Are Your Songs Locked Up?

If you’ve played guitar for very long at all, you’ve probably learned a song or two that you can count on. These are songs that you worked hard to nail down and you can pull them out with confidence to play for someone else, or just for your own pleasure. It’s a great feeling and one you should enjoy.

But once you’ve learned something to the point that you can play it without thinking, you may be playing yourself into a rut, regarding comprehension and creativity. Are you able, for example, to pick up the song from anywhere other than the beginning of a section? Can you play the chords in different places on the fretboard? Do you remember the names of all the chords, and can you easily apply them in other contexts?

If you answered no to any of these questions, you’re missing a lot of the value in knowing a song. Sure, it’s fun to be able to play the song seamlessly, but it doesn’t need to stop there. Wouldn’t it be even more fun to be able to pick up your guitar and play countless other songs and riffs as a result of knowing that one song? You can do that if you know how to break down a song and unlock the components!

How to Lock

When you learn a song, you probably learn it in chunks. That’s great! It’s the best way to memorize something and it enables musicality and flow. But if you haven’t employed all five kinds of memorization, you may be remembering the song only by the shapes that you’re making on the fretboard and how they relate to one another, without knowing the names or the range of possible functions of those shapes. Each section of the song (for example verse, chorus, line, or phrase—or in some cases, the whole song!) is locked into a cluster in your mind. Once the components are locked into a cluster, you might have difficulty accessing them.

How to Unlock 

You can unlock the components and discover their inner workings easily by taking them one at a time. Start by determining the root, the quality and, if possible, the function of each chord. For example, a G7 chord has the note G as the root and it’s a dominant 7 chord, which functions as a V chord in the key of C. Then consider where else the chord could be played on the fretboard. (If any of this is too hard for you, just do the best you can—and be sure to brush up on the basics in your theory book!)

If your song includes leads or riffs, you can break them down for analysis, too. Just remind yourself of the key that the notes are in, and the chord that it’s played over.