Here are some thoughts to consider. One thing I found out by examining the best guitarists that I know is that they all seem to love learning things on the guitar. They love the entire process of playing, learning things, getting better. They find joy in playing at whatever level they are at right now, while knowing that there is some room for improvement.

Many players I know get impatient with learning and they often are asking why it’s taking so long for them to get a part down, or they anxiously wait until they get to a goal.

The process itself to the goal is built on and filled with frustration. You do that for a couple of years – and, guitar playing sucks. That is not the way to approach it.

So, ask yourself whether you are intrigued by playing and do you really enjoy having the guitar in your hands, do you like the whole guitar universe … but, not only when it comes to gear. Buying gear is too easy. For gear, you give money and get a positive boost for a few days. This is why new gear gets old fast and something learned that’s new on the guitar stays with you forever.

I think you need to accept the fact that you will never “arrive” and will always be a student of the guitar. A much better student as years go by, mind you. Well, if you put in the work. Those are important ideas to keep in mind for you. Do you like the process and love the guitar, or do we want to get to a goal, so we can get something else from it?

What Is The True Hidden Secret Of A Metronome?

The metronome conversation comes up often with my students and I always do mention to them that I have used the metronome myself a lot – especially in my major woodshedding/college days.

But, I have to say that I think many guitarists think of a metronome not in full light. What I mean by that is that most think of a metronome as a speed building tool. And, yes it can be that, too. But, it is actually something even more important.

The real secret of the metronome is that it also a SLOOOW Down tool! Yep, the strength of it is not what most associate metronomes with.

How it works.

If I have a guitar phrase that I know I can perform more cleanly and in time, I can take my metronome and choose a click tempo that is where I sort of play the lick. I get this in a ballpark. Then, I slow it down considerably and I make sure that I understand where every note lays. This way there are no surprises whatsoever when I play my lick up to tempo. I burn in the notes slow, feeling that slow tempo, working through all my finger position changes, going over and over while getting to understand what I am playing 100% percent. This is how you play anything lightning fast with conviction because you can also play it slow perfectly. Playing something slower than you are comfortable with prepares you for faster takes later.

Remember: Slow To Smooth, Smooth To Fast.

So, just remember this lesson because it’s a good one.

Ever since I started to play the guitar I have been fascinated with how our minds work, how life’s proven principles work and how that all ties into success on our instrument; whether it’s playing it, forging a carreer out of it, etc.

I don’t really believe that anyone is born confident or born unconfident. Several factors shape our confidence in anything. So I believe that Confidence (in anything) is made out of Courage, Commitment and Capabilities.

We can apply these 3 to anything anyone would feel Confident in. And, just for fun, I run examples of this for myself based on what I want to see in anyone’s confidence or why someone has achieved a goal of some sort that I feel inspired by.

Okay, the pieces.

Courage: Well, nothing happens unless Courage happens. Courage is doing something without knowing what is on the other side. It is buying a guitar at 45 (while your friends give you the eye) and not knowing if you can learn the damn thing in the first place. It is buying a house and saying that you’ll be able to pay for it for the next 30 years. It is asking a girl out not knowing if she’ll laugh at you or not. It is auditioning for a band not knowing if you are good enough.

Commitment is us saying to ourselves that you are in it for a long haul. There might be ups and downs, but you are hauling forward. No matter what happens you will figure the shit out and end up on the other side. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

Capabilities is you sharpening your sword. It is getting the necessary skills, wisdom and application of them in order for you to become the best at a task that you can be.

You see, we can’t have one without the other. You have to have all 3 to be Confident in something.

If you are commited to playing the guitar and work on your Capabilities, but are afraid to jam with people (lacking Courage), you will never be Confident in it.

Here’s a flip scrpit. Let’s say you are are always up to playing with anyone (Courage), you can keep constantly looking for friends to jam with (Commitment), but if you never develop your skills (Capabilities), you will never feel Confident, because who wants to jam with people when you feel like you can’t play anything.

Of course, this goes way beyond music and you can apply these 3 to being Confident in anything. I think this is a good lesson. Give it some thought. It is pretty amazing to see and learn lessons from the past as you start reconstructing your past moves. You can see where you dropped the ball and which item (Courage, Commitment or Capabilities) cost you success.

Guitar playing is a Winter sport. I say that as it is easy to stay indoors while the evenings are long and the weather is cold. Once the warm months arrive, many players trade their instruments for beach flip flops. I, however always used the Summer months as opportunities to put in extra work while my guitar playing friends were at the beach partying.

For whatever reason, I always had guitar playing friends who were more advanced than me and who played guitar way longer that I did. And, in turn, I did anything I could to catch up and try to surpass them. And, the warm days were my secret weapon. I used these days to catch up and get better.

When school finished and everyone went their separate ways for the Summer break, I went straight to the basement ready to play the guitar all day long. Once school started many of my friends were no longer better guitarists.

Remember this tip and I hope it does great things for you.

Today, I want to share a cool tip that definitely applies to the guitar.

When we run a marathon (Let’s pretend) how do we do it? We usually start off at a slow pace and run towards to the finish line. Since the finish line is far off, it makes little sense to sprint since we’d be out of breath after a mile. We are in for a long haul.

In guitar playing, however, our playing goals such as better fluidity, better dextrerity, a part of a solo that should be mastered or a new recording can be achieved with better results if we pick-up the pace a bit. Think of these things as a sprint. Set the target and go like hell to the finish line.

Because, unlike a marathon, we are closer to great results than we give ourselves credit for.

I think it’s a wise move to approach guitar playing as a sprint and not a marathon. Or, at least as a marathon that is composed of little sprints. Let’s pick up the pace and be in a bigger hurry to get to the results. That means less goofing around when playing and getting to what we need to work on. Establish razor sharp focus, pick up the pace and lock in.

Things we want to achieve often are closer to us than what we sometimes think.
Anything we watch and stay on top of improves.

Lastly, don’t analyze your playing achievements once a year or every few months. Measure them more often! Perhaps even weekly. What have you done with your playing this week? Was it a day of good practice, 3 days of noodling and 3 days off? Again, if we think goals are far way (Marathon mentality) we don’t press enough. Think sprint and measure often.

I have a strong belief that people who perform at high levels measure their progress very often, perhaps daily if not hourly.

Last week I had a chance to talk with a pro bastketball player who also teaches and mentors young students. We discussed how when we both (me as a guitar coach) show someone something new, the students often begin to play or simluate what we are teaching them BEFORE we are done showing them what it is that we want them to do. Apparently, this is not exclusive to guitar players 🙂

So, we laughed about that because when you are on the other side of the table – it’s true.

He then told me something about mastering new techniques that he sticks by:

SLOW To SMOOTH, SMOOTH = FAST

With guitar playing, this goes something like this. When learning, we often want to play anything new fairly up to speed and then we slowly adjust something if a part of the riff, lick does not sound good or clean. This is a LONG way to getting something to sound right because we are “feeling out” what is wrong – we’re guessing. With enough time in and with enough guesses will you clean up your riff, lick or whatever? Probably yes! But it takes a loooong time and we don’t have that much time now versus when we were 15.

Even if you are 15 and are reading this – start doing it the right way!

The way to get anything fast is to play is SLOW until you can play it at a slow tempo SMOOTH. The trick is that once you are able to play anything new SLOW & SMOOTH – the speed finds YOU. In other words, you don’t have to work hasrd on getting faster. It’s amost is if, if you take the time to put in the work to learn something slow … speed shows up BECAUSE you no longer have any “ifs”, “not sures”, or “gray areas” that internally (in your mind) stop you from beinfg (or feeling) free to play faster or fast.

One of the worst things to hear is someone not get the intricacies of a lick or riff down and hear him play it lightning fast. Uh, no thanks.

Lessons, studying – yes, we all learn and make mistakes, make adjustments. It’s all good. But, I’m talking about the music store heroes playing stuff they’re not ready for.

So, I want you to think about the above and really stop yourself if you feel you’re not following the above advice. I’m confident is saying that because I’m 100% certain that it works.

Today, I want to talk about Overdrives and Distortion pedals because I feel some players are still confused about this a little bit.

I guess I’ll start to say that I never used a Distortion pedal in its true sense of the word. In order to get a good use out of a distortion pedal, you would have to play through a clean amp as the pedal adds just that – lots of distortion.

Since I use an amp that has an overdrive built in already (as I am sure all of you guys do as well), I choose to go with an Overdrive. What separates an Overdrive from the Distirtion pedal, is that the Overdrive gives your sound that little extra, that sweet boost needed for chunky tight rhythms and signing leads without throwing a ton and ton of gain on your amp. It works differently from a Distortion pedal. You can think of it as a milder version of a Distortion, although this is not exactly it, either.

If I plugged in a Distortion pedal in front of my head, the sound would be way overdriven and saturated. Not a good thing.

Here is how I use the Overdive to get a good sound and I’m pretty sure that most pro players do something in the ballpark.

When I play through a Marshall head (or, any high gain head or a combo) that already has a decent amount of gain, I leave the gain on the head at just about anywhere between 7 and 8.5. I don’t make the head work 100%.

In front of it, I run an Overdrive pedal which is always a Maxon OD-9. (Maxon OD-9 is closely associated with an Ibanez Tube Screamer, so if you are familiar with that pedal, then you might know what I’m referring to) But, any good Overdrive works depending on your taste. In the past, I also used the classic yellow Boss SuperOverdrive and Maxon OD808 which is very similar to the OD-9, but with less bass and more straight cut.

On the Maxon Overdrive, I keep the Gain/Overdrive just at around 10:30/11:00 O-Clock, Tone straight up at 12 and the Level pretty much just like the tone at 10:30/11. No matter what I’m using amp wise, this Overdrive setting works just as good. If the amp’s gain is weak, I might crank up the gain on the pedal.

So, amp’s gain not full tilt and you use the Overdrive to warm up/hot rod the sound. As you can see, I do not make any component work full tilt, which I think helps keep things in check.

See how it works for you. Of course, there can be variations of this depending on amps, guitars, style, etc., but this is pretty sure-fire way to get a cool sound.

In case anyone wants to know how my pedalboard looks like, it is also very simple.

Guitar goes into my pedals in this order:

1. Boss TU-2 Tuner

2. Dunlop Q95 Wah (This Wah is automatically turned on when you step on it. As soon as you take your foot off – it automatically switches off. I like that, because sometimes I don’t have time to worry about clicking it On/Off. It also has a button for 4db boost which is great for solos)

3. Maxon OD-9 Overdrive

4. Some sort of Chorus (Often a Maxon, or a simple Boss Super Chorus). Sometimes I bypass this step all together.

5.Boss NS-2 Noise Supressor, but if my rig is quiet, I even bypass that.

Any delay runs through the effects loop in the head. For the delay, I use a simple Boss Digital Delay stomp box. Many people are suprised when they hear me say that, but that Boss Delay pedal sounds good to me and I just leave it alone.

This is all fairly simple, to the point approach and I always think that the less stuff I got going on, the better the result.