Learning Songs is Overrated
Blog Post #4
Ahh, playing an entire song start to finish. This was one of the most exciting endeavors in the early days of my playing guitar. There’s a special flow state and feeling of satisfaction that comes with playing along with a whole song. In this post we’re going to consider why it’s also one of the most overrated and unrealistic goals we lay out for ourselves. This isn’t to derail anyone’s ambition to learn a full song -- I fully endorse ambitious goals. But in this post we’ll add another perspective, and show that we can get more out of paring the song down.
TL;DR:
Sometimes it’s impossible to learn a whole song, even if we practice it over and over for months. At the same time, it’s incredibly important to take on the challenge of learning a certain part of the song, even if we never play it as fast as the recorded version
Compare yourself to the guitarist you were yesterday, not to some virtuoso on YouTube. Okay, comparing yourself to that virtuoso time to time can light a very useful fire under your seat, but keep your own journey in perspective by looking at your progress over time.
The idea of learning an entire song is alluring. It gives us the chance to prove to ourselves we’ve accomplished a difficult goal or made tangible progress. There’s certainly magic in being able to play a whole tune. It’s a mandatory skill if we’re ever going to perform in front of an audience.
Most of us choose to learn songs (or parts of songs) for 3 main reasons:
1. Flow state
This is the reason we all play guitar -- to get to the place where we’re not thinking about anything else. This is why I slap my students on the wrist when they tell me they’ve been practicing guitar while watching TV. Your guitar deserves 100% of your attention. Imagine a priest eating a sandwich while giving a sermon, his stanzas interspersed with open-mawed, bready mayo and pickle chewing. A half dozen Negative Yelp Reviews are locked and loaded before the first tinge of cold cut combo umami magic slaps his palate. Either that, or his congregation explodes into the most wildly popular parish in the state. Poor analogies aside, your guitar is your portal to the enigmatic realm of sound. Fully arriving is unlikely while multitasking.
2. Satisfaction & Ego
“This song is awesome. If I can play it, it will feel awesome! I WILL BE AWESOME.”
3. Growth
A new song guides our hands into playing new shapes, rhythms, and sequences they’ve never performed before.
The longer we play guitar, the more deeply our hand patterns calcify and become ingrained in our playing. To some extent we want this. This is how the best players in the world develop their sound. But pattern reptition also means our solos, strumming patterns, and songwriting can get stale & predictable. We need a remedy to break those dreaded plateaus. Learning something new shocks the system, forces us to slow down, and brings something new to our technique that can foster creativity.
Here’s where it gets fun: We don’t need to learn a whole song to achieve any of the three things above. In fact, we’re usually better off learning one section of a song; one riff or a few measures of a solo can be all we need. Going deep on one piece of a song can have equal value to learning the whole thing if we spend enough time on it. This is the Etude Effect. More on this in blog post #5. Now go play!
Rob Wolfe is a jazz guitarist and instructor in Austin, TX. He gives remote lessons and in-person lessons to guitar, bass, and ukulele students all over the U.S.