Learn these five songs to improve your guitar technique
(I got this idea via Tim in my Suggestion Box. If you have any ideas for posts, let me know!)
It’s the same old dilemma. You want to learn some new songs so you can impress your friends with your guitar prowess. But you also feel a tad guilty because you’re not working on building your technique. Wouldn’t it be great if you could do both?
Well, you can. If you are deliberate in your song selection, you can use the process of learning a new song to help you work on your technique. Try these five on for size*:
- “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding: Probably the biggest obstacle separating those who “own a guitar” and those who “play guitar” is barre chords. Learn them and you can play about 99% of popular songs. Legend has it that somebody showed Otis Redding how to play barre chords and he turned around and wrote “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”, one of the greatest songs from the last 50 years, IMHO. With the exception of the open E, play ALL chords using barre chords. And be sure to play barre chords for the “sittin’ when the evenin’ come” walkdown. If you can hold form during this, you’re on your way. And your uncle will be impressed that you know this song. Mine was
- “Freight Train” by Elizabeth Cotten: I’m sure there’s a way you can learn Travis style fingerpicking without learning this song. I’m just not aware of it. This is THE SONG that budding fingerpickers cut their teeth on. Check out this priceless video of Cotten demonstrating the song as a starting point.
- “Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns and Roses: Before this song was a breakout hit, it was a warmup exercise Slash used to work on his picking technique. Axl Rose heard Slash practicing the now famous opening riff from another room, thought it was a song idea, and started writing lyrics to it. It’s now a rock classic. Use the opening riff to work on your own picking technique, but go ahead and learn the whole song. The solo is a great example of a melody that follows the chords. Also some great straight up pentatonic stuff at the end.
- “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin: Ignore “the sign“. Learning all of this song will put you well on your way to some great fingerpicking at the beginning, some 12 string flatpicking in the middle, and some simple yet brilliantly effective penatonic leadwork at the end.
- “Hotel California” by the Eagles: While it wouldn’t hurt to know the whole song, learning the outro is a great exercise in learning arpeggios. Plus it sounds so dang cool!
* A caveat: as a copyright owner myself, a goal of this site is to avoid abusing the copyrights of others. Therefore I do not plan to post copyrighted material here. Chords to all of these songs can be obtained legally at your local music store. Or Google it. But that swishing sound you hear is me washing my hands of the matter
If I embed videos or post YouTube links, I am assuming that the owner of the video has obtained proper permission.
If you enjoyed this post you might like these:
- Guitar for the Absolute Beginner, # 1: Make a practice plan to ensure your success
- Guitar for the Absolute Beginner: How to play guitar in 30 days
- Can you learn to play guitar by playing Guitar Hero?
- Best guitar solo of all time?
- Guitar music and copyrights on the internet
