Steve Stine Guitar Podcast

Level Up Your Guitar Skills: Understanding Ego and Project Songs

• Steve Stine

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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!

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Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
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Steve:

You know, when learning your favorite songs, sometimes it can be a struggle of deciding what to work on and how much of each song you should be actually trying to focus on. If you think about it, it's very easy for guitar players to get stuck trying to learn every component of a song and then they get frustrated because they're never finishing songs, they're just working on little pieces of songs, and then they get stuck and they move to another song and get stuck, and so today, what I'd like to do is talk to you a little bit about how to approach this to have more success. All right, so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to just talk about your path of study. So, if you think about it as a guitar player, what you need to acknowledge is where are you? What is it that you have ownership over when it comes to certain guitar skills? Not, you know, I've been introduced to this, or I remember studying this thing, or I 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 I always try and teach people the big difference of being honest with yourself on what you actually control. So if you think about it, for instance, if you take an absolute beginner who's learning how to play a G chord, they don't have control of that G chord. They're learning how to play the G, they're developing the skills to play the G, to make the G faster and cleaner and all of those sorts of things, but until they get the G chord to that level, they don't own it right. They're just utilizing the information and trying to accelerate and develop the information right To the point of ownership. That's what you're looking for.

Steve:

So, when it comes to playing songs, if you're always trying to choose songs that are outside your level of control, your level of ownership, you're going to consistently struggle with them, obviously because there's components within that song that you are not comfortable with. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing. That just then shows you, hey, this and this and this and this are things that I'm going to need to work on. So the song itself is going to have to be put on hold while I develop the components needed to play this song. So that's the struggle when you're kind of a beginner guitar player is you don't really own anything, you don't have ownership of these particular things, and so it's hard to you know play songs to motivate you. And then you know you may have a situation an instructor or whatever it might be where you just keep learning more and more components but you're really not again at an ownership level with any of it. So you just keep getting further and further away from the dessert, so to speak, and that can be very disheartening for a guitar player, for a budding guitar player wanting to learn how to play songs that they like.

Steve:

So what I did was I came up with this idea of what I call ego, ego and project songs, because what I found was a lot of my guitar students tended to be overachievers, especially the students that I had that were more rock or metal music oriented. They just always and I love it, don't get me wrong but they were always very much overachievers. They always wanted to do the hardest 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 that you're not ready for. So if we go back to this beginning student that I was just talking about, that's trying to learn how to play a G chord. And then next week, for this person's guitar lesson, they're given you know, an Yngwie Malmsteen song to play or a Steve Vai song play, you know, or whatever it might be. That's not going to be beneficial for them. They're trying to play something that is so far outside their control, right, they're not going to have success with it. Now again, you could argue, well, they might learn how to do something. Yeah, they can, that's wonderful, but fundamentally it's not on track with what it is that they're trying to learn. Where, if I had the opportunity to teach them whatever fundamentals there are, it is possible that some song that they wanted to learn how to play is getting closer and closer to being able to be acquired by them. So putting things in the right order and doing them at the right time can often make the consistency and the speed at which you're accomplishing things much faster. So with an ego song E-G-O I always think like tapping yourself on the back, you feel good about yourself. So an ego song should be a song that fits into elements that you either A control or B are working on controlling, and you're not trying to learn every single nuance of that song. That's going to put you back in the world of confusion.

Steve:

What happens a lot with guitar players is they don't spend enough time trying to learn how to play something from beginning to end, to experience what it's like to concentrate on whatever it is we're playing for three minutes or four minutes or five minutes or however long this thing is being able to keep time. You know, listen to the music, strum along, um, you know, not get lost, know when the verse is, know when the bridge is, know when the chorus is, know when the breaks are, whatever these things are that we're concentrating on. But learning how to focus yet play at the same time, focus on the music and play at the same time and concentrate and be able to successfully do that for an entire song. So an ego song is exactly that. I'm not asking them to learn the solo and the intro and all the licks and all the fills and everything. We're just trying to have the song meet them where they are in their journey and then learn how to play from beginning to end.

Steve:

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. So to play Knock it On Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan, we need G, d and C and an A minor chord. So right away, the question is is do you know those chords Not? Have you played them before? But do you have control ownership of those chords? Well, I know G, c and D, but A minor I need some work on.

Steve:

Okay, so now we need to make a choice. Do we want to spend some time developing that A minor, so now we can play this song, or do we need to choose a different song because you don't have a minor yet? It's okay, but these are the choices we have to think about. Do I want to put in some time to learn that? Obviously it'd be a great Idea to 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 the question, then we probably shouldn't approach the song. We should find something that just has G, c and D, because that's where your ownership lies.

Steve:

Okay, so we find a song that just uses GC and D. Um, sweet home, alabama, right, gcd there is an F in there, but it happens so little that a lot of times when I teach this from an ego song perspective, we don't even worry about the F, we just play D, c, g, d. Right, that's what we're doing. Is that over and over and over? Well, dcgg, I guess it would be, um. So we don't worry about the picking stuff, we don't worry about the licks, we certainly don'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 then we can focus on the chord changes, we can focus on the strumming, all of these other kinds of techniques that the student is developing in an ownership sort of way, okay, and develop those skills.

Steve:

Now, this particular song wouldn't have any other changes. There isn't a bridge and a chorus and that sort of thing for them to worry about. So it's a great starting point to learn how to play an ego song. And then we would make another choice, another assessment. What's the next song we're going to look at? Well, maybe now we're ready to do Knocking on Heaven's Door, and this student has been working on A minor and now we're going to start putting that together. 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 things now that we have to think about moving back and forth between those two sections, and then strumming and listening to the song, 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 an ego song to me.

Steve:

Now, you might be further along the guitar food chain and it isn't these songs that we're talking about. Maybe we're talking about something else, right, guitar food chain, and it isn't these songs that we're talking about. Maybe we're talking about something else, right? You know a more complex song, but you still have the skill set to make that into an ego song. So if we were looking at, maybe it's Highway to Hell, okay. So now we're dealing with an A and a D and a G and an E, whether you're playing them as open chords or power chords or whatever it is you're doing, okay, and that's what you're focusing on, but you're focusing more on the groove and the strumming, how you're doing that kind of thing. So not just strumming, but now strumming in a rock riff context, okay, with different changes, that sort of thing. Maybe we're looking at Rocky Like a Hurricane, right?

Steve:

So the beginning is the part that most people can do pretty easy if you know your power chords and you can visualize the motion, that sort of thing. And then we get to the verse and the verse has some palm muting with some chords moving and things like that. So again, maybe that fits into your ego song, schematic, or for somebody else, because they've never done palm muting before or power chords are new to them. This isn't an ego song, for them it's a project song. So if that makes sense, what I was trying to tell people is think about it kind of like a five to one ratio, or five to two if you want to, it's fine. But don't have everything be a project song. And let me explain a little bit about a project song now.

Steve:

So a project song to me is a song that at this stage in your playing you're probably not going to be able to play that entire song. You're going to be playing elements of it. So you might go in there on fire ready to go and you get to measure 17. And then it's like, oh my gosh, that's crazy that I can't do that. Crazy Train might be a prime example for a lot of players. The beginning of Crazy Train. Everybody learns that. But as soon as you get to the verse and it requires you to do alternate picking and the pull-off stuff and all those kind of things, maybe that's a struggle for you. So all of a sudden, what you thought would have been, you know, approachable becomes a project song, because that part you've never alternate picked in your life and you don't know how to palm mute. Well, it's going to hang on the project song shelf now, or the project song wall, because there's elements that we need to develop Now.

Steve:

The benefit of a project song is it's going to introduce you to new things that maybe you don't experience when you're looking at ego songs in your comfort zone, in your control space. So the beauty of project songs is you keep going. Oh, I've never done that before. I didn't know about alternate picking, I didn't know about power chords, I didn't know about palm muting. Now I do. So you extract the concept, the technique, the skill set, whatever it is that you're trying to do, and now that becomes part of your practice regimen to develop for not only that song but other songs that are like it. Chances are, if you like Rocky, like a Hurricane by the Scorpions, you like a lot of other stuff that is similar to that, that is going to use a lot of the same skills as far as a guitar player goes. You see, that's the benefit of this.

Steve:

Ego songs are great because they make you feel good, because you were able to play something from beginning to end and experience what that is. You can also do that in front of other people. Maybe you've got, you know, a friend or a relative or something that you're playing for and they're like wow, that was great man, you did really good. That was, it was awesome to listen to you. And now you feel better about yourself. Where the project song thing you're playing a little bit and then you got to keep stopping, and then a little bit and then you got to keep stopping. So it's not that it's bad, it's just understanding that you want to have a ratio of both of these things. Now, finally, I'd want to explain this to you too An ego song can become more of a project song by digging deeper into the song.

Steve:

So if you think about, for instance, sweet Home Alabama, we'll go back to that. If you were just playing the chords and strumming to it, that's all you were doing to it to make it an ego song. But you decide I really, really want to learn how to play the beginning of that. I love the beginning of Sweet Home Alabama. I had Sweet Child of Mine on my brain, sweet Home Alabama. So you start trying to practice the picking part of that. But you're brand new to single note picking and all of the components that go with that. So that element of Sweet Home Alabama becomes a project song element. But you're still able to play the song. So if people ask or you know, just for general practice on a daily basis or whatever it might be, you can play this. But that component of Sweet Home Alabama is a project song component that you're going to keep trying to develop because you find value in it, you find interest, you find worth to practice what that thing is, to develop it.

Steve:

And then the other really great thing here is the more you learn how to control the influx of things that you're trying to work on and the reason that you're working on them and what category they kind of fit into. You know it's okay to have project songs. Like I said, it's no problem. Just be okay with the fact that you recognize right now in your path, in your guitar path, you may not and probably won't be able to play the entire song, because if you could, it wouldn't be an ego or a project song, it'd be more of an ego song. So this is my point Six months from now, if you diligently practice and you try really hard and you learn all the things that you need to learn and study and all of those stuff that we do as guitar players or a year from now or whatever it might be, what happens is some of this stuff that was project songs for you a year ago may not be project songs anymore because you've developed all of these skills. So your landscape of ego songs is ever-changing because your skills are getting better, your knowledge is getting better, your overall control of these things keeps increasing, so the ego songs become more involved.

Steve:

Where for somebody else the song you're playing is a project song, for you it's an ego song. So hopefully that makes sense a little bit, because I get really bummed when I talk to people, and I talk to people all the time about guitar playing and 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 is true. What I think is true is is that you're just not understanding your path and your foundation, and that needs to be organized so you understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, how you're doing it and what your goals are, and then feeding those with songs that match what you're trying to do, as opposed to just hypothetically playing anything. You've got a purpose for the things that you're playing and how they fit into the trajectory of the things that you're learning, if that makes sense. So be careful with that, okay.

Steve:

Now, if you decide that you need any help with this kind of stuff, just letting you know.

Steve:

Here at Guitar Zoom, we've got what's called the Guitar Zoom Academy and this is where we help you with all of this kind of stuff.

Steve:

Get you organized, get you on a plan of attack, understanding what you need to do, getting a practice regimen together, getting you know what it is that you should be studying, what it is that you kind of need to stay away from for right now to stay on track.

Steve:

So often I find guitar players that are just kind of they want to learn, but they're all over the place because there's just so much information everywhere that they don't know what they're supposed to be working on. They don't know in the order of what they're supposed to be working on and they don't understand what they're missing. So that's what that's all about. But anyway, hopefully that makes sense to you and gives you a little bit of clarity on ego songs versus project songs, and to start making some decisions based on where you are in your path and what you own, what you control right to an absolute level. Always remember if you kind of know something, you kind of don't know it, and that's where the problem winds up. Especially if you have multiple pieces of that, then the whole thing just becomes very frail. All right, so take care, stay positive, and I'll talk to you soon.

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