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With the media's focus on visual presentation for music promotion it's easy to understand how somebody learning to play guitar can miss the important clues in learning how to play quickly and easily.
Today's music buying public tend to "listen with their eyes"; if you want to learn guitar fast you need to develop your ability to focus on the audio and develop your musical perception skills.
Learning how to bypass the visual presentation and quickly notice the similarities in the music is an essential skill for the advancing guitarist.
Whilst the majority of guitarists will be either confused or discouraged with the information they are learning from TAB or sheet music you will be able to mentally pigeon-hole songs as you hear them; making it a breeze to remember and instantly recall songs.
To illustrate my point, here are three songs that on the surface all appear to be different; different artists, different music styles... ever different video clips!
But... dig a little deeper and you will discover they are all based on the blues; the same blues chord progression, even the same key, how's that for high speed memorization? Three songs in an instant; just add guitar!
Here we go:
Michael Jackson's - Black or White
E /// | E /// | E /// | E /// |
A /// | A /// | E /// | E /// |
B7/// | A /// | E /// | E /// ||
Keith Urban's - Somebody like You
E /// | E /// | E /// | E /// |
A /// | A /// | E /// | E /// |
B7/// | A /// | E /// | E /// ||
Creedence Clearwater Revival - The Night Time is the Right Time
E /// | E /// | E /// | E /// |
A /// | A /// | E /// | E /// |
B7/// | A /// | E /// | E /// ||
One of the biggest issues to overcome is how music is often stereotyped by the music marketing people in an effort to create soaring sales. When you think of the blues what visual image comes into your head? For many it's some smokey bar in New Orleans or a Jazz band playing in a nightclub in New York.
The last thing that would cross many guitarist's mind would be how the blues could have an influence on a pop or country song, but as you can see the blues is a universal language that can speak to all audiences and age groups.
Sometimes the newbie guitarist does not notice the similarities because a song is preformed in a different key.
Ray Charles plays "The Night Time is the Right Time" in the key of Eb.
Ray Charles - The Night Time is the Right Time
Eb /// | Eb /// | Eb /// | Eb /// |
Ab /// | Ab /// | Eb /// | Eb /// |
Bb7/// | Ab /// | Eb /// | Eb /// ||
Can you see the similarities? Would you have noticed that?
There are thousands of other songs that use exactly the same blues chord progressions and even more songs will be added to the list over time as songwriters continue to utilize this proven musical form.
Keep your ears wide open and you will have much more fun playing the guitar.
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