Now it might seem a little crazy to you for me to do a lesson on pausing, but it is REALLY important. And we're going to actually start transcribing stuff in this lesson!

The last thing you hear, stays in your ear!

So learning how to pause exactly after the note you want to work out is very important.

Huh? So I'm going to work out just one note at a time? Well I'm glad you asked. Yes, just one little note or chord at a time, perhaps with many hours of practice you'll start doing a few notes in one listen, maybe even a whole lick, but most times (especially with fast or complex bits) you need to learn to listen to just one note at a time. It really is effective.

Learn to pause well and the battle is won.
It's VERY important to start just one note at a time.
IF YOU IGNORE THIS TOOL YOU WILL FIND THIS COURSE VERY HARD!

Practice the stop
So the first exercise we're going to be doing is working on stopping right after the note. In order to get better I'm going to ask you to work out some faster examples, but it's just to work on your pausing technique :)

After the pause it can be helpful to try and sing the note... keeps it going longer and it's not uncommon to see people singing the note while moving around on the fingerboard trying to find the same note on the guitar!! And it's not a bad thing, I use it still myself if I'm not finding the note right away!

START HERE

For this exercise you just need a page of Blank Tab. Download and print it out.

Exercises

Exercise #104-A

Listen to the example below and practice stopping exactly after the note you want to work out. This one should be pretty easy. It's using ONLY notes from the A Minor Pentatonic at the 5th fret (see the Beginners Course lesson). The notes are not really important, the task here is to learn how to stop right after the note and to train your ear to keep it there while you find it on the guitar. There are 4 clicks in.

Exercise #104-B

We're getting a little faster now and I'm mixing up the rhythms here a bit to make it a little more challenging... hit that pause as soon as you can after you hear the note you want to work out. Try and remember the note in your ear after you stop, find it on the guitar and write it down when you are confident it is correct. This one is still using only notes from the A Minor Pentatonic Scale but it has fast notes to make you fine tune your "pausing" skill. Most of you should find this very hard - it's harder than the proper exercises coming up - because doing faster notes will help your timing of the pause improve - remember this lesson is not about the notes!!!

Answers? You don't need them for this exercise, it's just about the pause technique!! the notes are actually unimportant. Huh? You still want them anyway?? really?? ok, I'll put a link on the forum...