Figuring out guitar wanks . . .

[thetruthfairy78]

Hi. I'm new here, and feel a little out of my depth. I taught myself to play around ten years ago, but I'm mostly into indie stuff (my idols: Johnny Marr, Graham Coxon, Bernard Butler) and I can't do much of the quick stuff.

It isn't that my fingers are slow - I seem to be as quick as anyone else i've met it's just that I find that parts of solos where there's a lot of notes, moving up or down a scale, say, hard to work out.

To pick an example (which will seem SO simple to all of you): Bohemian Rhapsody. The solo starts melodic, slow, and there's just a little part that's quicker, with hammer-ons and so on.

Now, I can bull**** my way through it, without people noticing, but it bugs me. I wish I could slow the Cd down, so I could know when the guitarist is changing notes, what rhythm, et cetera.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated. I know this'll sound totally amateurish to you (I've heard some of the sound samples on this site - Jesus!) but, well, there's some of us who haven't heard any Satriani.

[lalimacefolle]

Work, work, work. Take a metronome, and play it slow, then increase, slowly, maybe 5 beats per minutes at a time. Play it until it becomes comfortable, then increase... etc...

Don't overwork, give your brain and fingers a rest, every 15 minutes, then come back...

[thetruthfairy78]

It isn't that I'm not fast enough to do the things I want to do, it's that I literally don't know what notes are being played - with the changes going faster it's hard to tell.

If I could slow it down it would be fine. I just wondered how, when notes are being played so fast, a lot of guitarists who post here are still able to tell which ones are being played.

[lalimacefolle]

It sounds like you don't know about scales. Do you know them? It's hard to understand what your problem is :)

[thetruthfairy78]

You see, I know the scales.

The simple problem is that, when there is a fast part in a guitar solo - sweep picking for example - I can't make out what notes are being played!

And, if I had the tablature in front of me, I would know the notes, but the rhythm would be a mystery!

The only way I could clear it would be to slow the part down, leanr it that way, then speed up.

But, because I can't slow CDs down, this means that when I'm trying to figure out a solo by ear, I'm at a loss. I simply cannot DIFFERENTIATE between the notes in a fast piece.

For an example, listen to some of the sweep sound samples in this site. Now ask yourself, if you didn't have the tab in front of you, would you be able to tell which exact notes were being played and in what order? I definitely wouldn't.

[lalimacefolle]

Ok
well, you need to work on your ear, it's a very long task, but it come with practice. You mught want to check this out too:
http://www.perfectpitch.com

[Kevin Taylor]

If you have a Mac, there's a shareware program called Amazing Slow Downer that reads the music off your CD-ROM drive and slows it down between 1% and 400% using "time-stretching" so it doesn't change the pitch.
... don't know if there's a windoze version tho.

[lalimacefolle]

Originally posted by schmange

... don't know if there's a windoze version tho.

I do that with the time stretch of Cool Edit, It slows things without changing the pitch...

[dinerroll]

for windows go to slowgold.com for a program that works really well for slowdown and key transposition

[ignoble_yonoid]

look for the tabs is all i can say...