"I can only play exactly what's written in tab."
"My playing sounds mechanical — when I improvise, I can only play the same fixed shapes."
Every guitarist runs into this wall at some point.
"Hand me any amp, any guitar, and my sound still comes out."
That's how Tomo Fujita puts it. We asked him for the key to breaking through that wall.
Escaping tab notation
— Most guitar method books are full of technique and tips, but your book felt like it's written about the essence of music itself. It's the kind of book that reminds you of something that sounds obvious — that the guitar is for making music.
Tomo Fujita: I wrote this book to get across, through the CD, the parts that were hard to convey from my time teaching at Berklee. But it doesn't really cover things like how to play scales*1 or blues licks. What matters for playing guitar by ear and feel isn't that.
*1 Tip: scale
A group of notes arranged from a given root note according to a fixed rule. It forms the foundation for a song's melody and chords.
— Not that. A lot of people start out learning guitar by memorizing scales and licks. Are you saying that's not the essence of it?
Tomo Fujita: Exactly right. A lot of people practice guitar by looking at tab, don't they? Playing from tab, or memorizing scales and licks — that's a state where you can play it but don't understand what you're playing. You play without knowing what notes or what chords you're actually playing. You just memorize the shape and play it visually. Instead, I want people to play by ear.
— I feel that deeply myself (laughs). When I try to come up with a new phrase, I end up just moving my fingers without really playing.
Tomo Fujita: In that case, it helps to "limit" your freedom. For example, when I teach improvisation at Berklee, I tell students, "don't touch anything above the 12th fret." That's because high notes sound flashy. Once you use them, you get a false sense of satisfaction — an illusion that you can actually play. And once you're satisfied with that, it's over. By "over," I mean you'll be in the same place two years from now.
So what should you do instead? For example, use just one string. Below the 12th fret, carefully work out exactly what note is sounding at each spot.
— So instead of memorizing a "shape," it's more like moving along one string and catching the sound of each note — do, re, mi — by ear?
Exactly! That's precisely what "playing by ear" means. Memorizing it as a shape isn't the point. It's the same with scales — just running through a scale isn't good enough. That's why, the faster you learn guitar, the more you end up stuck.
As for feel — I think it comes down to not being bound by written notation. When I wrote "Conquering the Guitar with Three Notes: The Triad Approach," I actually played the parts first and wrote the notation afterward. If you write the notation first, it gets stiff. I record everything first, then turn it into notation.
Chills from a single guitar
— Your guitar sounds like full music even though it's just one guitar. It's like you can hear the backing, and you can feel the groove.
Tomo Fujita: Right. That's the appeal of music. If listening to it doesn't give you chills, it's no good. It might sound strange, but if my own playing doesn't give me chills, it isn't interesting.
— True. What kind of practice does that take?
Tomo Fujita: For that, you need to stop doing everything that's easy and comfortable and do the tedious basics first. The first step is building the foundation. It's a bit like quitting smoking or drinking — pretty rough (laughs).
This connects to what I said earlier — first, stop looking at tab. If you're watching someone play on YouTube, don't watch. When I learn from YouTube, I don't watch it — I just record the audio. If you watch, you can see the fingering, and that's no fun.
— So even in practice, it's really about "playing by ear." What about the tedious basics?
Tomo Fujita: By tedious basics, I mean the basic exercises — if your fingers can't move, you can't play, so it's fundamental. Just ordinary fingering exercises. I wrote about it in a fair amount of detail in the book, but people assume it's a simple basic drill and skip over it. Just changing what you're paying attention to completely changes what it means, so doing it carefully matters.
— Changing what you're paying attention to — specifically, how do you change that?
Tomo Fujita: A lot of people tend to think they have to prioritize tempo. Instead, focus on playing slowly and carefully, sustaining and connecting each note. Also, you need to play everything with downstrokes only. Everyone tends to use alternate picking, but that makes it harder, and that's not good.
Once you can do that, next, play softly. (Lighten your picking touch and start playing at a volume quiet enough that you can still hear the air conditioner.)
— Amazing. That's barely-audible territory.
Tomo Fujita: When I play softly, you can generally hear the air conditioner (laughs). A sound quieter than the air conditioner — that's what you get out of the amp.
— When I play normally, I never even notice the air conditioner.
Tomo Fujita: Right. Then next is descending — going down the scale. You have to play descending passages even more slowly than ascending ones. If you play a descending line at the same tempo as an ascending one, you get noise. Ascending, play slowly; descending, play even more slowly.
Doing this kind of basic training widens your dynamic range and enriches your nuance. People who play from tab skip this kind of practice, and they end up doing something that resembles playing while tense — so it never actually becomes playing.
— I see. It's hard to call it "playing" when you're just tracing notation and moving your fingers at the same intensity throughout. So should this basic training be done for a long time?
Tomo Fujita: No, five or ten minutes is fine. Rather than doing hours at a time, it's better to keep at it steadily and make it a habit.
— If it feels like a chore, you won't keep it up. Is there anything else to watch out for in that practice?
Tomo Fujita: You shouldn't do this practice on headphones or with the guitar's raw acoustic sound. That's because you can't hear it well, so you end up playing too hard without noticing. If you plug into an amp and play at that same intensity, it feels quite loud. Playing softly is what matters above everything.
Here's something interesting — I use celluloid picks. Celluloid chips if you play too hard. Let me try playing hard once. There. (After strumming a chord forcefully, he shows a pick that's been significantly worn down.)
— Whoa, it wears down that much instantly?
Tomo Fujita: Celluloid is a flammable material, so it wears down fast. After a gig where I felt like the sound wasn't good, I'll look at the pick and find it's pretty worn down. When you're nervous, you end up putting in too much force. You wouldn't notice that with a hard pick. You'd just walk away thinking, "that was a good show today." I check my pick after a gig and reflect on it — "maybe I played a bit too hard." Kind of like waking up hungover and thinking, "maybe I drank a bit too much" (laughs).
— I see (laughs). But listening to you live, I get the feeling this subtlety of dynamics isn't something YouTube or an amp simulator can fully reproduce.
Tomo Fujita: That's the difficult part of technology. It's true the recording is clean, but the nuance doesn't come through.
— Like there's compression on it the whole time.
Tomo Fujita: Right, exactly. So conversely, even if you play a bit too hard, it doesn't sound like bad playing. On top of that, if you adjust the EQ, smooth it out, add effects, it ends up sounding good regardless. But to give people chills playing live, this dynamics practice really pays off. It's especially clear with solo guitar.
To play guitar that changes the mood of a room, building that foundation from the start matters most. Don't tense your fingers, and don't let finger noise creep in. This is something you really can't understand without using an amp.
— So it really is best to do basic practice at home through an amp whenever possible.
Tomo Fujita: Yes. For example, when I was a student, I bought a Champ 12 amp — my first one. That amp only has volume, treble, and bass. I really wanted to practice dynamics, so I did a slightly unusual exercise with that amp.
— What kind of exercise was that?
Tomo Fujita: I'd set the volume fairly high, bass at zero, treble at ten.
— Whoa, that sounds scary to play (laughs).
Tomo Fujita: And on top of that, I'd practice with that setting at night. Playing loud at night would obviously bother people, so that became practice in itself. But thanks to that, even with the volume turned up some, if I play softly I can get about the same output as playing normally on an unplugged guitar.
— That's a great practice method even for people who can't use an amp at home because of the neighbors.
Tomo Fujita: Right. I've trained this way for a long time, and what that gives me is this: hand me any amp, any guitar, and my sound still comes out.
A weapon shaped by your environment
— Where does that root, or that way of thinking, come from?
Tomo Fujita: I think a big part of it is that I lived on the East Coast of the U.S. In New York, you move between clubs by taxi, so you can't bring a lot of big gear. Some venues already have an amp set up, so you just carry your pedals and guitar. That way you can travel with just a shoulder bag. I think that's the result of thinking about how to express myself using only minimal gear.
— So the environment shaped it.
Tomo Fujita: Right. When I was in Japan, I used a lot more gear and had a big pedalboard, but it kept getting smaller and smaller.
— Because you became able to express your sound even without much gear.
Tomo Fujita: That's right. Also, indirectly, I think Cornell Dupree had a big influence on me. There's an album called "Teasin'," and the more you listen to it, the more amazing it is that he barely uses any effects — almost straight into the amp. But it sings so much. He's not using especially flashy technique, but he really understands how to phrase.
I made my first album around '91, and my sound back then was pretty much Larry Carlton — fairly distorted. I decided that wasn't right for me, and after that I stopped listening to much jazz. From then until around '95 I played mostly blues. I think that's around when my own sound started to take shape.
A session with the metronome!?
— Next I'd like to ask about rhythm. People are often told to play along with a metronome, but that can turn into desperately chasing the click, and end up sounding mechanical.
Tomo Fujita: Saying "play along with a metronome" is technically correct, but the explanation is incomplete. What it means is: first learn to play it alone, and only then use the metronome to keep tempo. What matters most is whether your body is grooving while you play. Something I often do with my Berklee students is assign homework to film themselves playing something for one minute, and I watch it first with the sound off.
— With the sound off!? You want to watch the body movement?
Tomo Fujita: Right. Watching them, a lot of students clearly don't have the groove. That's a problem, because if that's the case, the audience won't get it either. A performer has to move their body so the people watching can lock in with them.
— So even playing alone, groove comes before the metronome. Is there a first step for practicing that?
Tomo Fujita: What matters most is building the groove inside yourself first, and only then playing with the click. Then it starts to sound as if the click itself is grooving. You're having a session with the click.
— Does it matter what song you practice with? Recent pop songs, for instance?
Tomo Fujita: Anything works. But if you can, it's better to practice with something slow and simple — swing, shuffle, that kind of thing. With sixteenth notes, there are so many notes packed in that it's busy, and it inevitably sounds like it's in time regardless. Plain power chords would work just fine, even.
That said, what you want to be conscious of is melody. Once you've built up rhythm, learning to play alone means being able to picture a melody in your head, and that's important.
Let the melody sound inside you
— When it comes to listening to music while studying guitar, is it better to listen to a wide variety of songs, or to dig deep into one song?
Tomo Fujita: Generally, listening broadly is better. But once your focus narrows down some, it's better to dig deep into one album, or even just one song, by one artist. Back in the day, people listened to music on records, so listening by album was the only option. That naturally makes what you get out of a single song go deeper. These days everything is digital, so you can jump to a different song instantly. I think it's better to pick a small number of songs and listen to them a lot.
— It does feel like that sticks with you more. When you listen to music, what are you thinking about as you listen?
Tomo Fujita: Well, for example, when I'm flying back to Japan from the U.S., I often listen to recent Japanese pop hits. I check for the songs with good melodies among them. I listen to a song like that maybe 20 times on the flight, and when I seriously try to transcribe the melody, it gets interesting. Japanese pop is calculated and constructed to sell, so the melodic phrasing isn't improvised. I turn that around and use it on the guitar instead. Guitar tends to be over-improvised and doesn't stick in the ear, so I bring the rhythm of pop melodies into my improvising. When I do that, even my solos become clearer.
This is how I approach it — when I'm listening to a song and something starts "sounding" inside me, I try to play it. It's good to build the habit of listening that way on a regular basis.
— Even when transcribing by ear like that, is it important not just to be able to play the melody, but to understand the chords as well?
Tomo Fujita: When I'm working out a melody, I'm thinking about what the chords are doing. Melody and chords are meant to be understood as a set. On top of that, it's important to understand melody in terms of scale degrees. I bring up triads a lot, and the reason is that to know scale degrees, you need to know the major scale and triads. Once you understand scale degrees, you can take the scale-degree ideas you learned from a song with a good melody and put them into your solos. I think that's the single most important point for moving away from generic pentatonic shapes. This kind of study is admittedly tedious and difficult, but it's on top of this study that you develop the sense of a melody sounding inside your head.
— I see. That study is exactly what your book "The Book for Playing Guitar by Ear and Feel" lays out clearly and from the basics.
Tomo Fujita: Right. People who actually read and understand this book get better. Most people, honestly, don't read it (laughs). If they do, maybe once. Really, reading it about three times is best. Reading it that many times deepens your understanding, and ideas start to click. That's when it becomes effective.
I organized it carefully when I wrote it, so I think it's ideal as a first step. Reading the whole thing is admittedly a lot of work, but even reading a few chapters, I think you'll definitely notice something.
— So working through that study raises your fundamentals in whatever genre you normally play, and it can lead into arranging and improvisation as well.
Tomo Fujita: I think it connects a great deal. If anything, you can't move to the next stage without the basics in place.
Freeing up the guitar, and moving to the next stage
— Do your previously published books, like "Conquering the Guitar with Three Notes: The Triad Approach," dig deeper into these ideas?
Tomo Fujita: Yes. At Berklee, we work on knowing intervals by scale degree and connecting that to triads. That's a part that's genuinely hard to learn on your own, and tab often fails to convey it. In that book, I wrote a lot about the exercises I felt worked best for practicing the fine relationships between triads and scale degrees, starting from the fundamentals.
To become a distinctive guitarist, fundamental study really does matter. It's a book for guitarists to move to their "next stage."
