[HN Gopher] How to get better at guitar
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How to get better at guitar
Author : jwworth
Score : 122 points
Date : 2026-04-05 16:14 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jakeworth.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jakeworth.com)
| taylodl wrote:
| It's still tabs, but marginally better because you're making your
| own tabs. Work on hearing the key and chord progression and you
| won't need tabs. You'll be able to jam with anyone, anytime.
| It'll take a couple months to get there, but you'll no longer
| rely on tabs - which I think is the goal.
| nopayne wrote:
| When you are transcribing a guitar part you have to think about
| the key, the chords, and how to play the part efficiently. It's
| a great way to get a better understanding of the neck since
| there is usually more than one way to play a part.
| littlexsparkee wrote:
| Had a lot of fun contributing tabs to Ultimate Guitar, esp.
| when folks would write notes of appreciation. The harder the
| better - not cheating to slow down the track to understand
| rapid lick in solos (the Steely Dan ones were a gas) either.
| You lose a little bit of the magic (little is off limits with
| some practice) but the fact that you can figure out your
| favorite tracks and imagine yourself up on stage is fun.
| beachy wrote:
| Sting famously learned to play bass using this sort of technique
| with music on LPs, lifting the needle and dropping it back a bit
| in the track over and over again as he gradually worked out the
| notes and fingering.
|
| Probably almost any method is effective at learning guitar, as
| long as it includes the key factor - time spent practicing.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| My music teacher said that practice does not produce
| perfection, only perfect practice produces perfection.
|
| If you mess up, redo the part you messed up correctly 5 times
| in a row.
|
| And, don't just practice the easy stuff. You have to challenge
| yourself to grow.
| bluGill wrote:
| Time is the largest factor though. Some ways are better than
| others but there is no substitiute for time.
|
| why am I posting here instead of practicing?
| doubled112 wrote:
| As somebody who started teaching himself guitar as a
| teenager, put it down for 10+ years and started back up, this
| resonates.
|
| Everything takes twice as long to learn because I first have
| to unlearn the old habits.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Yes. Put another way: Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
|
| And as my music professor once said: "If you sound good while
| practicing, then you're not practicing."
| password4321 wrote:
| Practice make permanent.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| practice makes perverts
| jedimastert wrote:
| > Probably almost any method is effective at learning guitar,
| as long as it includes the key factor - time spent practicing.
|
| There are a few pedagogical points here to keep in mind:
|
| first, there are local maxima in terms of learning something
| like guitar where you get bad habits and the only way to
| progress is to undo them.
|
| Also, different ways of learning have different values in terms
| of what goals you're aiming towards and _very importantly_ what
| kind of practice will keep you motivated in a sustainable way.
| Sometimes, taking shortcuts in some ways means you might slow
| down your growth rate but you 'll have better overall growth
| because you'll keep at it for longer
| freejazz wrote:
| That's called ear training and it's crucial. I don't think all
| ways one can play and call it "practice" are equal
| agumonkey wrote:
| Add some distance and sensitivity. I used blunt / brute force
| repetitions and somehow wasted years. Music is very subtle, and
| keeping a focus on small details is worth thousands of hours.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _The Way I Learn Now: Listening & Transcribing_
|
| I lived near a music school and took proper guitar lessons. After
| getting down the basics from the Alfred Method book, this was the
| homework my guitar teacher gave me.
|
| Coincidentally enough, I was also transcribing RATM back then
| too...
| glial wrote:
| I learned to play guitar this way -- listening to CDs and
| scrubbing back and forth, writing down what I heard. It's great,
| but it only gets you so far. Learning pentatonic scales was a
| step-change for me.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| as somebody who practices from tabs I have no idea how I would
| begin doing this.
| RyanOD wrote:
| Here is a suggestion...
|
| First, figure out the bass line. That typically suggests the
| chord progression. If you know your chords, then, for simple
| songs, you have the rhythm figured out.
|
| For solos, it's more tricky. If you aren't familiar with
| common soloing patterns (licks) and/or scales then start with
| simple solos and work your way up.
| kelvie wrote:
| Are you telling me that spending time writing an app to learn the
| guitar neck isn't the best way?? Blasphemy, I tell you!
|
| Anyway here is my app of shame:
|
| https://kelvie.github.io/chord-finder/
|
| I also came to the realization after making this that my time was
| better spent transcribing, but I wanted to learn egui (and this
| was before coding agents, so it actually took some time).
| dexwiz wrote:
| There should be a saying like "A tool is not the task" similar
| to "A map is not the land." As professional tool makers it can
| be easy to replace the task with a tool in theory, but that's
| not reality.
|
| In a similar vein I think that's why there are so many devs
| making game engines instead of games.
| dcminter wrote:
| Perhaps you're looking for this?
|
| https://strangestloop.io/essays/things-that-arent-doing-
| the-...
| exabrial wrote:
| Practice a lot. Try things you "can't play" and do them a lot.
| Pick it up every every single day.
| ben7799 wrote:
| All of it is good but none of it is a shortcut.
|
| The greats who became so good doing this had massive amounts of
| time to do it and put in massive amounts of effort.
| jrop wrote:
| Tommy Emmanuel apparently learned by transrcibing, famously
| thinking that both the bass line and guitar lines he was hearing
| were a singular "guitar part". Just by having his expectations
| (incorrectly) raised, he rose to the occasion and played both
| parts.
|
| I forget where I heard this story -- it's probably either rather
| famous, or buried in an interview somewhere.
| dizhn wrote:
| He tells it everywhere. (Also demonstrates the thumb vs fingers
| playing independently everywhere.)
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| I am playing for quite a while... Had private lessons with a
| coach to practice solo guitar, and general understanding for a
| couple of years. Before that around 10 years or more as amateur,
| now it's been 3 years since I spoke to a guitar coach last time.
|
| I play every day, I do my solos, I play blues, I don't need
| chords. But it's hard.
|
| Just don't underestimate how hard it is - to be able to play any
| solo by ear. I guess I just don't have any freaking talent.
| Pretty obvious at this point, since some people do a better
| progress in 3-5 years of work.
|
| But for me it's not. I realized that for me something isn't just
| clicking. There was no breakthrough moment I expected all these
| years.
|
| I invested a lot into playing guitar, but... meh. Honestly, I
| wish I spent all that time learning AI math or just math in
| general. Or spend my time on something that would have a better
| ROI.
|
| Looking back I see how much effort it took, and how low my ROI
| is. I wish I gave up earlier.
| bardackx wrote:
| this is pretty sad
| emil-lp wrote:
| Why did you continue playing for over a decade?
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| I was always pretty curious about what's gonna happen next :)
| Like one year more into that - will it make me fundamentally
| better or not? If you understand fretboard - will it make you
| better or not? If you learn the scales, if you practice them,
| etc... I was (and still am) looking for something that would
| hopefully glue all of that together.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I produced a couple of songs, some people
| say they're pretty good. But honestly, it's a crap.
| bityard wrote:
| I mean, it kind of sounds like you hated the whole process and
| didn't care about the result either. What was your reason for
| taking up the guitar as a hobby in the first place?
|
| I suspect it's actually impossible to get reasonably good at
| something without some amount of passion for it, to some degree
| or another. Most musicians are in it for the thrill of learning
| something that most people find hard to do, or because they
| love music, or because they want to be part of a community that
| values music. Occasionally because they think they can make
| money at it.
|
| I play an instrument or two, but only for fun. I love music,
| but I'm at a point in my life where I will never be good enough
| to be in a band. I have enough other hobbies anyway. I take a
| random 15 minutes out of my day to play a few songs, maybe
| practice a new song I'm learning, watch a short Youtube video
| about it here and there, and that's enough for me.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I'm a new player so I'm not asking this to be snarky but to
| understand. How can you think you don't need chords? It seems
| to me, 5 months into my journey, that chords are a fundamental
| aspect of guitar. It sounds like someone taking up golf but
| saying they don't need putts. Can you help me understand?
| douglee650 wrote:
| TLDR: practice. If you have sufficient natural talent xor will,
| you will eventually go past the canon of available material and
| begin to transcribe your own. Then there are those who move to
| creation, either immediately or somewhere in the path.
| crtified wrote:
| One truth I've observed from decades of keen hobbyist involvement
| in guitar music and playing is that a lifetime of music is
| largely an individual journey.
|
| The fact that some players learn by transcribing, while others
| learn by jamming, and yet others learn by rote theoretical study,
| or 10-hour practice sessions, etc, is a big part of the variety
| which results in the wonderfully varied tapestry of music styles
| and approaches that humanity creates and enjoys.
|
| Not to take away from the age-old, valid advice in the link about
| the value of ear-to-fretboard work.
| Affric wrote:
| I can't imagine stopping every note. I think it is pretty good
| practice for me to never stop if one can avoid it.
|
| I used to stop all the time, when I made a mistake, between
| repetitions, when I finished the piece.
|
| I agree about ear to fretboard.
| al_borland wrote:
| I think you need both. If you never stop or slow down, it's
| hard to build the proper muscle memory to improve and get
| more accurate. However, it's also valuable to practice
| playing through mistakes to finish a whole song. Mistakes
| happen, and if you're playing for a crowd you can't just stop
| and start over.
| devin wrote:
| Yes, both. A good example why is for example, as muscle
| memory grows it will bias your note selection when
| improvising. Sometimes you really need to slow down to
| consciously force yourself to explore other sounds. Once
| you've done that, you need to wear it in again so it sounds
| natural in your playing.
| andrewvc wrote:
| It's a great article on something that's useful, but a bit
| overconfident in its universality. Better at what? There are many
| dimensions to being a guitar player. Is it technique? Theory?
| Ability to pickup a song by ear (this article)? Better at playing
| in a group? Better at playing solo? Better at reading music?
| Better at accurate bends? Better at fingerpicking?
|
| One of the nice things about music is you can't get good at ALL
| of it. You have to pick where to focus. I'll also say, you might
| need to ask yourself if you want to get better. I love relaxing
| by reading through the chords on a new song and playing it. I
| already have a job, and the time I truly have for intentional
| practice is like once a month. Most people are not studying to
| become guitar pros but to enjoy their time with the instrument.
| If that is your goal let joy be your guide. Perhaps some short
| term pain is part of that journey but really weigh out what you
| want out of the experience.
| RyanOD wrote:
| I've been playing guitar for 30+ years. When I was a kid, I
| learned almost everything by ear - note by note by note...
|
| In hindsight, once I had learned a song, I had actually learned
| MUCH more than just that song. It is that "extra" that adds up
| over time and makes one a guitarist and not just someone who can
| play some songs on the guitar.
|
| Rock on!
| senko wrote:
| Wow, Justin with his hair!
|
| Been plucking at the guitar (literally and figuratively - trying
| to learn) for a couple of years now and Justin's (free) course
| was the best I've found. His videos are compassionate, funny,
| explain things really well and easy to follow. He also dog-fed
| the instructions by learning to play left-handed (and posted
| those videos as well, hilarious to watch).
|
| Compared to that, some time earlier I subscribed to a Berklee
| free course on Coursera (iirc) - Beginner guitar. Felt like a
| fumbling idiot, almost never touched guitar afterwards.
|
| Really recommended: https://www.justinguitar.com/
| arecurrence wrote:
| Another 10/10 free course is Scotty West's Absolutely
| Understand Guitar on YouTube. Filmed in the 90s and it's still
| one of the best classes out there.
| freetime2 wrote:
| This brought to mind a quote from Ira Glass:
|
| > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone
| told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because
| we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple
| years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be
| good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing
| that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is
| why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past
| this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting,
| creative work went through years of this. We know our work
| doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all
| go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are
| still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most
| important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a
| deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only
| by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap,
| and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took
| longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met.
| It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just
| gotta fight your way through.
|
| I think listening and transcribing is great advice. Careful
| listening will help to improve your own listening ability and
| taste. It also helps to demystify _why_ something is great.
|
| But it's also going to be a struggle - especially at first. You
| have to be prepared to struggle, a LOT. Most people won't be able
| to keep at it, and that's one of the things that separates the
| greats from everyone else.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| That reminds me of an interview I heard with comicbook artist
| Chip Zdarsky. He was talking about how we all love to draw as
| kids, but eventually around 10 years old or so we start to
| become aware that what we see in our heads isn't anywhere near
| what's appearing on the page in our drawings, and that gap acts
| as a powerful filter discouraging most people from pursuing art
| any further.
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm a jazz musician, and my kids are both professional
| classical players. I've asked them why they don't learn to play
| jazz. My daughter described pretty much what Glass is saying
| here. She calls it "fear of sucking." She knows what good jazz
| improvisation sounds like, and trying to make herself do it is
| pretty discouraging.
|
| Not that there's anything wrong with loving and playing
| classical music, which is a factor too.
|
| This may be why it's different when you start very young.
| You're not conscious of your own sucking, you just play,
| usually in a setting where everybody's congratulating you. For
| sucking. ;-)
|
| I started on classical, and got into jazz by accident, as a
| bassist. It turns out that you can function in a band as a
| bassist without having to improvise very much, so I was able to
| learn at my own pace and eventually did. In fact a lot of good
| jazz players started out in school jazz bands or large
| ensembles where you didn't have to be a good improviser right
| up front.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Good advice.
|
| I'm a banjo player. Starting with tab ( and playing for myself )
| quickly got me to a certain level and then ingrained some bad
| habits. Playing by ear is much better.
|
| One way that seems to work really well:
|
| 1. Listen to the song, tap the rhythm to learn it.
|
| 2. Figure the chord progression.
|
| 3. Using standard rolls ( sequence of notes, one measure ) find
| how to fit in melody notes
| RyanOD wrote:
| Obscure "learn it by ear" guitar story...
|
| Upon hearing Eruption for the first time, the story goes that
| Tony MacAlpine learned to play the finger tapping section by
| PICKING IT because he didn't know finger tapping was a thing.
| Only after seeing Van Halen in concert did he realize what Eddie
| was doing.
|
| If memory serves me right, I read this in either Guitar Player or
| Guitar World magazine back in the late 80s or early 90s. Whether
| Tony was embellishing or not is unknown.
| H1Supreme wrote:
| Recognizing melodies by ear is a hugely useful skill, but I can't
| help but think it's going to be nearly impossible to do without a
| sound foundation in music theory.
|
| Tabs are, in large part, paint-by-number. Lots of guitarists out
| there are only interested in learning a song. Regardless of key,
| mode, or what the notes actually are. And, tabs satisfy that
| group by saying: "Play this fret on this string".
|
| To write tabs, you'll need to be able to make an educated guess
| at what's being played. ex. "Is that a minor pentatonic scale? Or
| are they arpeggiating a minor 7th chord?". If terms like that
| aren't in your musical vocabulary, and you haven't played enough
| to recognize the difference, I don't see how a guitarist would
| even begin writing their own tabs. Maybe the author is assuming
| this skill set.
| bluGill wrote:
| You can figure it out by ear with music theory. You use
| different terms but who cares. Theory is useful of course but
| not required.
| RAM-bunctious wrote:
| Having learned guitar in a way that's somewhat similar to
| what's outlined in this article, I will say that someone doing
| this transcription-based method will likely naturally
| consolidate their "making tabs" into "making chords" pretty
| quickly, because the patterns occur often enough. I'd also say
| that producing your own tabs is very far away from a being a
| mere tab-consumer, it's just a natural introductory medium
| because tabs are very easily digestible to a beginner and, as
| you say, satisfy the craving.
|
| I think that starting off with easy songs, and with enough
| brute force as you scale up, you can become organically
| familiar with these concepts to make the educated guesses
| you're talking about.
|
| Many renowned musicians were able to effectively create music
| utilising these concepts despite never formally learning music
| theory, and by just learning by ear.
| __fst__ wrote:
| I started learning guitar using tabs. It's good for easily
| picking up a song, but I found it painful to learn new songs.
| Everything I played I simply memorized and learning a new song
| was always a start from scratch.
|
| I mostly play classical guitar and now force myself to get better
| at sight reading standard music notation. I find it extremely
| hard but very rewarding because I'm now able to simply pick up a
| sheet of music and with a couple of tries figure out the basics
| of a piece. It opens up a whole library of beautiful pieces.
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