What do you know?

One of the surprising, though it shouldn't be, results of learning songs WITH the music, is the following realization: You don't really know the song unless you can play it with the music! You can memorize the notes and even play it in time and make it sound right in your head. However, you don't really know the song until you can play it with the music.

Another thing I've done is purposely skipped playing solos/leads for the past few weeks. Instead I've focused only on the rhythms. This week was the first time I focused on playing leads or solos. I was surprised by how I hear them differently than I did before. I hear how they maintain the rhythm of the song. That's kind of cool.

Anyhow, here's another song that I don't typically listen to, and would probably change the radio station if it came on. It's AC/DC's Back in Black. It was surprisingly fun to play. I never really learned the solo as I wanted to listen and try and play along (not note for note, just fit).

Learning Songs...not intros

I know the intro or main riff to about a million or so songs. There's a HUGE difference between being able to play a song so someone can recognize it and playing it in time with the original.

I always seem to fool myself into thinking, "Yeah, I can do that." However, I never did, so I never developed a huge part of playing music: time. Now, I can play some songs in time, note for note, but it takes me a long time to get a new song down.

Part of what I'm doing is learning new songs in time with the original studio recordings to help develop my listening skills and so on. I figured I could never really play in a band and listen to changes if I can't play along with a song.

So the second song I undertook was Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak. I wasn't sure if anything in this song would cause a problem, I thought, yeah, I can do that. Sure enough, something did cause a problem.

There's a pause for a beat in the main riff. The riff starts off with an A chord (power), then an E (power chord too). Then it hits an F-sharp. THEN A PAUSE. What I found is that I can come in after the pause on time, 99% of the time. However, if I missed, I was late (or early depending on how I missed) the rest of the time. I wasn't listening and adjusting well.

So I had to literally stomp my foot for that silent note (the pause). Then, naturally, I start using my foot to keep time for the whole song. This is a strange thing for me as usually when I use my foot to keep time I end up tapping along with the notes I'm playing, not the time itself. So, I took steps in the right direction here in keeping time with my feet.

Anyhow, here's the video. It's recorded with a video camera as I was having some latency problems with my audio.