Learn solos by ear or tab?

Sorry. We still can, I suppose. Just no B.C. Rich pointy monstrosities.

You son of a

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Is there a thread on how to practice this?

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I remember talking to Rusty Cooley about seeing that Arnold Schwarzenegger hand shake during the 80s, how impressionable we all were as young handshakers at the time, and what a pivotal moment it was seeing that 2 minute scene at the intro of Predator.

Anyways, @JakeEstner, have you checked out our Handshake Primer yet? We have a 9 part series dealing specifically with movements like this, especially on how to move from the elbow. This comes after watching a 26 part dissection on how to think about moving from the elbow.

Once you’ve got a general idea of the handshake, make sure to start with speed! Don’t start slow and count up with a metronome! And don’t think so much about controlling the movements at this point or sounding perfect, what we really want here is a thunderous clap at the end of your handshake. This lets us know you’re doing the movement right.

If things aren’t feeling right at the start, you’ve got to change the movement or environment. Think like an engineer. You can change your polo, the ambient room temperature, the amount of bicep veinage, and so on. Experiment, and shuffle the deck!

And It’s ok to accidentally slap the person instead of grasping their hand with an explosive, high-testosterone movement. If you hit them in the face or hit them so hard their grandchildren feel it, it’s totally fine! What we want is you to think smooth, relaxed and fast.

Post back here with any other questions and if you have any Magnet footage I’d be more than happy to take a look.

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Solid dedication to the bit, I like it.

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This thread’s an oldie, but a goodie. I’m finding lots of good stuff like this in the archives here - thanks, Troy, for preserving all this. I did want to throw in my 2 cents, as there’s a point to be made here that I don’t think others did…

Working from TABS is, at least for me, just that - work. Having the notes mapped out doesn’t replace a lot of decision making - phrasing, fingering. And then there’s memorizing. TAB can’t do that for me.

Could be that some of those who posted are so gifted as musicians that their experience of working from sheet music (standard or TAB) is a fairly quick thing, and so they don’t get such a ‘work out’ from it. But if you’re not yet at the level of gigging/teaching, I’d say that you’re going to break a sweat using TAB - so you may not be short-circuiting the larger process that learning new material offers as much as some think.

(As for ear training, which seems to be the main bugaboo about using TAB… I’m not as qualified to speak to that. But for you fellow TABers, there are methods for working more directly on that than transcribing. It’s like if you don’t like orange juice, there’s always vitamin C in a pill. Check out justinguitar for a free and pretty comprehensive course on interval training. Btw, he’s a CTC fan, too:)

I think this is where tools like Soundslice truly shine - where you can see the tab playing along the real human performance. I swear I am not on their payroll :wink: - and to avoid being too self-promotional I’ll link a cool example by our excellent @JakeEstner:

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I have been thinking about this one for a few days. This is the response I have come up with.

I think of drawing. When you first start you trace, which in my mind is like tablature or a how to play video. Now when you want to challenge yourself you look at the picture, and start to free hand, aka looping a song section to figure out by just listening. Then even harder, you look at it for a bit, then you remove the picture, and try to draw it from your mind, less looping. See where I am going?

I will say tablature is great for explaining technique like economy picking, sweep picking, hybrid picking. Anything out of the ordinary on licks that sound complex, but are actually easy.

So just enjoy your instrument. When it gets to free from rhythm or heavily polyrhythmic for very complex sections dissect the chunk note for note if you are struggling to proceed until you get better at learning by ear. Two things that can aid your ear journey are konnakol, and to sing what you hear and play. When you get tired of challenging yourself by using just your ear, and you start to get a bit frustrated, switch to tablature to work on another genre or complex lick, or better yet fire up the metronome to work on technique. But I would say try to stick to one song for awhile to learn by ear, and don’t overwhelm yourself. Let this one song guide your metronome technique speed practice.

technique
alternate picking
economy picking
swybrid picking
trills
legato
work on blending picking and legato
short chunked phrases
3 nps scalular style runs
string skipping arpeggios
3,4, and 5 string arpeggio shapes
chord transitioning

Levi Clay has been doing this with country solos on YouTube, and has some great books. I am also not on his payroll. :slight_smile:

Is that like solfege?

Yes, but for rhythm.

Ah and thank you kindly @tommo!