{"id":6340,"date":"2014-08-20T05:02:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-20T05:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6340"},"modified":"2014-08-20T05:02:03","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T05:02:03","slug":"learn-to-listen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/learn-to-listen\/","title":{"rendered":"Learn To Listen"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Back in the old days” before the internet we had records… then tapes… then CDs… but what we didn’t have was instant access to anything!<\/p>\n

You actually had to go to a record store or mail-order the music you wanted. And that meant you were going to listen to whatever you bought a LOT because it wasn’t so easy to get anything else.<\/p>\n

\"headphones\"What that did for us who studied music during that time is it taught us how to listen actively<\/em> to what was going on. We actually took time aside to just sit and listen to music – it wasn’t just the background noise of our daily lives.<\/p>\n

I can remember going in my room and turning on a record and just sitting on my floor listening to the whole thing in my headphones… taking in every guitar string noise, every cymbal crash, and every last ounce of sound from the recording.<\/p>\n

Because of that time I spent there are a lot of things that I can do now and I don’t even think about it… and you need to able to do that too. So you need to develop what I call active listening<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Let’s say you are soloing over a jam track<\/a> in your music room… do you know where you are in the form? Is it the top of the form? Is it the IV chord, is it the V chord? Or do you find yourself just kind of noodling without a clear vision of where you are or where you’re going?<\/p>\n

So try this – put the guitar down and start the track again.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Get to where you can always notice the top of the form (bar 1 of the 12 bar blues)<\/li>\n
  2. Then get to where you can always notice the change to the IV chord (bar 5 usually unless it’s a quick change.)<\/li>\n
  3. Then get to where you can always notice the change back to I (bar 7)<\/li>\n
  4. Then get to where you can always notice the change to V (bar 9)<\/li>\n
  5. Then get to where you can notice what the chords are for the turnaround (bars 11 and 12) just by listening to them. You’ve heard them all in previous measures so you’ll get used to what they sound like.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now try a few jam tracks and try the same thing. See if you can notice whether or not it’s a quick change (IV chord in the 2nd bar) just by listening.<\/p>\n

    See if you can pick some songs that aren’t a straight 12 bar blues and see if you can notice where the I, IV, and V chords are. Chances are they will be in there somewhere even if they don’t follow the 12 bar pattern.<\/p>\n

    All of these things take time and patience… and are worth their weight in gold when it comes to soloing.<\/p>\n

    Every chord serves a function… the I chord is home base. The IV chord adds a little variety but clearly isn’t the end and the V chord sets up the ending. The better you get at hearing that function the better you can notice it in any song in any style at any time.<\/p>\n

    And here’s one last little challenge for you – can you sit down and imagine a 12 bar blues in your head while you solo? Pretend you have a tape deck in your head and press play and solo over it for exactly 12 bars. If that sounds impossible, start spending some time with your record collection (or whatever format it happens to be in these days) and enjoy some quality active listening time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    “Back in the old days” before the internet we had records… then tapes… then CDs… but what we didn’t have was instant access to anything! You actually had to go to a record store or mail-order the music you wanted. And that meant you were going to listen to whatever you bought a LOT because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6342,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340\/revisions\/6342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}