How to learn songs with chords & lyrics

Let’s say it’s a song with chords; you begin by playing the verse chords.

First, you play the song while looking at the chords. Then, you try to play the song from memory.

This is key.

Many people come to me and say they don’t know any songs, even though they can play guitar. What they’ve never practiced is memorizing the song and playing it by memory.

So, you need to practice memorizing the song.

Let’s use a common chord progression as an example: A minor, F, C, G. Let’s say that’s the verse. You play the verse while looking at the lyrics if they’re available.

For example, on Ultimate Guitar, you can find songs with lyrics and chords.

I suggest that if it’s a song with vocals and you’re just strumming chords, you hum or sing the melody, even if you have no intention of being a singer.

This is because many songs have the same chords, so you can’t identify the song by the chords alone. You need to hear the melody as well.

Here’s how you do it for a song with chords and lyrics: You start with the verse. You play it while looking at the chords and hum the melody at the same time.

You could just strum and hold like a whole note if you can’t play and sing at the same time. Then, you close the document or scroll down and try to play the verse from memory.

If it’s a song with many chords(like Hotel California), I suggest you do four chords at a time. Look at the chords, play them, then try to play them from memory. Then, move on to the next four chords.

Learning songs with riffs

For memorizing songs with riffs or many riffs, I suggest you always go bar by bar. If you have a riff, take the first bar and play it while looking at the tablature, maybe ten times or for two minutes.

Then, don’t look at the tablature and play the notes again.

If you make a mistake, look at the tablature again, correct it, and try to play from memory.

The key here is practicing remembering the riff.

Once you have the first bar memorized, move on to the next bar. But if you want to play the whole riff, I suggest you do it section by section.

For example, if we take a song like “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, the whole riff would be when it goes down to the power chords at the end, which is about four bars.

 Play that entire thing and then try to play it from memory.

Then repeat.

Learning songs with Picking Patterns

Learning songs with picking patterns is similar to learning riffs.

Start bar by bar. Identify the picking pattern with only the picking hand if necessary and practice only the picking hand in isolation

If there are any bass lines between the chords, (Like in Jeff Buckley’s version of hallelujah)

isolate those and play only the bassline and the next chord.

Learning Solo’s, Licks & Lead parts

The key takeaway from th here when you’re learning solos you may need to isolate even more and a friend of mine that is also a master teacher and guitarist has come up with a phrase for this that he calls “fragmentation” which I also use in my teachings.

What that means is that you break it down to as small parts as only two notes at a time because solos and lead parts can be very challenging you need to sort of fragment or use fragmentation and play two to three notes at a time and really focus on your technique on both the left and the right hand¨

Learning Guitar Solo’s

 Solos can handle long series of notes, so here you probably need to isolate bar by bar and even so you might need to isolate certain challenging parts of the solo.

Maybe it could be a scale sequence that you really need to practice or practicing switching from one scale sequence to another part of the neck where you do a bend.

for example, if you do a scale run or sequence around the 5th fret, and then the next thing is a bend is at the 17th fret. You may need to practice just the switch from the scale sequence to the bend higher up on the neck.

Memorizing solo’s

you would use this same process here to memorize the solo you do it bar by bar you look at the tablature and then you don’t look at the tablature, and repeat until you have it memorized.

How to practice the fundamentals of singing & playing at the same time

To practice singing and playing guitar simultaneously, I suggest integrating singing the melody while playing chords.

This approach helps you a lot with your timing, allowing you to understand when chord changes align with specific words in the lyrics.

While I won’t go into extensive detail about learning to sing and play guitar here, the most fundamental practice involves strumming each chord once and singing the melody line

. Alternatively, you can simplify by strumming straight quarter notes (down on 1-2-3-4) and singing the melody.

While I have additional resources where I elaborate on strumming various rhythms while singing or advanced practice routines for playing riffs and singing.

 I strongly advise incorporating singing the melody, regardless of how you perceive your voice.

Doing so enhances timing and helps you recognize where chord changes occur.

Strum each chord once, sing the melody line, then move to the next chord. This could be played as whole notes or quarter notes (1-2-3-4).

Practice remembering so that you can play the songs by memory!

Key take aways and conclusion:

The key takeaway from this article is that the fastest way to learn songs is by breaking them down into very small parts and focusing on the parts that you can’t play. There’s no use in just playing the whole song and making the same mistake at bar 68 every time.

Also, it is important to realize that you may not have the proper techniques to play the songs you want to play, and that’s where exercises that I have in my programs come in. You know this already I think but I will say it anyway, because repetition is key!

In these exercises, you isolate the technique itself so that you can apply it in songs.

For example, if you have a problem playing songs that have picking, I have many exercises on picking patterns where we just isolate your picking hand to pick the chords.

Or, if you want to be able to play challenging solos, there are many techniques that go into that.

For example, proper bend technique, proper vibrato technique, proper picking technique, proper two-hand sync, learning scale sequences, and so on,

If this sounds overwhelming, it’s not – don’t worry! You can learn to play the solos you want quickly by isolating the techniques themselves.

If you want to play rock songs or metal songs with a lot of riffs and palm muting, you will isolate practicing your picking hand’s palm muting to get that to sound really good, as well as the two-hand sync & muting of unwanted noise.

The same goes for strumming chords; you would isolate the chord changes themselves so you can switch chords fast enough to play any song, and you would isolate your picking hand by practicing just strumming with your picking hand.

It is important to have structure in your practice and have a practice routine. To practice the techniques in isolation, your practice schedule should probably be 80% technique and 20% songs.

The reason why we play guitar is to play songs, right?

And maybe to express ourselves with music and our guitar playing, so you will get faster results by focusing on the techniques in isolation. But you always have to have songs in your practice routine because songs can also be seen as the reward for yourself to play a song because once you’ve done your practice!

The main big programs that I teach everything that you need to know can be summarized like this:

Total Guitar Mastery Training – All the technique & relevant music theory you need to play anything

12 Week Fretboard Navigation – Understand music and the entire fretboard so everything you play fits. Understand what 99% of all guitarists don’t know but what they should know.

Expressive Guitar Playing Training – Get your playing to sound expressive and emotional and more colorful. The goal is for us as players to sound as expressive as the best singers in the world.

These programs contains over a decade of experience and exercises that work, with practice routines so you know exactly what, how long and HOW to practice to get results. They a bit pricy but from time to time I run campaigns with huge discounts, so keep a look out for that in your e-mail!

If you’d like to have this article as a video or audio recording, please let me know and I will put it in my pipeline, I wrote this using the voice to text function and since it’s a long one right now I kind of regret I did not record it so you could listen to it.