Originally Posted by: Slipin Lizard-I DO care if you can play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"... can you? Can you start on any note and figure out the rest just by ear? When you go to hit a note in a solo, do you know how it will sound before you hit it, or are you just following a box pattern hoping that the note will sound good? (a lot of players do). I was jamming to a preset on my DR880 that had a very distinct chord progression, when I suddenly realized it worked perfectly for "Puff the Magic Dragon"... it was fun to "solo" Puff just as an ear-training exercise. This kind of training helps you move towards being able to hear the note in your head, and then play it on the fretboard.

As one new guitarist to another, I can only vouch for this. While I don't do ear-training with Puff or Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star, I still tried this about two months ago with Rod Stewart's "Sailing". The main potion of the song wasn't that hard to figure out, but I'm still having fun trying to work out the guitar-solo without resorting to any kind of tabs or musical notation. I'm having fun practicing a song I like, while training my ears at the same time. And if I could begin doing that after only having played the guitar for half a year, you can do it too, no doubt about that.