JFR Ear Training 101 Answer page

Written by:	Jeff Fiorentino
Produced by:	Jeff Fiorentino, Kelly Ross
Video Edited by:	Kelly Ross
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Copyright © 2007 JFRocks All rights reserved

Primary Guitar	Primary Amp		Effect #1	Effect #2	Effect #3

Fender Stratocaster	Crate GFX 212		None	None	None
Click here for Strat Details Set for Humbucker pickup
	Settings		Settings	Settings	Settings
	Channel: Shape: Low EQ: High EQ: Reverb:	Gain #2 7.0 3.0 8.5 6.5	Level: OCT 1: OCT 2: Mode:	Speed:	Level: OCT 1: OCT 2: Mode:
	Effect order from Guitar to Amp

*Remember Effect suggestions are my suggestions for the home player. Usually suggestions are geared for a low budget. I purposely use effects and equipment that I know everyone can afford, and get their hands on in an effort to prove that you can get a great sound without mortgaging your house.

For this problem we were going for accuracy... Accuracy counted... This is a real bone of contention for many players, some out there are very gung ho about getting everything just as their favorite player did it. Some of my critics out there misunderstand me and think that I advocate playing songs incorrectly, (cover songs that is), usually this is because they only read, or hear what they want to hear because they for what ever reason don't like me.. LOL.. If they read more closely and pulled their you know what's out of their you know what, they would know that I advocate playing things accurately so that you can learn from them.. BUT, after that, then I advocate embellishment...

Embellishment is where you learn who you are as a player and how you develop YOUR chops... Your favorite players like SRV and Van Halen, embellished on every cover song they ever learned.. SRV's Little Wing is far from note for note when he plays it.. Van Halen's You really got me, isn't even in the correct key, nor does it sound like the Kinks version.. LOL.. Eddie learned how to be Eddie by learning riffs like the You really got me riff and then embellishing on it... Saying to himself, "hey that's a cool riff", "What if I did this"... etc.etc.. etc...

Some people just want to play cover songs.. That's cool, boring, but cool, to each his own.. Either way, you still need to have a good ear... LOL...

Relying on tabs will only get you so far... There's a lot of tabs that are just plain wrong, and if you don't have a good ear you won't hear that they're wrong.. You also won't know when you're over bending, or when you're under bending, and believe me the list of things goes on and on and on...

So since accuracy is the thing people seem most interested in, this was an exercise in accuracy... A couple people sent in tabs for this with comments like, "that was too easy man", and "this one was cake"... and added notes to tell me how great a player they are and blah blah blah... Well, "GREAT PLAYERS" you all got the answer wrong!!.. LOL... There's a lot of ego involved with musicians, the flaw that many players have is that they let their ego dictate what they do.. Meaning, rather than listen to what's going on, they assume things,, and pass things off as easy.. When in fact, there was a very good lesson here in this ear training problem if one could put ones ego aside long enough to actually learn it... LOL..

This lesson contained one of my main flaws as a player.. I often hear things in the wrong position.. I have a hard time picking out open strings vs. non open strings... I'm aware of that flaw so I always double check myself to be sure I'm correct.. What I don't do is assume I'm right all the time...

Enjoy the tabs and I'll give some additional tips on the Video Lesson for this problem of course.

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If you didn't read the lesson notes above please do.. Despite what some of my more cynical site visitors thought, this problem was NOT easy at all, I actually gave this a high difficulty level.. This problem is very typical of the way someone like a Van Halen or Via might play a riff like this.. It's very typical of a cover song that you may know and have been playing for years, and then you buy a tab book and find out that you've been doing the notes right, but in the wrong position the whole time, and that's why the riff never came out right.. LOL...

This was a trick problem.. It's all over the place but there were clues to listen for to figure out the positioning... Nobody is ever 100% correct when learning things beyond the level of "Mary had a little lamb" by ear.. Rule number 1 when learning tracks by ear... "NEVER ASSUME YOU'RE correct".... Cross check yourself 2 or 3 times minimum...

This is a good example and a good lesson of how off anyone can be.. and why I sometimes laugh when I surf the web and read how concerned people are with getting everything just as the player got it when learning their cover songs... LOL...

Nobody got this one right 100% correct... BUT, just about all of you got the pitches correct, and I played through all of the tabs that came in for this, and they all work, and they all sound fine.. (the ones that had the pitches correct that is).. Any one of you could have played this riff out in a club if it was a real riff from a real song, and even though you had the positioning wrong it would still sound just fine...

Point here is what I always advocate!!... Stop worrying about what the player did, and start worrying about how to make it sound good on your equipment in your house or studio... Nobody got the position right for this in their tab, yet the tabs all sounded good... That's all that's important... There are many things that VH does for example in the 5th position that don't sound good on my equipment when I do it there, so I move it to the 12th position to play it on thicker strings... Do I give two craps that it's not where Ed did it??... NO!! .. All that matters to me, is that it sounds much better and more authentic when I do it where it sounds good on my setup... This is a very important concept that many of you who want to write your own music need to understand, and it's one of the main things this site tries to teach in all of its lessons...

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