“The most important thing is to be able to hear something and play it”: Tim Henson on the importance of learning guitar by ear
What’s the most efficient way to become a better guitar player? Is it endlessly practicing scales and music theory? That certainly doesn’t hurt, but according to Polyphia guitar maestro Tim Henson, all guitarists should seek to learn as much as they can by ear.
While theory is no doubt important – and will help you better understand why certain note patterns and chord progressions work together – Henson says there’s a certain value to “learning everything you can by ear”.
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“I started playing violin,” he tells The Music Zoo in a new interview [via Guitar World]. “Before I started playing guitar, I started playing at the age of three. I can sight-read violin pretty well.”
However, he says he learned to play guitar by ear, partly because “violin was so rigid, and it killed any sort of love for music”.
“It made me hate music,” he says. “Especially in classical music, you’re essentially just doing cover songs all the time. There’s no room for creativity. And when I picked up the guitar at 10, I saw it as an escape from that.”
Polyphia’s music is some of the most technically complex in the game, so for many guitarists, resorting to the tablature is a must. But Tim Henson says they should learn as much as they can by ear before checking the official tabs for accuracy.
“We sell our tablature,” he says. “It’s one of the things that helps us pay our bills, and I think it’s a great tool and a great helper. But for the young guitar players who want to play guitar, learn it by ear. Just learn everything that you can by ear.
“And if you want to get the tab afterwards to double check and maybe, if there’s something that you were struggling with that you couldn’t just quite get, sure, do it, but learn it by ear. That is going to be the most important thing for any musician is to just be able to hear it and to play it.”
The extent to which guitarists should know theory has long been a subject of debate. While most don’t discount the usefulness of theory entirely – some say it’s not necessary to make high-quality art.
Earlier this year, former All That Remains guitarist Jason Richardson said it’s not essential, explaining: “Remember, it’s called music ‘theory,’ not ‘law’.” And YouTuber Become the Knight explained how “you can have these tools in your tool belt and still make pretty mediocre art”.
A big advocate of knowing your theory, though, is jazz-funk maestro Cory Wong, who earlier this year slammed guitarists who don’t know every note on the guitar’s fretboard.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
