Ideas for rapid playing improvement

Brad

ricky50 said:

@Brad - what's a good way to improve ear training? I can usually work out the chords and fairly simple solos to a song pretty quickly by ear.  I'm not exactly accurate but it's been enough to get by - any tips here?

There are loads of things you can be doing to improve your ear. Keep transcribing for starters, this is a must. I don't know what stuff you're into but try and up the difficulty with what you're working out. Don't worry whether you're successful at first, even by trying and getting nowhere, you're still developing and it's better than doing nothing. Put yourself in musical situations where you have to work stuff out by ear, preferably while you're actually playing - be it a gig or even just a jam. So get yourself out of any comfort zone! 

Get singing. Sing scales and arpeggios as you play them on the guitar, then try and sing them without the guitar. Play a chord on your guitar and sing the root, 3rd, 5th and 7th. Play a chord and sing a scale over it e.g major scale over a major chord etc. Sing intervals, root movement of chord progressions. The list can be pretty extensive... Then improvise for a bit and try and play what you're singing (not the other way round!).

There are various online ear trainers that you can use to test yourself that have loads of things to work on too.

Blaendulais

Funnily enough i am better now i practice 4 hours a day.   Its still slow tho as i do not have much natural talent.  I have to say the 100000 hrs is a pile of bollocks.