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Awesome!! Glad you liked it. I'll definitely make a few more and see how they go.

Thank you. Glad it was helpful

You're welcome. I'm glad you liked it.

Very interesting. I'll definitely give it a try. I guess I forgot to mention that whenever I am learning a new song I also listen to it obsessively. I put in on whenever I am driving or cooking or whatever. But I'm not sure I have the confidence in my ear to get all of the chords and lyrics perfect without referencing sheets at least a little in the beginning. If you can thats awesome. I'm very impressed.

@@fretcraft Thanks for your response. I get your point regarding confidence and I think there are two approaches (maybe three) that help, the third because it is less about practice is perhaps to give the song some personal meaning. Believe in the message you are singing, think about what the lyrics mean. Not sure if you already mentioned this. The other two are learn the song section by section and shadow the song. Learn a short meaningful part of the song, say the first two bars or the first line of the song and accompanying chords and don't move on too quickly until you know it. You are basically adding blocks or notes or musical events one by one until you have built up something bigger. The idea is to break down the song into manageable chunks and not feel like we have to be able to play the entire song everytime we practice it. Shadowing is something I take from language learning (I am also a language teacher and learner) but we all do it anyway, playing along with the track or version of the song at a slower speed if possible and let the sound of the music remind you what is coming. You sing along or play along with the track and basically you are learning through imitation and a little trial and error. Jaco Pastorius famously became who is was by playing with his dad's band. He learnt by doing. I do think this is a key issue for a lot of growing musicians that prevent them from advancing. There are a few other tricks worth considering such as playing slow and doing short sessions over longer sessions. Not knowing a song leaves a musician confused, they don't know where they are going, better to internalize the sound of the song first.

Thanks, glad it made sense.

I've never done it before I still understood! Thanks!

Thats a great lyric, thanks for sharing

Awesome, so glad to hear it

I.m the same age, but I always had a poor memory. This is an interesting approach but I doubt it would work for me, still seems like a lot of memorization. I think I will always need to refer to chord sheets.

Nah..I'm 51 and it happens to me also. Merry Christmas 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎁

Yeah, I totally get that. I used to always have my notes open when I played songs and eventually I realized I was training my brain that the way to access that part of the memory was to glance at the notes. It was subtle but it was there and then when the notes were gone I would go totally blank.

Awesome, let me know how it goes

sweet, glad it was helpful :)

Let me know how it goes. It's been an absolute game changer for me.

How are your timing and phrasing? If you are playing notes you like but it still doesn't sound the way you would want I would look into the rhythmic structure of what you are playing.

@@fretcraft I think phrasing can't really be taught, it can be copied I guess, but you either have it or you don't. But thanks anyway.

​@@QBRX A suggestion. Just start out, no matter how it sounds at first. Try this; Imagine creating Sticato effects on the way you play some notes. I mean... Play some long then deliberately play some short. If you put your finger on a fret for some few more seconds, it will come long. If you just put your finger for a second or more, you would have created a Sticato effect. Meaning short, and coming cripsy or distinct or whatever else we should call it. Begin to compare times you spent time mixing short Sticato effects with others as you played notes, on your way to phrasing better. Here's another suggestion; Throw in some Bends and or Slides, in a few spaces to spice up your Solo. You will see changes.

@@GodsStoryteller Thanks. One of my problems is going from chord to lead and keeping the right number of beats in the bar.

@QBRX I think that the most important prerequisite for learning anything is a belief that it can be learned. And truly, virtually anything can be learned. It's just another neural pattern. The human brain is insanely flexible. People can learn to see with their tongue. I think you can learn to be better at phrasing if you put your mind to it.

Oh wow, you're right, good catch, thank you

You're very welcome! I'm glad it was helpful.

Sorry about that, the link was there but it wasn't clickable because I forgot the "" Thanks for letting me know, it's fixed now. Hope you enjoy it.

@@fretcraft No problem. I really needed this lesson

@@dmyerstc55 Awesome. I'm glad it was helpful.

Awesome! Great to hear it!

I have read "The Inner Game of Tennis". Great book, and definitely an inspiration for some of what I am talking about here. I have not seen the other one though. I'll check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

@@fretcraft that’s awesome. Look forward to checking out more of your videos. Thanks.

Yeah its so much fun right? the music gives me energy and I can play for so much longer than just working on things by myself.

Thats awesome! I should try more jazz stuff. I've been doing a lot of funk lately, today I was playing along with St. Paul and Broken Bones and having a lot of fun with it.

@@fretcraft Funk is great for developing your time and your ability to only play what's needed. Sometimes people overplay (well, most times!), and funk teaches you how not to do that. But I think the value in jazz lies in the way chords move, and the need to really and truly listen before you play. With rock, you can pretty much tell what's coming next, and rely on licks.

That makes a lot of sense, I'll give it a try

@@fretcraft Give it a try and see how it works for you. One of my two all time guitar heroes, Lee Ritenour, once did a column for Guitar Player magazine back in the stone age (it might be the only one he's ever done) where he described how to develop the ability to play the right parts. He used a particularly "difficult" example by using a one-chord vamp. He laid out ten guitar parts - one acoustic guitar playing full chords, one humbucker-based part playing a chunky riff, one clucky Strat part and so on. Then, he laid out the challenge - can you come up with the eleventh part? You can simulate that by playing along with, say, a Steely Dan track, because they're so slickly and completely produced. It's almost impossible to find any space there, but that's the challenge. It's almost an intellectual exercise, but apparently that skill is what gets you hired to do sessions.

Baking tracks?

@@APW-ry2ok I meant to say backing tracks lol

@@Returnality Made me laugh as well …..

mmmm delicious, baking tracks

Thats a great idea. I actually realized from doing this exercise how much Spotify uses key signatures in building their playlists so they flow together well, they almost always have two or three tracks in the same key before changing it.

I just got a scarlett 2i2 so I can do this sort of stuff. I am using Bias FX 2 to get my guitar tones and so far it's been a great experience. I want to record stuff but so far all I've done is jammed along to songs on YT 😄

Focusrite is a great interface for this. Simple and easy to use. Then you just need some sort of an amp modeler on your computer so you can get a decent tone. I am on mac and use the ones I have in Logic Pro, but I know there are many many out there and I think a lot of them you can get some sample packs for free and try some different tones. After you have an amp modeler its just a matter of getting the volumes balanced between yourself and whatever music you are playing with.