It's Just One Thing After Another

This month's post comes from a question I was asked after a Dave The Rock Band gig back in 2015 (yep, quick off the mark as always) – I got chatting with one of the security guys after the gig and he revealed that The Final Countdown had always been one of his favourite songs.

“So how long would it take me to learn the solo?” he asked.

Hmm.

You see, the thing is, there are a big list of things you need to know before you can start learning a solo like that. A BIG list.

The solo starts with a flurry of arpeggios tracing the chord sequence of Bm, C# dim (implying A7) and G before moving to a scalic idea around Bm and B blues scale, and a melody slid along the G string following the B natural minor scale. So in order to play this properly, you're going to need to..

Understand what an arpeggio is

Develop the dexterity to play one, and quickly – and the ability to morph the shape to cover major, minor, and diminished chords

Understand and learn both the B natural minor and B Blues scales. You'll also need to map the B natural minor long the G string and master sequencing and legato ideas to very high level for the faster bits

Develop robust and efficient string bending (including harmony bends) and legato techniques (ver fast and accurate hammer ons and pull offs, as well as vibrato and picking.

If you've got ALL THOSE THINGS – then actually, it won't take you that long. When I first learnt it in 2006, it took me about half an hour.

If you haven't got those things though, you're in for a world of pain. It probably is just about possible to learn it note for note from the tab, practicing nothing else, going slowly and building up step by step, but it's going to be an incredibly difficult and frustrating journey, and even if you make it to the end you've learned one guitar solo, with no understanding of the concepts used in it and no ability to connect them up in different ways to do anything else (like, for instance, play a different solo... or the non-solo parts of the song...)

A good teacher puts these pieces in order and lays them out before the student in the right way, so that each piece connects to the next in a logical, clear and understandable manner, so that the learning curve is as shallow as possible and the frustration level is minimised. And so that by the time you have cracked this solo, you understand completely what you're doing and have also learned a great many other songs as well as the skills to teach yourself many, many more.

In truth, there is very little original material I teach my students that isn't available in places like YouTube, Ultimate Guitar, magazines such as Guitar Techniques and so on. The problem the student has is working out how to interpret the information, apply it and figure out how you can use it.

Another example – a few years back, a students signed up for guitar lessons at school at the start of September, wanting to learn to play “Eruption” for the school talent show.

In two months.

With no previous experience.

Riiiiiiight.

In the end I was able to compromise with him – Van Halen has frequently named Eric Clapton as one of his biggest influences. Eric Clapto, in his turn, named BB King as one of his. Now, for all his stunning deftness of touch and phrasing, BB was not a technical player. With hard work and application of major and minor pentatonics, you can get close to a passable BB-style solo in a couple of months and gradually build your technique from there.

Moral of the story – with the right skillset, you can learn anything you want. But it takes time and guidance to get that skillset. I accomplished quite a lot in my first couple of years teaching myself, but it wasn't until I did my Access To Music course and met my guitar Yoda (Brian Thomson, hallowed be his name) that I really started to understand what I was doing. The fog receded, I wasn't groping blindly in the dark any more, and everything started to make sense. Suddenly, I was in control