Can anyone tell me some effective, proven methods for learning songs?
Practice,practice, practice. Break each section down to the smallest parts you can handle and slow it down until you can play it clean. Then increase the tempo..
If you are new to guitar this will take time weeks maybe months...once you have played for awhile it'll be hours and days..
But putting in the time is mandatory there are no shortcuts.
When you are working on sections of the song and slowing it down be aware of where your fingres are and make sure you don't have any tension in any part of your body..stay relaxed.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
It depends on a combination of what you want to learn the songs for, and how difficult they are for you.
If you want to learn lots of songs solely to be able to perform for others, TAB and standard notation are an invaluable resource. If I have to learn a bunch of songs quickly, I opt for TAB.
If you want to develop as a musician, I would suggest learning as many songs as you can by ear, rather than using TAB. I wish I'd done more of this. Even now that I am doing more of it, I still wish I could do more. It is very beneficial to your playing, but it can also be frustrating when you're working on a piece where you can't seem to figure what's being played.
Okay, that's the basic resources covered (you can also learn from video footage - this can be quicker than using TAB alone, but has the same drawbacks of not working your ears as hard as trying to figure it out yourself from the record), how to learn the songs...
Again, how I approach learning a song depends on why I'm learning it.
Take Clapton's version of Hideaway on the Beano album. I had to learn this for an exam. This exam required me to provide the examiner with a copy of the score I was playing from. It was also a fairly uptempo tune with a bunch of different rhythm changes and techniques to learn from. Because it was for an exam, I got the TAB/standard notation, and a copy of the track. First, I sat down and listened to the track, following the score so I could link between sections of the score, and the record. I did this again, this time marking out the key phrases; breaking it down into to blocks of 1-4 bars or so. After that, I would work on each section I had marked out, getting it perfect, then going on to the next section, perfecting that, and then playing the first and second sections together, as one longer section. I worked like this throughout the piece. By the time I'd got to the end, I'd played the opening so many times, and knew the melody inside out. To this day, if you put that track on at any point of the record, I know roughly how far in to the track we are, and what is going to happen next.
But that was for an exam, and I learned a bunch of great techniques and ideas without fully understanding them. I still play that piece, usually not note-for-note nowadays. But I took the time after my exam to go back over it, and consider each of the techniques I'd learned and how they could be applied in other situations.
The other way I often go about learning songs (and this is usually what I do if I'm figuring something out from a record), also involves breaking it down into different components. The only difference is this time the components are not bars, or groups of bars. The way I work goes something like follows:
* Time signature and feel - is it in 4/4 or 2/4? Is it a shuffle? Or is it a slow ballad?
* What is the structure? Is it verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus? Or something else? Do any of these sections seem to change the tone/feel of the song dramatically?
* What are the instruments involved?
* What is the tonal centre? Does it change key anywhere?
* What are the chords? (If I want to figure out a solo, and I'm having trouble pinning down the chord precisely, I may stop after I've got the main ones, rather than bothering to suss out specific voicings, chord extensions, passing chords, and the like)
* What is the melody?
In addition to this, you can also consider the dynamics of the piece - is it all at one volume level? Or are some bits quieter than others?
I do this with scores as well as with stuff I'm trying to figure out by ear. If I like a piece sufficiently, I will sit down with a score and figure out how it is achieving the effect it has on me. When working with records, or with scores, the order of items listed above may change; it depends on the piece.
Hopefully, this hasn't scared you off. It sounds more daunting than it is, I promise! Anyhoo, there'll be other people posting soon enough with their thoughts.
Thanks guys that actually helped out a lot! Don't worry scrybe that made perfect sense and was very reasonable. Right now I'm taking a class called Rock Ensemble at my school and I need to learn Foolin' by Def Leppard, and to learn it I will use both tips and I will let you know how that goes for me!
