Bill Dutcher – Modern Acoustic Guitarist

I use to teach for years and was always asked, “What’s the best way to learn new tunes and commit them to memory?” People would often say they were frustrated because they could not make it all the way through the piece of music and felt lost….Well that’s the problem! The best way to start with a new song is to…

Break it down into segments.  Start with the first four bars and play it for 5-10 minutes without stopping.  I CANNOT stress how important it is to use a metronome.  Start slow.  Play the four bars for 5-10 minutes.  Then move on to the next four bars.  Play for 5-10 minutes .  Now start over and play bars 1-8 and play for 5 minutes.  Then repeat this process for the next 8 bars.  Then play all 16 bars…and so on and so on.  It’s like you build a foundation and keep building your pyramid.  After you have done this with the “A” section take a little break…Don’t want any carpel tunnel here!

Now, whatever the tempo of the piece is cut it in half.  Now play the “A” section until you can play it all the way through with no mistakes.  Put that away for the day and start the next day with the “B” section using the techniques explained above.  Repeat this whole process for any additional sections until the song is completed.

Once you have the whole song down at half time it’s time to start increasing the tempo.  You may find that there are sections that you may miss.  Isolate that section and reduce the tempo of that section until you can play it with no mistakes.  Whatever that tempo is, start over playing the whole section at that tempo until it’s perfect.  Repeat this process until your at the desired tempo.

This continued repetition will ‘engrain’ the tune into your brain and muscle-memory will take over and you’ll be surprised at the confidence you’ll exhibit while playing…So build that pyramid!