Just as every writer, whether they admit it or not, was influenced at some level by every book they have ever read, so too are guitar players influenced by just about everything they hear.

Everything you actively listen to becomes part of your musical knowledge.  The wider your listening pallet, the more material you have to draw from.

Here we will look at 2 very powerful exercises you can do to improve your understanding of song writing, composition and guitar solos.

These exercises will look at how your favourite guitarist’s style has evolved.

An Enlightening Listening Exercise: The Circle of Influence Part 1

Who is your favourite contemporary guitarist?

Do you know who their influences were?

If you don’t know their musical influences, read through some guitar magazine interviews.

For some good guitar magazine recommendations, see my blog post called -> How to Buy Guitar Sheet Music, Songbooks or Tab and Not Get Ripped Off. (The magazine recommendations are about three quarters of the way down the article.)

Most musicians readily acknowledge their influences.  So it shouldn’t be too hard to find your answers.

If you don’t have access to guitar magazines right now or you want to get started with this exercise right away…it’s google to the rescue!

You can do a quick google search using “who was __________ influenced by?”  Fill in the blank with your favourite guitarist.  Do the search without the quotation marks.  Also try the search with and without the question mark.

Sometimes you will find that guitar players were influenced by different styles of music.  For example, a lot of rock guitarists were influenced by blues guitar players.

Once you know their influences, get a hold of some of their recordings.

Back To School?

Remember that favourite high school test question: “Compare and contrast blank with blank”?  Well here you can have some fun with it…

Can you hear some commonalities between your favourite guitarist and their influences?

What is different?

The Next Step

To take this exercise a step further, what you should do is learn to play some songs written by your favourite guitarist’s influences.

In other words, if your favourite guitarist is guitar player A, and guitar player A was influenced by guitar players B, C, D, and E, learn to play some of their songs.

You will learn a ton from this.

When you actually play these songs you will be able to see and hear the similarities and differences much better.  On top of that you will have lots of fun!

If you can learn these songs by ear─awesome!  If your ears aren’t quite there yet, check out -> How to Buy Guitar Sheet Music, Songbooks or Tab and Not Get Ripped Off for some tips on getting accurate tab and sheet music.

In part 2 of this article, we will take this Circle of Influence exercise even further.