how do you pick out songs like where you can listen to a cd and figure out how to play it just from listening to it
voodoochildtwj
Well, that's something that the more you do it, the better at it you get.
When I started playing there was no internet, and no tab books you could purchase at the music store. Sometimes you could find a good music book for a song or group you liked, but it was almost always written for piano with basic chord symbols shown above. So almost everybody just learned by ear. We had record players in those days, no cassettes or CDs. But you got real good at "needle dropping". You could drop the needle exactly where a solo began.
And that was how it was done. You just listened to a passage over and over and tried to find the notes on your guitar.
But you get better at it as time goes on. And if you listen to certain artists long enough you begin to get an idea of how they played and what keys they liked. So that makes it easier to figure out the next song.
I guess the best advice I can give is listen to the bass. Whether a chord is a major, minor, dominant, or so forth, the bass player will usually play the root note. So if you find the bass player is playing an A note, then the chord will probably be an A, Am, A7 or other type of A chord. This is probably true 90% of the time, but not always.
Listen to the tone. If you really listen carefully you can figure out which strings the guitarist is playing on. With electric guitar you are usually playing on 1, 2, or 3 strings. On acoustic it's a different story. Many times acoustic is played on all 6 strings.
As I said, the more you listen to particular guitarists you will find some have favorite keys. The keys of E, A, G, D, and C are probably the favorite guitar keys for most players.
Most of the time the first chord is the key of the song.
Another trick is to know that most (not all) songs are composed of the 3 major chords and three relative minor chords. So if you hear a song and the first chord is G, you can kind of guess the other chords. In G, the major chords are G, C, and D, and the three relative minor chords are Em, Am, and Bm or B7. So just try one of these chords on a change and see if it fits. You would be surprised how well this works. You can figure out most songs with this method.
After awhile your ear will get very good. You will start to recognize some chords as soon as you hear them. The same with strings. You will know if a riff is played on the 6th string or 4th string for instance.
Just stay at it and it will come to you.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
