How to Play a Ringtone on an Electric Guitar

The electric guitar is a perfect instrument for imitating the jangling sounds of a ringtone. Properly amplified, you guitar can replicate some of the same flat-sounding electronic tones. Learning the ringtone on the guitar can help you to hone your ear for music.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Listen to the ringtone a few times to get the song fixed in your head.

2. Look for sheet music on the Internet. For lots of songs, you can find written music known as "tabs" or tablature online (see Resources below).

3. Review the song and write down the notes. You can find the notes of the ringtone by reading the music or by listening closely to what is being played. While getting the music by ear, play short parts of the song to locate each note on the guitar. Write the notes down until you have a full song.

4. Play the notes in sequence. It might not sound right, but if you wrote the notes down correctly, you're probably on the right track.

5. Add rhythm. If your composition doesn't sound like your favorite ringtone song, you're probably not playing the notes the right way. A flat sequence of notes might not sound like much of anything. Imitate the tempo of the ringtone with appropriate spaces between each note, and you should start to hear a song emerge.

Resources

• Some guitar tabs