March 13, 2025 • 17 mins
Mastering the guitar can feel like an overwhelming journey, especially when it comes to picking which songs to learn. It’s tempting to jump into your favorite tracks, but this episode sheds light on the importance of understanding your own skill level. We introduce the concepts of ego songs and project songs—tools that can transform how you approach your guitar practice.
Ego songs are the easy wins that allow you to truly enjoy the essence of playing music, while project songs challenge you by introducing new techniques and skills. Balancing these two types of songs can help you sustain motivation and progress without feeling stuck. We discuss practical tips on how to assess your skills honestly and choose songs that match your current abilities while pushing your boundaries.
If you’ve ever felt frustrated with your guitar progress or unsure where to direct your practice time, this episode is for you! Join us in exploring strategies that will set you up for success, confidence, and enjoyment in your guitar journey. Don’t forget to check out Guitar Zoom Academy if you’re looking for a comprehensive plan that aligns with your individual goals. Subscribe, share your thoughts with us, and let’s make your guitar dreams a reality together!
Links:
Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/
- Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
- GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
- Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steve (00:00):
You know, when learning your favorite songs, sometimes
it can be a struggle of decidingwhat to work on and how much of
each song you should beactually trying to focus on.
If you think about it, it'svery easy for guitar players to
get stuck trying to learn everycomponent of a song and then
they get frustrated becausethey're never finishing songs,
(00:20):
they're just working on littlepieces of songs, and then they
get stuck and they move toanother song and get stuck, and
so today, what I'd like to do istalk to you a little bit about
how to approach this to havemore success.
All right, so the first thingwe're going to do is we're going
to just talk about your path ofstudy.
So, if you think about it as aguitar player, what you need to
acknowledge is where are you?
(00:41):
What is it that you haveownership over when it comes to
certain guitar skills?
Not, you know, I've beenintroduced to this, or I
remember studying this thing, orI can kind of sort of do this,
or on a good day, I have success, but what things are you really
, really, really in control of?
And that's one thing that Ialways try and teach people the
(01:03):
big difference of being honestwith yourself on what you
actually control.
So if you think about it, forinstance, if you take an
absolute beginner who's learninghow to play a G chord, they
don't have control of that Gchord.
They're learning how to playthe G, they're developing the
skills to play the G, to makethe G faster and cleaner and all
(01:23):
of those sorts of things, butuntil they get the G chord to
that level, they don't own itright.
They're just utilizing theinformation and trying to
accelerate and develop theinformation right To the point
of ownership.
That's what you're looking for.
So, when it comes to playingsongs, if you're always trying
(01:45):
to choose songs that are outsideyour level of control, your
level of ownership, you're goingto consistently struggle with
them, obviously because there'scomponents within that song that
you are not comfortable with.
Now that's not necessarily abad thing.
That just then shows you, hey,this and this and this and this
are things that I'm going toneed to work on.
(02:07):
So the song itself is going tohave to be put on hold while I
develop the components needed toplay this song.
So that's the struggle whenyou're kind of a beginner guitar
player is you don't really ownanything, you don't have
ownership of these particularthings, and so it's hard to you
know play songs to motivate you.
And then you know you may havea situation an instructor or
(02:28):
whatever it might be where youjust keep learning more and more
components but you're reallynot again at an ownership level
with any of it.
So you just keep gettingfurther and further away from
the dessert, so to speak, andthat can be very disheartening
for a guitar player, for abudding guitar player wanting to
learn how to play songs thatthey like.
(02:48):
So what I did was I came up withthis idea of what I call ego,
ego and project songs, becausewhat I found was a lot of my
guitar students tended to beoverachievers, especially the
students that I had that weremore rock or metal music
oriented.
They just always and I love it,don't get me wrong but they
(03:10):
were always very muchoverachievers.
They always wanted to do thehardest stuff and again, I think
that's awesome, that's great.
So as I'm talking about this,please understand I'm not saying
you're not allowed to do things.
You can do whatever you want,but there's a lot of frustration
in trying to play songs thatyou're not ready for.
So if we go back to thisbeginning student that I was
just talking about, that'strying to learn how to play a G
(03:32):
chord.
And then next week, for thisperson's guitar lesson, they're
given you know, an YngwieMalmsteen song to play or a
Steve Vai song play, you know,or whatever it might be.
That's not going to bebeneficial for them.
They're trying to playsomething that is so far outside
their control, right, they'renot going to have success with
(03:56):
it.
Now again, you could argue,well, they might learn how to do
something.
Yeah, they can, that'swonderful, but fundamentally
it's not on track with what itis that they're trying to learn.
Where, if I had the opportunityto teach them whatever
fundamentals there are, it ispossible that some song that
they wanted to learn how to playis getting closer and closer to
(04:18):
being able to be acquired bythem.
So putting things in the rightorder and doing them at the
right time can often make theconsistency and the speed at
which you're accomplishingthings much faster.
So with an ego song E-G-O Ialways think like tapping
(04:39):
yourself on the back, you feelgood about yourself.
So an ego song should be a songthat fits into elements that
you either A control or B areworking on controlling, and
you're not trying to learn everysingle nuance of that song.
That's going to put you back inthe world of confusion.
(05:04):
What happens a lot with guitarplayers is they don't spend
enough time trying to learn howto play something from beginning
to end, to experience what it'slike to concentrate on whatever
it is we're playing for threeminutes or four minutes or five
minutes or however long thisthing is being able to keep time
.
You know, listen to the music,strum along, um, you know, not
(05:26):
get lost, know when the verse is, know when the bridge is, know
when the chorus is, know whenthe breaks are, whatever these
things are that we'reconcentrating on.
But learning how to focus yetplay at the same time, focus on
the music and play at the sametime and concentrate and be able
to successfully do that for anentire song.
So an ego song is exactly that.
(05:49):
I'm not asking them to learnthe solo and the intro and all
the licks and all the fills andeverything.
We're just trying to have thesong meet them where they are in
their journey and then learnhow to play from beginning to
end.
So if I said to somebody, okay,so let's look at, I mean
whatever the song would be,knock it On Heaven's Door.
(06:09):
So to play Knock it On Heaven'sDoor by Bob Dylan, we need G, d
and C and an A minor chord.
So right away, the question isis do you know those chords Not?
Have you played them before?
But do you have controlownership of those chords?
Well, I know G, c and D, but Aminor I need some work on.
Okay, so now we need to make achoice.
Do we want to spend some timedeveloping that A minor, so now
(06:31):
we can play this song, or do weneed to choose a different song
because you don't have a minoryet?
It's okay, but these are thechoices we have to think about.
Do I want to put in some timeto learn that?
Obviously it'd be a great Ideato do that, but we have to.
We have to talk about this.
We have to make a choice.
So if a minor is out of thequestion, then we probably
shouldn't approach the song.
We should find something thatjust has G, c and D, because
(06:52):
that's where your ownership lies.
Okay, so we find a song thatjust uses GC and D.
Um, sweet home, alabama, right,gcd there is an F in there, but
it happens so little that a lotof times when I teach this from
an ego song perspective, wedon't even worry about the F, we
just play D, c, g, d.
Right, that's what we're doing.
(07:13):
Is that over and over and over?
Well, dcgg, I guess it would be, um.
So we don't worry about thepicking stuff, we don't worry
about the licks, we certainlydon't worry about the solo.
We just learn to play D, c, g,g for five minutes or however
long the song is right, and thenwe can focus on the chord
changes, we can focus on thestrumming, all of these other
(07:36):
kinds of techniques that thestudent is developing in an
ownership sort of way, okay, anddevelop those skills.
Now, this particular songwouldn't have any other changes.
There isn't a bridge and achorus and that sort of thing
for them to worry about.
So it's a great starting pointto learn how to play an ego song
.
And then we would make anotherchoice, another assessment.
(07:57):
What's the next song we'regoing to look at?
Well, maybe now we're ready todo Knocking on Heaven's Door,
and this student has beenworking on A minor and now we're
going to start putting thattogether.
Okay, so now this song,Knocking on Heaven's Door, moves
G, d, a, minor, a minor, g, d,c, c.
So we actually have two thingsnow that we have to think about
moving back and forth betweenthose two sections, and then
(08:19):
strumming and listening to thesong, paying attention to the
tempo, staying with the band,all those sorts of things
playing all the way through.
So that's what the idea of anego song to me.
Now, you might be further alongthe guitar food chain and it
isn't these songs that we'retalking about.
Maybe we're talking aboutsomething else, right, guitar
food chain, and it isn't thesesongs that we're talking about.
Maybe we're talking aboutsomething else, right?
You know a more complex song,but you still have the skill set
(08:41):
to make that into an ego song.
So if we were looking at, maybeit's Highway to Hell, okay.
So now we're dealing with an Aand a D and a G and an E,
whether you're playing them asopen chords or power chords or
whatever it is you're doing,okay, and that's what you're
focusing on, but you're focusingmore on the groove and the
strumming, how you're doing thatkind of thing.
(09:05):
So not just strumming, but nowstrumming in a rock riff context
, okay, with different changes,that sort of thing.
Maybe we're looking at RockyLike a Hurricane, right?
So the beginning is the partthat most people can do pretty
easy if you know your powerchords and you can visualize the
motion, that sort of thing.
And then we get to the verseand the verse has some palm
(09:27):
muting with some chords movingand things like that.
So again, maybe that fits intoyour ego song, schematic, or for
somebody else, because they'venever done palm muting before or
power chords are new to them.
This isn't an ego song, forthem it's a project song.
So if that makes sense, what Iwas trying to tell people is
think about it kind of like afive to one ratio, or five to
(09:50):
two if you want to, it's fine.
But don't have everything be aproject song.
And let me explain a little bitabout a project song now.
So a project song to me is asong that at this stage in your
playing you're probably notgoing to be able to play that
entire song.
You're going to be playingelements of it.
So you might go in there onfire ready to go and you get to
(10:10):
measure 17.
And then it's like, oh my gosh,that's crazy that I can't do
that.
Crazy Train might be a primeexample for a lot of players.
The beginning of Crazy Train.
Everybody learns that.
But as soon as you get to theverse and it requires you to do
alternate picking and thepull-off stuff and all those
kind of things, maybe that's astruggle for you.
So all of a sudden, what youthought would have been, you
(10:31):
know, approachable becomes aproject song, because that part
you've never alternate picked inyour life and you don't know
how to palm mute.
Well, it's going to hang on theproject song shelf now, or the
project song wall, becausethere's elements that we need to
develop Now.
The benefit of a project song isit's going to introduce you to
new things that maybe you don'texperience when you're looking
(10:54):
at ego songs in your comfortzone, in your control space.
So the beauty of project songsis you keep going.
Oh, I've never done that before.
I didn't know about alternatepicking, I didn't know about
power chords, I didn't knowabout palm muting.
Now I do.
So you extract the concept, thetechnique, the skill set,
whatever it is that you'retrying to do, and now that
(11:15):
becomes part of your practiceregimen to develop for not only
that song but other songs thatare like it.
Chances are, if you like Rocky,like a Hurricane by the
Scorpions, you like a lot ofother stuff that is similar to
that, that is going to use a lotof the same skills as far as a
guitar player goes.
You see, that's the benefit ofthis.
Ego songs are great because theymake you feel good, because you
(11:38):
were able to play somethingfrom beginning to end and
experience what that is.
You can also do that in frontof other people.
Maybe you've got, you know, afriend or a relative or
something that you're playingfor and they're like wow, that
was great man, you did reallygood.
That was, it was awesome tolisten to you.
And now you feel better aboutyourself.
Where the project song thingyou're playing a little bit and
then you got to keep stopping,and then a little bit and then
(11:58):
you got to keep stopping.
So it's not that it's bad, it'sjust understanding that you
want to have a ratio of both ofthese things.
Now, finally, I'd want toexplain this to you too An ego
song can become more of aproject song by digging deeper
(12:19):
into the song.
So if you think about, forinstance, sweet Home Alabama,
we'll go back to that.
If you were just playing thechords and strumming to it,
that's all you were doing to itto make it an ego song.
But you decide I really, reallywant to learn how to play the
beginning of that.
I love the beginning of SweetHome Alabama.
(12:41):
I had Sweet Child of Mine on mybrain, sweet Home Alabama.
So you start trying to practicethe picking part of that.
But you're brand new to singlenote picking and all of the
components that go with that.
So that element of Sweet HomeAlabama becomes a project song
element.
But you're still able to playthe song.
(13:02):
So if people ask or you know,just for general practice on a
daily basis or whatever it mightbe, you can play this.
But that component of SweetHome Alabama is a project song
component that you're going tokeep trying to develop because
you find value in it, you findinterest, you find worth to
practice what that thing is, todevelop it.
(13:23):
And then the other really greatthing here is the more you learn
how to control the influx ofthings that you're trying to
work on and the reason thatyou're working on them and what
category they kind of fit into.
You know it's okay to haveproject songs.
Like I said, it's no problem.
Just be okay with the fact thatyou recognize right now in your
path, in your guitar path, youmay not and probably won't be
(13:45):
able to play the entire song,because if you could, it
wouldn't be an ego or a projectsong, it'd be more of an ego
song.
So this is my point Six monthsfrom now, if you diligently
practice and you try really hardand you learn all the things
that you need to learn and studyand all of those stuff that we
do as guitar players or a yearfrom now or whatever it might be
, what happens is some of thisstuff that was project songs for
(14:08):
you a year ago may not beproject songs anymore because
you've developed all of theseskills.
So your landscape of ego songsis ever-changing because your
skills are getting better, yourknowledge is getting better,
your overall control of thesethings keeps increasing, so the
ego songs become more involved.
(14:31):
Where for somebody else the songyou're playing is a project
song, for you it's an ego song.
So hopefully that makes sense alittle bit, because I get
really bummed when I talk topeople, and I talk to people all
the time about guitar playingand they're just really
frustrated with themselves.
I can't play anything, I suck,you know, I don't.
I don't think any of that istrue.
What I think is true is is thatyou're just not understanding
(14:54):
your path and your foundation,and that needs to be organized
so you understand what you'redoing, why you're doing it, how
you're doing it and what yourgoals are, and then feeding
those with songs that match whatyou're trying to do, as opposed
to just hypothetically playinganything.
You've got a purpose for thethings that you're playing and
(15:16):
how they fit into the trajectoryof the things that you're
learning, if that makes sense.
So be careful with that, okay.
Now, if you decide that you needany help with this kind of
stuff, just letting you know.
Here at Guitar Zoom, we've gotwhat's called the Guitar Zoom
Academy and this is where wehelp you with all of this kind
of stuff.
Get you organized, get you on aplan of attack, understanding
(15:38):
what you need to do, getting apractice regimen together,
getting you know what it is thatyou should be studying, what it
is that you kind of need tostay away from for right now to
stay on track.
So often I find guitar playersthat are just kind of they want
to learn, but they're all overthe place because there's just
so much information everywherethat they don't know what
they're supposed to be workingon.
They don't know in the order ofwhat they're supposed to be
(15:59):
working on and they don'tunderstand what they're missing.
So that's what that's all about.
But anyway, hopefully thatmakes sense to you and gives you
a little bit of clarity on egosongs versus project songs, and
to start making some decisionsbased on where you are in your
path and what you own, what youcontrol right to an absolute
level.
Always remember if you kind ofknow something, you kind of
(16:23):
don't know it, and that's wherethe problem winds up.
Especially if you have multiplepieces of that, then the whole
thing just becomes very frail.
All right, so take care, staypositive, and I'll talk to you
soon.
You know, when learning your favorite songs, sometimes
it can be a struggle of decidingwhat to work on and how much of
each song you should beactually trying to focus on.
If you think about it, it'svery easy for guitar players to
get stuck trying to learn everycomponent of a song and then
they get frustrated becausethey're never finishing songs,
(00:20):
they're just working on littlepieces of songs, and then they
get stuck and they move toanother song and get stuck, and
so today, what I'd like to do istalk to you a little bit about
how to approach this to havemore success.
All right, so the first thingwe're going to do is we're going
to just talk about your path ofstudy.
So, if you think about it as aguitar player, what you need to
acknowledge is where are you?
(00:41):
What is it that you haveownership over when it comes to
certain guitar skills?
Not, you know, I've beenintroduced to this, or I
remember studying this thing, orI can kind of sort of do this,
or on a good day, I have success, but what things are you really
, really, really in control of?
And that's one thing that Ialways try and teach people the
(01:03):
big difference of being honestwith yourself on what you
actually control.
So if you think about it, forinstance, if you take an
absolute beginner who's learninghow to play a G chord, they
don't have control of that Gchord.
They're learning how to playthe G, they're developing the
skills to play the G, to makethe G faster and cleaner and all
(01:23):
of those sorts of things, butuntil they get the G chord to
that level, they don't own itright.
They're just utilizing theinformation and trying to
accelerate and develop theinformation right To the point
of ownership.
That's what you're looking for.
So, when it comes to playingsongs, if you're always trying
(01:45):
to choose songs that are outsideyour level of control, your
level of ownership, you're goingto consistently struggle with
them, obviously because there'scomponents within that song that
you are not comfortable with.
Now that's not necessarily abad thing.
That just then shows you, hey,this and this and this and this
are things that I'm going toneed to work on.
(02:07):
So the song itself is going tohave to be put on hold while I
develop the components needed toplay this song.
So that's the struggle whenyou're kind of a beginner guitar
player is you don't really ownanything, you don't have
ownership of these particularthings, and so it's hard to you
know play songs to motivate you.
And then you know you may havea situation an instructor or
(02:28):
whatever it might be where youjust keep learning more and more
components but you're reallynot again at an ownership level
with any of it.
So you just keep gettingfurther and further away from
the dessert, so to speak, andthat can be very disheartening
for a guitar player, for abudding guitar player wanting to
learn how to play songs thatthey like.
(02:48):
So what I did was I came up withthis idea of what I call ego,
ego and project songs, becausewhat I found was a lot of my
guitar students tended to beoverachievers, especially the
students that I had that weremore rock or metal music
oriented.
They just always and I love it,don't get me wrong but they
(03:10):
were always very muchoverachievers.
They always wanted to do thehardest stuff and again, I think
that's awesome, that's great.
So as I'm talking about this,please understand I'm not saying
you're not allowed to do things.
You can do whatever you want,but there's a lot of frustration
in trying to play songs thatyou're not ready for.
So if we go back to thisbeginning student that I was
just talking about, that'strying to learn how to play a G
(03:32):
chord.
And then next week, for thisperson's guitar lesson, they're
given you know, an YngwieMalmsteen song to play or a
Steve Vai song play, you know,or whatever it might be.
That's not going to bebeneficial for them.
They're trying to playsomething that is so far outside
their control, right, they'renot going to have success with
(03:56):
it.
Now again, you could argue,well, they might learn how to do
something.
Yeah, they can, that'swonderful, but fundamentally
it's not on track with what itis that they're trying to learn.
Where, if I had the opportunityto teach them whatever
fundamentals there are, it ispossible that some song that
they wanted to learn how to playis getting closer and closer to
(04:18):
being able to be acquired bythem.
So putting things in the rightorder and doing them at the
right time can often make theconsistency and the speed at
which you're accomplishingthings much faster.
So with an ego song E-G-O Ialways think like tapping
(04:39):
yourself on the back, you feelgood about yourself.
So an ego song should be a songthat fits into elements that
you either A control or B areworking on controlling, and
you're not trying to learn everysingle nuance of that song.
That's going to put you back inthe world of confusion.
(05:04):
What happens a lot with guitarplayers is they don't spend
enough time trying to learn howto play something from beginning
to end, to experience what it'slike to concentrate on whatever
it is we're playing for threeminutes or four minutes or five
minutes or however long thisthing is being able to keep time
.
You know, listen to the music,strum along, um, you know, not
(05:26):
get lost, know when the verse is, know when the bridge is, know
when the chorus is, know whenthe breaks are, whatever these
things are that we'reconcentrating on.
But learning how to focus yetplay at the same time, focus on
the music and play at the sametime and concentrate and be able
to successfully do that for anentire song.
So an ego song is exactly that.
(05:49):
I'm not asking them to learnthe solo and the intro and all
the licks and all the fills andeverything.
We're just trying to have thesong meet them where they are in
their journey and then learnhow to play from beginning to
end.
So if I said to somebody, okay,so let's look at, I mean
whatever the song would be,knock it On Heaven's Door.
(06:09):
So to play Knock it On Heaven'sDoor by Bob Dylan, we need G, d
and C and an A minor chord.
So right away, the question isis do you know those chords Not?
Have you played them before?
But do you have controlownership of those chords?
Well, I know G, c and D, but Aminor I need some work on.
Okay, so now we need to make achoice.
Do we want to spend some timedeveloping that A minor, so now
(06:31):
we can play this song, or do weneed to choose a different song
because you don't have a minoryet?
It's okay, but these are thechoices we have to think about.
Do I want to put in some timeto learn that?
Obviously it'd be a great Ideato do that, but we have to.
We have to talk about this.
We have to make a choice.
So if a minor is out of thequestion, then we probably
shouldn't approach the song.
We should find something thatjust has G, c and D, because
(06:52):
that's where your ownership lies.
Okay, so we find a song thatjust uses GC and D.
Um, sweet home, alabama, right,gcd there is an F in there, but
it happens so little that a lotof times when I teach this from
an ego song perspective, wedon't even worry about the F, we
just play D, c, g, d.
Right, that's what we're doing.
(07:13):
Is that over and over and over?
Well, dcgg, I guess it would be, um.
So we don't worry about thepicking stuff, we don't worry
about the licks, we certainlydon't worry about the solo.
We just learn to play D, c, g,g for five minutes or however
long the song is right, and thenwe can focus on the chord
changes, we can focus on thestrumming, all of these other
(07:36):
kinds of techniques that thestudent is developing in an
ownership sort of way, okay, anddevelop those skills.
Now, this particular songwouldn't have any other changes.
There isn't a bridge and achorus and that sort of thing
for them to worry about.
So it's a great starting pointto learn how to play an ego song
.
And then we would make anotherchoice, another assessment.
(07:57):
What's the next song we'regoing to look at?
Well, maybe now we're ready todo Knocking on Heaven's Door,
and this student has beenworking on A minor and now we're
going to start putting thattogether.
Okay, so now this song,Knocking on Heaven's Door, moves
G, d, a, minor, a minor, g, d,c, c.
So we actually have two thingsnow that we have to think about
moving back and forth betweenthose two sections, and then
(08:19):
strumming and listening to thesong, paying attention to the
tempo, staying with the band,all those sorts of things
playing all the way through.
So that's what the idea of anego song to me.
Now, you might be further alongthe guitar food chain and it
isn't these songs that we'retalking about.
Maybe we're talking aboutsomething else, right, guitar
food chain, and it isn't thesesongs that we're talking about.
Maybe we're talking aboutsomething else, right?
You know a more complex song,but you still have the skill set
(08:41):
to make that into an ego song.
So if we were looking at, maybeit's Highway to Hell, okay.
So now we're dealing with an Aand a D and a G and an E,
whether you're playing them asopen chords or power chords or
whatever it is you're doing,okay, and that's what you're
focusing on, but you're focusingmore on the groove and the
strumming, how you're doing thatkind of thing.
(09:05):
So not just strumming, but nowstrumming in a rock riff context
, okay, with different changes,that sort of thing.
Maybe we're looking at RockyLike a Hurricane, right?
So the beginning is the partthat most people can do pretty
easy if you know your powerchords and you can visualize the
motion, that sort of thing.
And then we get to the verseand the verse has some palm
(09:27):
muting with some chords movingand things like that.
So again, maybe that fits intoyour ego song, schematic, or for
somebody else, because they'venever done palm muting before or
power chords are new to them.
This isn't an ego song, forthem it's a project song.
So if that makes sense, what Iwas trying to tell people is
think about it kind of like afive to one ratio, or five to
(09:50):
two if you want to, it's fine.
But don't have everything be aproject song.
And let me explain a little bitabout a project song now.
So a project song to me is asong that at this stage in your
playing you're probably notgoing to be able to play that
entire song.
You're going to be playingelements of it.
So you might go in there onfire ready to go and you get to
(10:10):
measure 17.
And then it's like, oh my gosh,that's crazy that I can't do
that.
Crazy Train might be a primeexample for a lot of players.
The beginning of Crazy Train.
Everybody learns that.
But as soon as you get to theverse and it requires you to do
alternate picking and thepull-off stuff and all those
kind of things, maybe that's astruggle for you.
So all of a sudden, what youthought would have been, you
(10:31):
know, approachable becomes aproject song, because that part
you've never alternate picked inyour life and you don't know
how to palm mute.
Well, it's going to hang on theproject song shelf now, or the
project song wall, becausethere's elements that we need to
develop Now.
The benefit of a project song isit's going to introduce you to
new things that maybe you don'texperience when you're looking
(10:54):
at ego songs in your comfortzone, in your control space.
So the beauty of project songsis you keep going.
Oh, I've never done that before.
I didn't know about alternatepicking, I didn't know about
power chords, I didn't knowabout palm muting.
Now I do.
So you extract the concept, thetechnique, the skill set,
whatever it is that you'retrying to do, and now that
(11:15):
becomes part of your practiceregimen to develop for not only
that song but other songs thatare like it.
Chances are, if you like Rocky,like a Hurricane by the
Scorpions, you like a lot ofother stuff that is similar to
that, that is going to use a lotof the same skills as far as a
guitar player goes.
You see, that's the benefit ofthis.
Ego songs are great because theymake you feel good, because you
(11:38):
were able to play somethingfrom beginning to end and
experience what that is.
You can also do that in frontof other people.
Maybe you've got, you know, afriend or a relative or
something that you're playingfor and they're like wow, that
was great man, you did reallygood.
That was, it was awesome tolisten to you.
And now you feel better aboutyourself.
Where the project song thingyou're playing a little bit and
then you got to keep stopping,and then a little bit and then
(11:58):
you got to keep stopping.
So it's not that it's bad, it'sjust understanding that you
want to have a ratio of both ofthese things.
Now, finally, I'd want toexplain this to you too An ego
song can become more of aproject song by digging deeper
(12:19):
into the song.
So if you think about, forinstance, sweet Home Alabama,
we'll go back to that.
If you were just playing thechords and strumming to it,
that's all you were doing to itto make it an ego song.
But you decide I really, reallywant to learn how to play the
beginning of that.
I love the beginning of SweetHome Alabama.
(12:41):
I had Sweet Child of Mine on mybrain, sweet Home Alabama.
So you start trying to practicethe picking part of that.
But you're brand new to singlenote picking and all of the
components that go with that.
So that element of Sweet HomeAlabama becomes a project song
element.
But you're still able to playthe song.
(13:02):
So if people ask or you know,just for general practice on a
daily basis or whatever it mightbe, you can play this.
But that component of SweetHome Alabama is a project song
component that you're going tokeep trying to develop because
you find value in it, you findinterest, you find worth to
practice what that thing is, todevelop it.
(13:23):
And then the other really greatthing here is the more you learn
how to control the influx ofthings that you're trying to
work on and the reason thatyou're working on them and what
category they kind of fit into.
You know it's okay to haveproject songs.
Like I said, it's no problem.
Just be okay with the fact thatyou recognize right now in your
path, in your guitar path, youmay not and probably won't be
(13:45):
able to play the entire song,because if you could, it
wouldn't be an ego or a projectsong, it'd be more of an ego
song.
So this is my point Six monthsfrom now, if you diligently
practice and you try really hardand you learn all the things
that you need to learn and studyand all of those stuff that we
do as guitar players or a yearfrom now or whatever it might be
, what happens is some of thisstuff that was project songs for
(14:08):
you a year ago may not beproject songs anymore because
you've developed all of theseskills.
So your landscape of ego songsis ever-changing because your
skills are getting better, yourknowledge is getting better,
your overall control of thesethings keeps increasing, so the
ego songs become more involved.
(14:31):
Where for somebody else the songyou're playing is a project
song, for you it's an ego song.
So hopefully that makes sense alittle bit, because I get
really bummed when I talk topeople, and I talk to people all
the time about guitar playingand they're just really
frustrated with themselves.
I can't play anything, I suck,you know, I don't.
I don't think any of that istrue.
What I think is true is is thatyou're just not understanding
(14:54):
your path and your foundation,and that needs to be organized
so you understand what you'redoing, why you're doing it, how
you're doing it and what yourgoals are, and then feeding
those with songs that match whatyou're trying to do, as opposed
to just hypothetically playinganything.
You've got a purpose for thethings that you're playing and
(15:16):
how they fit into the trajectoryof the things that you're
learning, if that makes sense.
So be careful with that, okay.
Now, if you decide that you needany help with this kind of
stuff, just letting you know.
Here at Guitar Zoom, we've gotwhat's called the Guitar Zoom
Academy and this is where wehelp you with all of this kind
of stuff.
Get you organized, get you on aplan of attack, understanding
(15:38):
what you need to do, getting apractice regimen together,
getting you know what it is thatyou should be studying, what it
is that you kind of need tostay away from for right now to
stay on track.
So often I find guitar playersthat are just kind of they want
to learn, but they're all overthe place because there's just
so much information everywherethat they don't know what
they're supposed to be workingon.
They don't know in the order ofwhat they're supposed to be
(15:59):
working on and they don'tunderstand what they're missing.
So that's what that's all about.
But anyway, hopefully thatmakes sense to you and gives you
a little bit of clarity on egosongs versus project songs, and
to start making some decisionsbased on where you are in your
path and what you own, what youcontrol right to an absolute
level.
Always remember if you kind ofknow something, you kind of
(16:23):
don't know it, and that's wherethe problem winds up.
Especially if you have multiplepieces of that, then the whole
thing just becomes very frail.
All right, so take care, staypositive, and I'll talk to you
soon.
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