JFRocks Ear Training 101 Problem page                                                     Copyright © 2005-2006 JFRocks

This page contains no tabs.  This is a page that contains an Audio lesson in mp3 format that contains a riff or solo for you to try to figure out using the tips that Jeff gives you as a guideline.  If this is an older problem and already has an answer page there will be no opportunity for you to submit a tab of how you think this problem is played.  If however it is a new problem and has no answer posted as of yet you will be able to anonymously submit a tab of how you think Jeff is playing the problem.  Be warned these are designed to help your ear and are designed to fool you most of the time.  Please don't cheat and do the answers too fast if they are available.  You are only depriving yourself of a great learning opportunity if you do that. 

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Be sure to listen to the whole audio file.  The answer to this problem will have a video and detailed lesson.

Audio

Contains the problem riff or solo to be figured out

Think you know how this problem riff or solo is played ? Or even what effects may or may not have been used.

Problem Tips: 

This problem is actually NOT an original tune of course, but I'm using it because it's a great example of figuring out melody.  Granted I've embellished on the actual song a little bit but the melody is all there. 

This type of problem is one of the things that I started out with when I was first learning how to really figure stuff out.  This particular problem is a TV show theme from an 80's TV show called the A-Team.  This was one of the first TV show themes that I figured out.  Magnum P.I. was the other one.  They're actually very similar though in some ways.

This is an excellent lesson for ear training because you need to pick out a melody.  The melody is in a lot of cases what the singer would be singing if there was a singer.  In most cases these melodies are scale patterns.  They're little mini-solos. 

This particular problem also has a power chord riff in it for you to try to figure out.  This problem will be tricky for you in a few different ways so I'll give you a couple hints.

1.  Figure out the pitches first.  Figure out if I'm standard tuning or flat etc. but get the individual notes.  This theme is generally written in the key of D minor, but it does incorporate a couple modes, so it goes out of scale in places during the main melody or "theme" portions.  We'll talk about that on the video answer to this problem.  I'll give you a hint though, the scale being used consists of "10 tones".  7 of them are from the scale of the key this is in, which is "D minor" and the other 3 tones are outside of the 7 tone or Diatonic scale for this key.  The other 3 notes, really help give this theme its mood and feel.  

2.  You may need to slow this down, scale ups and scale downs are one thing slowing down a song is great for.  That will help you a great deal with step 1 above.  If you wait for the mp3 to finish downloading you can right click on the media player on the htm page and you will have slow down options if you're using win XP with media 10.  If you're not, and you're using media 9, you never had slow down options anyway.  LOL 

3.  Figure out a logical position and or a comfortable position to do it in on the fret board. 

Good luck with this problem and follow the steps I gave above.  They will help you.