of your favourite guitar players then surely, they must be worth at least a listen.

Rule #2 - Explore Different Genres of Music

There is a lot of self-labelling that goes on in our society, guitarists included unfortunately. You hear a lot of guitar players branding themselves as being purely shred or metal. They have little interest in the other musical genres and dismiss these genres without having given them a chance. Likewise, classical or acoustic guitarists, can sometimes be very stubborn when it comes to venturing into the electric guitar.

Some will argue that it's a musician's choice to play whatever music they want - I would agree and even encourage this. After all, there's only so much music we can play. It is impossible for someone to simultaneously become a great blues guitarist, a great classical guitarist and a great metal guitarist. However, by not checking out and hearing some of these other musical genres, you would miss out on things you could have learnt.

For example, a heavy metal guitar player could learn a lot of licks and phrasing ideas from blues guitarists. Similarly, the fingerpicking technique of classical or flamenco could also be utilized by jazz guitarists. You may not necessary want to embrace these other genres with all your heart, but at least you've heard the music.

And who knows - it might even change you as a guitar player. When I was in my high school days, all I ever wanted to play was shred. I was obsessed with playing at the speed of light and would spend hours a day trying to get my sweep picking right. At the same time, I was open to learning new musical theories and wasn't scared of exploring other genres of music. After a chance encounter with a Pat Martino live recording, I changed my guitar playing focus. Today, jazz is my main genre of music. Ten years ago, my friends would have laughed at me if I said I was going to be a jazzer.

Rule #3 - Explore Other Instruments

One bad habit a lot of guitarists make is to listen only to guitar music. Whilst this is rather intuitive, it is a real shame because we can learn a great amount from other musicians. One thing which I've noticed amongst great guitar players is the diversity of their musical tastes. For example, jazz fusion guitarists such as Brett Garsed and Scott Henderson frequently cite horn players as their influences. After adopting this approach, I too feel that listening to other musicians has hugely improved my guitar playing.

Guitar players tend to be stuck in a rut of playing a lot of guitar-sounding licks during improvisation, where bends, hammer-on's, pull-off's and bends are overused and abused. Listening to non-guitarists could help us to break out of these habits and inspire us to come up with some new ideas. For example, I regularly listen to pianists such as Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea to get me thinking out of the box and come up with new inspiring guitar licks.

Rule #4 - Be An Active Listener

Most of us have heard of the term active listening - but does it mean when applied to a guitar/musician context? For me, active listening simply means to learn as we hear, to take in the good ideas of the music we hear and to see if we can adapt some of these ideas to our guitar playing. It's not simply appreciating the music - it's harnessing the music that we listen to.

Readers of my blog will know that I believe in the one-lick-a-day principle. The idea behind it is to learn one and only one new lick a day, spending the entire day internalizing the lick so that it can integrated into your guitar improvisations. The biggest source of these new licks isn't from a website, tab sheet or book - it's the music that I listen to. My approach is - when I hear a lick that I like (which doesn't necessarily have to be from a guitarist), I make a note of it and transcribe it later. This transcription also helps you to develop a good ear - one of the vital tools for good guitar improvisation (i.e. playing what you hear in your head).

So I recommend that you too become an active listener. When you hear a song that you like, understand why you like it and see if there's anything there that you can use in your own guitar compositions or guitar improvisations. This can be done for just about any aspect of music - phrasing ideas, a certain guitar tone, guitar chord progression or lick. You will be surprised at the things you learn when you adopt this active listening approach.

Found this article useful? For more free guitar playing tips, licks and lessons visit the The Shadow Guitarist Blog at [http://www.shadowguitarist.co.uk].

Lex Robben

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Lex_Robben/638296

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4388750