Guitar Ben Howard

Keeping your head up

I have decided to start learning some of Ben Howards songs. He is an acoustic guitar player and singer, who is very talented. His music has a very distinct style and it is very original. Here is a video of what the song sounds like. I would also like to learn two other songs by Ben Howard. This was part of my creativity due to me having to further my ability in playing guitar and to figure out how Ben Howard plays his different riffs.

Objectives

My objectives for this project are for me to learn the three songs by Ben Howard I like the most, which are, "Keep Your Head Up";"Further Away" and "Only Love". I want to be able to play these fluently and without errors. I think this was a hard enough goal, seeing Ben Howards guitar playing capabilities, he uses such unusual ways of tuning and playing and this is what made me feel inspired by him, because he in a way opened a new genre for himself.

Progress

So far I have been able to learn "Further Away" and " Keep Your Head Up". These I have gotten onto a quite fluent level and you can see that i still make some errors while playing, however make it through quite fluently. I still have to learn "only Love", however I am up to that over the next few weeks, I hope over the next few weeks these songs become of performing quality.

Reflection

Now at the end of learning the three songs of Ben Howard, I must say it was a journey for myself, his songs are the kind that you learn and you dont really forget ever as you have t opractice so long to get his way of playing down that the muscle memory is so ingrained in one that one doesnt really forget it easily. "Keep Your Head up" was the first song I learnt of him and it was the simplest of the lot I must say, this was due to the song being mostly in a conventional playing wise, which was finger picking which I had done a lot of before the time. This meant I enjoyed learning it more as I found it easy to pick up on, it was also a song I admired Ben Howard for writing as I could relate to a lot, he has a way of putting words in the lyrics that invoke so many thoughts in one whilst one hears them. The song itself was quite straight forward, therefore I do not really have much to say about it, however after learning "Keep Your Head up", I started learning "Further Away", this was a whole different challenge for myself, it was a very up beat song, a lot of rhythmic difficulties and strange tuning. Ben Howard tuned it to a open C tuning, then he put a capo on the 7th fret however only over 5 strings and left the open E string without capo, he then used harmonics combing with a strumming and fingerpicking style which was new for me, I had to learn so many different skills to play this song, I spent maybe 40 hours over the last 8 months alone practicing this song and I have never been as proud before learning something, as I was learning that, it was a great achievement for me and I felt like I was progressing a lot in guitar for that, I set out even to learn his solo at the end and everything, it was a very great experience I had and it open new doors for me in terms of writing music as well, it made me think in different ways, and I was great full to learn anything he played. I also learnt only love which was similar style to "Further Away", I again had the same experience learning that song as I had with the two before. I started appreciating what Ben Howard was writing and what it all was about, he has a lot of depth in his songs, however sometimes it was quite dark and gloomy, it was something I started playing when I was in a sadder mood, as I felt I made a connection with what he wrote and it invoked in me a sense to write something myself, the whole activity gave me inspiration to do something new with my guitar skills and start processing thoughts and ideas in a different way, especially emotions that one holds back, however I still felt it hard to bring pen to paper and write exactly what I felt and meant, I felt I needed more time to create something that I was happy with, that had depth to me. However I feel like the activity was a great success for me, it opened new doors in my mind, it allowed me to connect more with myself and further my guitar skills.