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Originally Posted by bmurnahan
Especialy these days with all the tab around. We are turning into a paint by numbers sort of method to play the guitar.
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Doesn't notation do the same, Bob? It's certainly more kosher than tab, but I always remember a John Williams (classical guitarist, Segovia protege) documentary in which he said that his last goal was to be able to improvise, that he needed notation in front of him to tell him what to play. I was dumbfounded when I heard that! It was many years ago now, however, but what it told me at the time was that John's ear training needed work.
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Originally Posted by bmurnahan
Back in our day when we still listened to records, we had to scratch them up by dropping the needle over and over on the same spot to figure out what we wanted to play.
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Yes, and I'd play 33 rpm albums at 16 rpm, pretty much half speed, which dropped the pitch down an octave so I wouldn't need to retune much, and scrutinize the sounds at half speed. Did you do the same? I'd listen to chords over and over and over again listening for the chord tones, then searching for them on the fretboard. That was great ear training ... you find a couple of tones, then you have to ignore them and listen for the others ... very intense concentration required for that!
I always point out that most of us can hear the I-IV-V changes in a 12 bar blues ... it doesn't require much time to be able to do that. Those are the major chords of the key; next add the relative minor to the majors, the vi; then listen for the ii and iii ... they're a little harder to zero in on, but only for a while. Once you can do that, the 'majorizing' the minors and 'minorizing' the majors is the next step. That pretty much covers it except the use of the flatVII chord ... like C in the key of D. They come up quite often in modern music ... an easily recognized 'outside' chord.