It can be a hard thing for an up and coming musician to really stand up for themselves and to hold their ground when it comes to the tough task of negotiation. It has always been rather difficult for me, and I can’t really say I’ve gotten all that better at it, but I certainly hope I’ve at least improved a little, certainly enough to help you with my experience!

Getting the right guitar for your own style of playing can be an arduous task, or it can be an endless and fun ride for sure! The instrument you choose will not only be the result of how you play it, but it will also help shape the way in which you play, and will definitely play a role in making who you are as a player.

There is so much to be learned from doing live performances, and also so much that can be achieved in terms of making yourself a better player, and a more professional musician. I have found this over the years to be very true, as much of my learning really occurred to begin with in front of live audiences! There were countless times I had to be thrust onstage with many different acts, barely knowing the songs or anything, but being able to use my musical and performing instincts, able to quickly learn, process and perform with feeling, the given material! Of course, it helps to be a good improviser in the first place, but this really did help me become a better one, with a better ear too!

I was a predominantly ear learner, and it’s never been hard for me to extrapolate any ideas or come up with new ones simply by what I hear in my head. “Hear it, then play it” has always been my mantra, and believe it or not, when I wrote my first book, “Slide Guitar”, I only knew where the “G” was on the music staff when I started to write the book (I certainly wasn’t going to embarrass myself by letting them know I couldn’t read!) But I was amazed at how much knowledge I actually had to impart at the tender age of 20, and it seemed the more I delved into my style, the more I therefore knew!

There has always been a long-standing need for guitar players to be overly impressed and impressive with lightning fast playing, and all kinds of technical acrobatics, but in the end, your real success will be determined by how simple you can keep it. After all, even the most technically proficient players eventually will run out of acrobatics, and will really need to state a melody, a theme, or actually play with some pure emotion.

The debate raged from the 1950s through the ’80s and into the early ’90s: tube amplifiers verses solid-state amps. These days, the clear winner in the working musician’s marketplace is tube amps. Even high-priced emulating amps rely on tubes for at least a portion of their tone sculpting — the preamp. And among boutique amp manufacturers it is clear that the tube is king.

I would say that among the most misunderstood things in the world of the guitar, the capo lies right near the top of the list. For many, many years folks would call them “cheaters” as if the only point behind using them would be to keep playing positions that only novice players knew, while the “advanced” players didn’t need them at all. Well, if you really know guitar, you know that this is a totally false assumption, and that the capo is a very valuable tool for the guitarist who really wants to expand their horizons on the instrument!

When it comes to booking that first gig, there’s no age limit. And when it comes to securing a performance in a live music venue, the same strategy applies whether you’re a new solo artist, a teenager starting your first rock band or a group of middle-aged joy pickers longing to take your Sunday classic rock jams out of the garage and onto the stage.

Did you ever wonder how guitarists like Slash or Def Leppard’s Phil Collen gets those really high-pitched squealing tones in their solos? Well, they are called harmonics, and it is something every guitarist should at least have a basic understanding of. These tips are geared toward beginners, but I am making the assumption that you have a basic understanding of playing simple solos using the pentatonic scale and how to read guitar tablature.

One of the most exciting parts of you being a guitar player, and of your further development as a player, is the evolution you will go through. There is nothing like watching the natural evolution of your playing, and in my opinion, it’s really the best thing about being a player to begin with! After all, it is we who control the player we will become, and the inner influences as well as the external ones really have an important influence on us.