Figuring Out Parts (with Indescribable)

One good way to improve is to learn as many riffs as you can, but tabs are not always available. Hence, it is important that you develop the ability to figure out parts on your own - its not something that you can do overnight, and takes lots of practice over the years. You have to start somewhere though, and this video shows you how:



The idea is to narrow down your choice of notes by trying out the scale first, and then figuring out the part note-by-note first by trial and error for the first few notes, and then by listening out to the scale and the recorded part - you can roughly tell the 'distance' of subsequent notes from the first few notes.

To force you to practice this, I won't tab out this song, but I'll be happy to check your tabs if you leave them in the comments for this post.. here're the tabs for the Bb major scale to get you started:

---------------------
-------------8-10-11-
------7-8-10---------
-8-10----------------
---------------------
---------------------

Lastly, thanks to Ben Burnett for his help with this song.

8 comments:

Psycr0tic said...

Hey Kenny,
Nice done this site and you playing.
If i undertand it correctly than you're the guy with the two inbanez guitars and the rest are other people. Thanks for this practice, it helps a lot. And you're other vid's too. God bless.

Anonymous said...

-------------------------
------11-10----8--------
-8-10-------10---8--10--
-------------------------
-------------------------
-------------------------

Anonymous said...

this song reminds me of a song i've been meaning to ask of a request. can you post a video of "the way I was made- by chris tomlin"

Anonymous said...

Kenny, this has been up for awhile

I figured out the tabs

e ----------------------------------
B ---------11-10-6-8----------------
G ---8—10--------------8-10---------
D ----------------------------------
A ----------------------------------
E ----------------------------------

Repeat twice to play that intro for Indescribable

You can add like the slides, hammer-ons, if you want to on this tab
but tell me if it's good or not
thank you

Anonymous said...

hey kenny, i was just wondering, how do u figure out the key of a song? is there a technique to it or is it just purely figuring it out by ear? please let me know it'll be of great help =)

keep on worshipping gee/oh/dee with your excellent work kenny =) keep it up

edwinsagun said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
edwinsagun said...

i don't know... but i hear it a semitone higher,,, hehehe,,,, its the same, i was gonna post this when i thought i figured it out, but people posted their version a semitone lower >.<. So there might be something wrong with my hearing or something.... maybe u guys are right, but i'm gonna post this anyway... LOL

B|-------12s11--------9--------7
G|-9h11----------11-------9

Unknown said...

hey kenny! my praise leader gave us this song in the key of g.. so the version you're playing wouldn't work right? do i have to move the whole thing a couple frets up or down?? thanks and God bless!