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Old January 10th, 2007
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solidwalnut solidwalnut is offline
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Playing guitar for what seems like forever.
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
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Location: Phoenix, AZ USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by krissovo
...So will there be internet era of guitar players like me that will lower the general quality guitar playing as a whole?
Well, the best players learn to develop their ear to understand what it is that is being played and then try and translate that to the fretboard.

I'm definitely an old school player. I've spent alot of hours picking up the needle of a record player and ff and rew tapes! The 'net and other digital tools has made the process alot easier, but.....

There is just no substitute for developing the ear. And I've never learned a song from viewing TAB. I'd rather listen to the song and figure it out.

Once you can 'hear' and 'see' in your minds eye the shape of a chord and the notes of that chord, then you can begin to hear and understand what other guitar players are doing. An open G chord will always sound the same, and you can recognize the succession of notes being played.

There are only so many ways to play a G chord on the guitar, and the forms that are mostly played number about 3. Once you hear the succession of strings being played and get that in the mind's eye, you can begin to reproduce what you hear.

Soon you begin to realize that you can not only hear what other players are playing, but you soon realize that you can play that stuff too! Even if you can't always reproduce everything, you begin to adjust your playing style to what you can do; ya learn to celebrate your limitations!

So I think the answer could be yes. But just because the new gen doesn't have to press ff and rew a bunch of times doesn't make them lazy. It's just that they have so many different tools to choose from that some are beginning to believe that you can learn how to play guitar by tools only! As if there is some magic elixir out there than can make one a player! Because the old school didn't have so many tools in the way of learning, the ear was more quickly developed.

PlaneTalk is, seriously, a tool that very much helps develop the ear. There aren't very many tools out there that can say that.

Ear training is king!

Steve


Steve Cass
Solid Walnut Music/ASCAP

Becoming a great guitarist has less to do with fancy moves than it does becoming a master of the basics and learning musicianship.
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