It took me 10+ years to learn what I’ll teach you in 9 minutes

[00:00:11][music] [music] >> If you've been playing guitar for years, but you still can't play the melodies in your head or understand the chords of the music just by listening, this video might sting a little bit. I spent years doing all the scales, finger patterns, and like app gimmicks that they told me to do, and I still wasn't able to play what I heard on guitar. In the next few minutes, I'm going to show you exactly what changed for me.

[00:00:40]And honestly, if I had known this earlier, I would have gotten here much faster, much easier, and much more enjoyably. Here's what most guitarists get wrong. They assume that more practice, more hours on the instrument, equals more progress. I'm not going to tell you that playing your guitar less is necessarily going to make you better, but what I am going to tell you is that just pounding away raw hours at this thing, as I'm sure many of you have experienced, is not just going to magically translate into you being able to get the stuff in your head on your fretboard without having to guess and play a bunch of random notes. Especially if you're practicing the wrong skill, which most people are. So, if you're like I used to be, you've probably gone through all the YouTube videos telling you to do stuff like learn your scales, you know, learn all of your modes, you're learn your five pentatonic positions, learn how to do your triads all over the neck, learn theory, whatever the hell that means, or just learning songs by tabs. But, here's what's missing. None of that requires you to actually hear what you're doing as you're doing it. You basically could just be pressing buttons and have no awareness of what's happening, and that's why you don't develop an awareness of what's happening when you play actual music. So, what is the answer?

[00:01:54]In a word, numbers.

[00:01:56]In a few more words, an integrated system to understand the language of music that cuts across all instruments, all keys, through major and minor, and something that actually makes sense where you can place the sounds that you're hearing to give them stable identities, unlike letter names and tablature. Because ultimately, music is about relationships. G does not mean anything. It does not give you much information other than the exact pitch of this note.

[00:02:26]But when your brain hears a G, it doesn't even register as a G in most cases. It's more like it would be the Okay, [music] home of the key of G. Or maybe we are um in the key [music] of C, and now that G is a 5 4 3 2 1.

[00:02:44]Or potentially we're playing over a uh >> [music] >> This is also the note G. This is a a D flat 7 sharp 11 chord.

[00:02:54]The bottom line is G is meaningless cuz music is relative. It's all about relationships. Some of you might be familiar with this idea of numbers.

[00:03:01]Maybe you've advanced beyond the point where you're able to see, you know, a G [music] D E minor C as like a 1 5 6 4, for example. But even that is not going far enough, and let me explain why. So, the numbers in that case are basically describing the root motion, right? 1 5 6 4. But every single one of these chords has its own fingerprint and DNA. So, it's not just a 1 chord.

[00:03:24]It's literally in the case of this open G chord, it's 1 3 [music] 5 1 5 1. In the case of this D chord, it's literally >> [music] >> not just the root fifth root and third, but within the tonal octave, these notes have their own specific names. So, 5 2 5 7. The 6 chord.

[00:03:44]6 3 6 [music] 1 3 6. Finally, the 4 chord, the C.

[00:03:49]4 6 1 [music] 4 6.

[00:03:52]By taking your level of awareness one step deeper and literally understanding every single note that you play as related to the tonal octave your ears are just going to explode in the best way. And so here's what starts to change when you begin thinking this way.

[00:04:08]First of all, you stop needing your guitar to practice because you understand that all the music that you're listening to is somewhere on this map of the numbers. Additionally, learning chords by ear becomes so much easier because you're not just listening to the root movement or whether a chord is major or minor, you can basically pick out any piece of that DNA and use it to help you figure out the chords.

[00:04:31]For example, if I have have one and then I hear a major chord [music] and I hear the note seven like this top note, I know that that's the five chord. And so practically speaking, how can you start to integrate this today right now?

[00:04:46]Step one, you got to take the vow of I shall not play any notes and not know where they are on the tonal octave.

[00:04:54]Everything has a specific coordinate.

[00:04:56]And so expanding on that idea, all the songs that you already know how to strum, right? You're no longer allowed to just stop at A minor, D, G, C. You've got to find what the key of is and apply the numbers there, right? In this case it's 2514.

[00:05:14]By the way, if you're in minor, analyze that based around six, right? So if I have this progression E minor, [music] C, G, D, right? This song is in the key of E minor. We're going to call E minor six. So in this case it would be 6415.

[00:05:31]Additionally, if you want to really get in here, what you can do is you can sing all of these notes as it relates to the tonal octave. At the beginning it might take you a some brain power to really go through, but seriously just going through and 636136 [music and singing] 46146 [music and singing] 135151 5257 Singing the numbers is such a important key to being able to get the melodies in here on your fretboard. Because once you're able to sing the numbers like this, 1357176345 4321, it's so easy to go 13571763454321.

[00:06:22]All right, so here I've got a random song generator. We just got Dua Lipa Don't Start Now. It's like a super crazy popular song.

[00:06:30]>> [music] >> And we'll just show you how this actually applies.

[00:06:44]>> [music] >> Right, so it's going to seem like I'm skipping some steps here. That's a 2641.

[00:06:54]And so I'll just show you how I'd put that on my fretboard first. You play any random note.

[00:07:00]So I just played bum bum bum bum.

[00:07:03]So that's a five. So that means that my first chord is this two here.

[00:07:07]Two, >> [music] >> then to six, then to four, then to one.

[00:07:16]>> [music] >> So look, even if you don't have developed ears like I have with the numbers, you can just find a song, look it up, and then once you have the chords, let's say that instead of um you knew that this is two, maybe you just knew that the first chord was E minor and then it went to A minor.

[00:07:33]>> [music] >> And then it went to uh G and then to D.

[00:07:37]So your job is to like figure out and maybe you have to look it up, what key are we in, right? And so, in this case, it's probably going to say that we are in the key of D major or B minor. And so, whatever the case is, if it's minor, B minor, you put B as 6, and then you analyze the rest of the chords.

[00:07:54]And so, just a simple act of going from thinking letter names to thinking numbers, it explodes your ears because now this motion of it's not just an E minor to A minor, but this is a 2 to 6.

[00:08:10]And that character stays the same for every single song that uses the 2 chord and the 6 chord in sequence like that.

[00:08:16]And so, why is this important? Well, you just saw that I was able to figure out the song before I even touched my guitar. And so, this opens up your ability to practice when you're on the train, when you're taking a walk, when you're walking through the mall, and just listening to songs on the radio.

[00:08:30]Once you're able to start singing and speaking this language of the numbers, your practice it's just anytime that you hear a piece of music. And so, for you, your homework today, if you're not already thinking about every single song that you're playing as numbers, start doing that. Just take any song that you already know how to strum, and put the numbers on. And then, of course, singing along those numbers as you play the roots is going to just do wonders for your ear. I have helped over 100 guitarists transform the way that they speak and understand this language of music, and made it so they can effortlessly get the melodies in their head onto their fretboards, and also understand the music around them.

[00:09:07]If you want help with this, all you got to do is click the link in the description and see how I can help. And if you have any specific questions, feel free to DM me on Instagram, and I'll get back to you personally. Peace.