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HOW TO CREATE MUSICAL IDEAS THAT ARE MUSICAL

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by Andrea Basiola

personally think that knowing how to create musical ideas is something that should belong to every musician, and not only to guitarists, so this article is addressed to anyone who would like to make their playing more interesting and complete.

However what do we exactly mean by “musical”?

To me an idea is “musical” when it meets these requirements:

- it’s pleasant to listen to: it has to be well played, in time, and with no bum notes. It has to flow with the music.

- it’s rememberable: this is a very important point to me. When you can remember a melody that means you created something musical. People tend to sing or whistle !
melodies, if they do, you are catching their attention.

- it’s singable: when you can sing it like a vocal line or melody.

Every time I want to create a solo, or a melody I normally tend to respect these rules. !
This depends also on which style of music you are playing and in particular which songs, meaning that your ideas have always to be in the context of the piece and never sound “out of place”.

Here is how I personally approach the creation of a solo or a musical phrase.

  1. LISTEN CAREFULLY TO THE BACKING TRACK many times until you are confident with that and you can master it. By doing this you can more easily find the right notes and melodies
  2. SING THE NOTES, this is essential. If you do it, you are not gonna go wrong, you are going straight to the point in finding only the notes that you need. Sometimes you might not find them immediately and it might take a while, but will also come up with more options for your composition.
  3. TRANSPOSE THE NOTES ON THE GUITAR: you’ll find out that if you sing the notes, you will find them much faster on your fretboard.

I still notice now how finding the right melody can vary from day to day. Sometimes it comes immediately and sometimes it takes hours or even days. It depends also on the inspiration, and how you are feeling on that particular moment.

In order to create a good musical solo, we can also use techniques and tricks that will make our composition really stand out:
1 – SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE. Playing hundreds of notes at high speeds isn’t always the right choice. If we use some rests, pauses, and even different note values, we will give something special and different to our solo.

EXAMPLE: Have a listen to the solo in “Goodbye to Romance” by Ozzy Osbourne. It starts with a slow melody and it speeds up later on. This solo is a great example because it has everything in it,with the right amount of notes and dynamics.

2 – DYNAMICS. These can be given by using different playing techniques: palm muting, bending, volume swells,, etc
You should also consider 2 key points : TENSION and RELEASE.
When a moment of release follows a moment of tension you are creating dynamics and you are actually “telling a story” with your solo.

EXAMPLE: This particular phrase is taken from the solo of the song “Took the message” from the upcoming album of my band Future Shock. It’s an idea I often use in my solos. It starts with a quite fast run up , using the A minor blues scale, and ending with a powerful bending on the 8th fret on the B string, which resolves to the root note of A.
|————————————————|—————————————————|!
|————————————————|—————————————8b10~—|!
|————————————2-5p2— |2——5—7p5—5-8-7-5———————|!
|——————————2-5———5—|—5/7—7——7————7——————|!
|—3-5-6-5-3—3-5-6——————— |—————————————————|!
|5—————5————————— |—————————————————! !
3. KNOWING YOUR LIMITS. When you are in the process of creating something, you always want the best. Too often we are not satisfied with our ideas, and we keep on looking for new ones, ending up in a endless vicious circle.
It’s very easy to lose the feeling and the nature of the solo. Once we find an idea that we like, we should stick to that one.

4 – THEORY CAN HELP: Knowing some basic music theory can really help you to take the “right path” in your compositions. Choosing the right scales, chords, etc… can make the difference and it will prove that you know
what you are doing and what you want to achieve.

Creative Blues Rhythm Guitar

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Tommaso Zillio

 

Do you know how to play a creative Blues rhythm part on your guitar? Most Blues player focus all their efforts on learning how to solo and simply ignore the rhythm side of playing. This is a pity, because there is much more than power chords and shuffle rhythms out there. Let’s see some easy options.

The problem seems to be that many guitar players are afraid to study harmony… and it’s a pity because it’s not so difficult to do and there are many rewards in doing it. On the other hand most players seem to simply try and learn by heart a certain amount of patterns, and then use them rigidly. It’s difficult to be creative under these conditions.

Many players who know how to build their own patterns can also improvise using chords, creating more than one melody line at the same time. Think of what players like Eric Johnson can do with chords: it’s because they haven’t learned these patters by heart, rather they know how to build and modify them depending on the context. Wouldn’t you like to get started on this in a simple way?

The solution is for us to make friends with an interesting musical interval: the tritone. To hear a tritone (that can also called diminished 5th or augmented 4th) try playing the notes C and F# on your guitar. Yes, it’s dissonant! But dissonance is not bad, dissonance is “spice”. Too much, and you have ruined your music, but if you don’t put any then your music is boring.

In Blues specifically the tritone is one of the most used intervals to give that zest that is typical of Blues music. Despite the bad reputation that the tritone gets from classical music – where it was often called “the interval of the devil” and used only with extreme care – the tritone sounds great in the right context. It’s in fact the interval at the core of most chords used in Blues. To see how to use it in practice, watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcZMWpHXCQ4

What should you do now? Well, no amount of reading or video-watching will substitute for direct experience and ear training so… pick up your guitar and play everything I played in the video. You will see immediately that it’s very easy to create some nifty harmonies just by adding notes on the first or second strings as I explained.

As a side note, this is also one of the best ways to learn “Jazz chords”. Rather than committing all these patterns by heart yo are much better off to see how they are built and what kind of “freedom” you have to modify them, as we have seen here. Of course, the video contains only a small fraction of all the possible Jazz chords, but the important thing here is the method. Have fun with it!

About the Author

A professional guitarist, teacher, and composer, Tommaso Zillio enjoys particularly writing about music theory and its application to guitar playing

How To Improve Your Guitar Skills By Learning About John Petrucci’s Style

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By Tom Hess

Want to play guitar like John Petrucci? If you’re like most guitar players, you ‘only’ pay attention to his fast guitar playing and complex music writing style. However, to truly get the best value from studying this great guitarist, you will need to look much more closely to identify more subtle (yet important) areas within his style. Only then will you be able to fully utilize his style to enhance your own guitar playing.

These are the five most frequently overlooked elements in John Petrucci’s style that will benefit you most as a guitar player:

1. Very Precise Rhythm Guitar Playing

In addition to being an excellent lead guitar player, Petrucci has an uncanny ability to play tight, intricate rhythm guitar parts. In spite of this, most guitarists do not pay much attention to his rhythm playing because they do not perceive it to be as skillful as his lead guitar phrasing.

On the contrary, it is equally as difficult to play and record flawless rhythm guitar parts as it is to play high speed guitar solos. There exist many subtle nuances in rhythm guitar playing that most (primarily) lead guitar players have never even heard of. Here are ‘some’ of these nuances:

  • Maintaining perfect silence (no noise) during rests between chords or notes
  • Keeping the intonation of each string 100% perfect (it’s very challenging to do while playing any chord larger than a basic two note power chord)
  • Getting rid of all the noise that can be created from vibrations in strings that aren’t being played
  • Using consistent palm muting for ALL chords/notes
  • Keeping all pinch harmonics ‘in key’ while playing them with vibrato that matches the rhythm in the music
  • Doing all these things with perfect timing
  • Doing all of these things MANY times over while recording multiple tracks for a part in a song

Additionally, the majority of Petrucci’s music is written for odd meter while using complex songwriting techniques, playing in between beats and making tons of unexpected changes to note values. This makes it difficult to play even the easiest of Petrucci’s rhythm guitar licks with perfect timing.

How Will This Make You A Better Guitar Player?

Understand that rhythm guitar playing is much more than simply playing along to the beat of the music or matching the ticks of a metronome. Then do these two things to become a better rhythm guitarist:

1. Take the time to listen to any of Petrucci’s music from his band Dream Theater while focusing ‘only’ on his rhythm guitar playing and how it matches up perfectly with the drum parts in the song. Once you do this, you will gain a totally different perspective on what it means to be a great rhythm guitar player.

2. Learn how to make your rhythm guitar playing tight using this guitar recording resource.

2. Excellent Performing Skills In Live Situations

Most fans of John Petrucci overlook the fact that he plays with great consistency during live shows. In addition to playing ‘highly complex’ music, Petrucci is also taking advantage of a highly developed skill set that gives him the ability to play excellent live shows. Fact is, playing live is totally different than playing at home or in the studio. Most musicians who are not used to the pressure of playing in live settings will struggle to perform well even if they are great at recording in the studio (or playing while alone in their room). Playing live presents challenges such as low lighting levels, playing when you can’t hear yourself, playing without much sleep, playing while being tired and covered in sweat plus a wide variety of other issues. It takes a real master guitarist to consistently perform his music as accurately as possible under these circumstances.

How Will This Make You A Better Guitar Player?

Know that ‘playing’ and ‘performing’ are two completely separate things and treat them as such when it comes time to practice. To play at the highest level, you must invest a great deal of time into practicing ‘performing’ while trying your best to recreate the challenges of playing in a live setting (like the ones mentioned above). Only then can you become perfectly consistent while playing live on stage.

That said, even if you aren’t interested in touring with a band as a pro musician, it is still highly important that you learn how to perform in live settings so you can be confident while playing in front of others. Learn how to overcome musician stage fright.

3. Guitar Solo Phrasing Ability

Guitar players who attempt to emulate Petrucci’s soloing style often focus on his ‘speed’ when they should be focusing on his ability to smoothly connect melodies together with excellent phrasing. This is what makes his guitar solos seamlessly transition from one melodic idea to the next with clear ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’ points. By listening to his work with Dream Theater you can hear tons of examples displaying this quality. Here are just a few:

  • “Voices”
  • “The Spirit Carries On”
  • “Forsaken”
  • “The Best Of Times”
  • “Ministry Of Lost Souls”

After listening closely to the solos above, you will clearly hear both a start and end to each phrase. Additionally, you will notice how each time a phrase is played, it sounds like a natural progression from the one that was played prior. This has the powerful effect of moving the music forward and taking the listener on a journey.

Petrucci’s phrasing approach has a lot in common with the one used by Yngwie Malmsteen. Yes, both players have an overall style that is very different, BUT both use the same approach when it comes to connecting the phrases of their solos together in a smooth, flowing manner. Learn more about Malmsteen’s specific musical style by checking out this Yngwie Malmsteen electric guitar lesson.

This soloing approach used by Petrucci is entirely different from the one used by the majority of guitar players. In most cases, guitar players simply play through the notes of the scales they have memorized without trying to build distinct phrases. This causes their guitar solos to sound ‘random’ and does not provide a smooth sense of progression for the listener.

How Will This Make You A Better Guitar Player?

You must abandon the approach of mindlessly running up and down scales during guitar solos and instead focus on:

1. Putting together articulate phrases that sound like clear musical statements. Find out how to do this by reading this guitar soloing article.

2. Create a solo based on a specific melodic theme that will be ornamented using different guitar techniques. This will be much less difficult once you can think about soloing similar to how a singer writes his/her vocal melodies. See a demonstration of these concepts by watching this video on how to create a guitar solos.

4. Innovative 7 String Guitar Playing

I have already written a 7 string guitar column where I discussed a crucial mistake made by 7 string guitar guitarists: focusing too much on the lowest string, making their playing boring and repetitive. John Petrucci does not make this same mental error. Instead he uses the expanded range of the instrument much like how a piano player takes advantage of the wide range of the piano. A great pianist will not remain in just one octave range throughout an entire song. He will utilize the entire range of his instrument to give himself the potential to achieve the highest degree of creativity possible.

How Will This Make You A Better Guitar Player?

Whether you play lead or rhythm guitar, you must avoid this habit of continually focusing on the extreme higher or lower pitch ranges. If you play 7 string guitar, this is even more important (because this problem is more obvious). Learn how to become a more balanced and creative guitarist using these free resources:

1. Free 7 string guitar player mini course

2. Resource about playing rhythm guitar riffs

5. Mastery Of Various Songwriting Approaches

In Petrucci’s band Dream Theater, he writes music using a wide variety of different styles. This is made possible by Petrucci’s ability to write not just for guitar, but also for all other instruments used in the band’s songs. Being able to do this (while writing very complex music) requires complete mastery of different songwriting approaches instead of simply writing using the same approach every time.

Additionally, Petrucci (Dream Theater’s primary songwriter) may be a guitarist, but his music is not skewed toward ‘guitar’ parts only. In fact, a lot of Dream Theater’s songs are written in a way that focuses on the rhythms, melodies and motives of drums, synthesizer, piano or bass while guitar serves more of a minor role (when necessary).

Unlike Petrucci, the majority of guitar players write their music in a highly improvisational manner. In most cases, all of their songs are written by simply hoping that something ‘cool’ will happen while they are playing through the same licks or chords over and over. Then they will simply try to mold these disconnected, random ideas into a complete song. If you use this same approach, you have a lot to learn before you will be able to write in a highly creative and self-expressive manner. Although improvising new songwriting ideas is an approach that can produce results, you are greatly limiting yourself if this is the only approach you use. In fact, since so many people write music this way, there is a good chance that your music will sound a lot like the music of everyone else (rather than something that is ‘unique’ to you).

How Will This Make You A Better Guitar Player?

To become a more creative songwriter, you need to do these two things:

1. Use a variety of songwriting techniques so that you are never constrained to just one method for writing music. Study the information in this article to learn how to become a great songwriter.

2. Read this article to find out how to become a more creative musician.

What Is The Next Step To Take?

Now that you know what makes John Petrucci’s guitar playing style more amazing than what most give him credit for, begin consistently doing these three things:

1. Listen to the music of Petrucci’s band (Dream Theater) while focusing specifically on the things that have been discussed in this article. Even if this is not your preferred style of music, you will benefit greatly from listening to it with the deeper level of understanding you have now. This will help you to identify and separate the truly magnificent guitarists from the guitarists who are merely ‘good’.

2. Look deeply at your own guitar playing skills and identify what areas in your playing need the most improvement (within the context of the topics in this article). Understand that all the concepts I’ve talked about here are universally applicable to all guitarists. You will become a much better guitarist and musician once you have fully mastered them.

3. Use the resources throughout this article to strengthen the weak areas in your playing.

Once you do these three things on a consistent basis, you will make progress on guitar at an accelerated rate (much faster than any casual Petrucci fan who is unaware of the topics in this article).

 

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and guitar player. He teaches guitar players from all over the world in his online guitar lessons. Visit his website tomhess.net to get free guitar playing resources and to read more guitar playing articles.

Why You Struggle To Make Progress Towards Your Guitar Playing Goals

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By Tom Hess

One of the biggest misconceptions in the guitar playing community is thinking that making fast progress will lead you to your musical goals more quickly. Truth is, there are endless guitarists who actually ruin their ability to achieve their goals because they make ‘too much’ progress ‘too fast’ in one area of their playing, and little or no progress in other important areas. As a result, these under-developed areas end up holding back their progress. Then it takes them months if not years to balance things out and get back on the right path toward reaching their musical goals.

Why Uncontrolled/Mismanaged Progress Is Destructive For Guitar Playing:

Unbalanced guitar skills are caused directly by making progress too quickly in one area of your playing while ignoring other (important) areas. After teaching guitar for many years, countless guitar players have come to me with ‘unbalanced’ skills and expressed great frustration because they were unable to be fully creative in their playing. In most cases, players focus primarily on improving technique and speed while ignoring improvisation, ear training and other important skills. As a result, the guitarist is unable to ‘think’ as fast as he can play, leading to unbalanced overall playing, and a glaring weakness in overall musical creativity. In the end, they are held back by their weaknesses – unable to fully reach their highest guitar playing goals and take advantage of their main strengths. This is like fixing-up an old car and investing all of your money into purchasing the most high-powered engine you can find while completely ignoring the fact that the brake pads are worn down, the tires are bald and the suspension is terrible. This will obviously lead to issues in your car’s performance and you will not get the maximum benefit from your engine until these other factors are taken care of.

Here are the most common reasons why unmanaged/out of control progress happens for many guitarists:

Reason One: Guitar players falsely believe that they need to fully master certain skills before they practice other areas. This causes them to consistently practice in only one area of their playing while ignoring others. This is a very common occurrence that I’ve seen countless times in the hundreds of students I’ve had over the years. Here are two of the most common examples of this:

Example One: Guitarists use up every moment of their practice schedule to focus on increasing speed/building technique and learning about music theory, trying to master these things before they begin integrating them into their improvisation and songwriting. These players may increase their ability to play with good technique and understand concepts in music theory, but they will remain a novice when it comes to applying their skills in any kind of self-expressive manner. Truth is, improvising requires practice of a very specific set of skills at the same time that you work to improve your general guitar playing. There is almost nothing more disappointing than having to start from square one after spending countless hours building your skills in a totally unbalanced manner.

Example Two: Many guitarists who want to become great improvisers attempt to memorize the entire fretboard before working on their improvising skills. They spend many months working to memorize each note for each fret as quickly as possible before finally working to become better at improvisation. As a result, they are surprised when the time comes to improvise and their ability to recall individual note names on the fretboard is completely useless because they never learned how to integrate this knowledge with the understanding of how each note feels while being played over specific chords. Again this mismanagement and out of control progress leads guitar players away from the goals they intended to reach.

To get a better idea of how to prevent these approaches from affecting your playing, watch the video about the most efficient guitar practice method.

Reason Two: In some cases, guitar players seem to ‘naturally’ make progress faster with specific guitar skills while struggling to improve in other areas of their playing. This situation occurs because the practicing approaches in their weaker areas are nowhere near as effective as the ones they use with their strengths. This commonly happens with guitarists who learn guitar on their own OR with people who take lessons with guitar teachers who have not helped tons of other guitarists reach their goals.

How Can This Be Solved?

Before I reveal what needs to get done in order to bypass the issues mentioned above, there are two errors you must avoid:

1. ‘Distributing practice time equally for all areas of your playing’: After reading about the above problems, you might be thinking that the best approach to guitar practice is practicing all your skills for an equal amount of time. DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE! Truth is, your guitar playing skills to not grow in the same manner at the same rate. With this in mind, it makes no sense to reserve the same amount of practice time for all areas of your playing because this will only lead you back to the problem of becoming ‘unbalanced’.

2. ‘Practicing EVERYTHING so you don’t have any weaknesses’: Before you consider using this bad approach to practice, consider the fact that all of your favorite guitar players have major weaknesses in tons of areas that are outside of their particular playing style. That said, although their playing suffers from these weaknesses, it doesn’t matter for them because these ‘weaknesses’ have nothing to do with the kind of music they like to play. They have mastered the strengths that matter most for their musical goals. For example, top-notch metal guitar players are usually unable to play fingerstyle passages on a nylon-stringed classical guitar. Blues players usually have no ability to transcribe and play Paganini compositions for guitar. However, these players fully understand the difference between ‘weaknesses that matter’ (that keep them from reaching their musical goals) and ‘weaknesses that don’t matter’ (that have nothing to do with their musical goals). The weaknesses that are most relevant MUST be improved upon in order to achieve your musical goals. Any other weaknesses can be overlooked.

These are the steps you must follow to make sure that your guitar playing doesn’t become unbalanced:

1. Read this article about accomplishing musical goals to better understand what you should be working on in your guitar playing right now.

2. Learn how to put together a guitar practice schedule that helps you maximize productivity in relation to your specific musical goals. Then take initiative to use your practice schedule consistently and make progress toward these goals. Test your ability to create an effective guitar practice routine and get better results from your practice.

3. Don’t fall for the trap of only practicing what you are good at while not practicing in areas where you are weak. Your (‘relevant’) weaknesses will always hold you back from achieving your ultimate goals – you must fix them first before you can fully use your musical strengths.

4. Don’t assume that some musical skills need to be fully mastered before you can even begin working to improve in other areas of your playing. Learn how to effectively develop different areas of your guitar playing by learning this guitar practice method.

5. Locate a great guitar teacher who has already helped other guitarists reach their highest goals and understands how to help you reach yours by providing you with many effective strategies. Find the greatest guitar teacher for you by downloading this free resource about how to locate a guitar teacher.

By following the steps mentioned above you will avoid the frequent problems of uncontrolled guitar playing progress and get on the fast track to achieving your musical goals.

 

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and virtuoso guitar player. He teaches guitar players from all over the world in his online guitar lessons. Visit his website tomhess.net to get free guitar playing resources and to read more guitar playing articles.

How to Create Non-Standard Guitar Chords

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Tommaso Zillio

The good old “cowboy chords” are good to learn when you are getting started with the guitar but they get old really fast. Most players have no idea what or how to learn after they got these chords, and so they get stuck with them forever. Here I will show you something that will help you learn new and fresh chords.

Most amateur guitarists spend all their life using only a handful of “cowboy chords”. While they may know about the existence of other chords, they may think that it is too difficult for them, or simply they are not interested. Well, if the simple chords are enough for them to express themselves, this is ok I guess… except that most people who hear what can be done with just a tiny little bit of music theory knowledge invariably thinks “I want it, I want to be able to play also these ‘non-standard’ chords”.

In my view, the most important thing to know is the sound of each chord, not how it is named. Knowing the name of a chord is definitely important in order to communicate with other musicians, but too many people tend to get stuck at how complicate the name of the chord is, not at how it actually sounds. And this is a pity because many chords with complex names are actually easy to play and use on the guitar.

The WRONG solution to this problem (and sadly the one that most people follow) is to get a book with lots of chords diagrams and plunge through it. Again, chords do not work alone: even if you find the “perfect” chord, then you are left with the problem of finding other chords that will work with it… and this is even more frustrating! (been there, done that). Also, in my experience it is really difficult to remember these chords if the only thing you do with them is to play them once or twice before you pass to the next diagram.

In the video below I explain how to create a whole SET of original chords that work well together. The system I explain is easy and can be used to find chords that match your “perfect chord”, if you have one… or you can just use it to create completely original chords from scratch. There is practically no formal theory involved, as you will see.

How to Create Non-Standard Guitar Chords

Like most guitar exercise, what I explain in the video will work for you only if you implement it as part of your daily practice. You just need few minutes a day for few week for this exercise… but if you’re anything like me you will WANT to spend more time on it because you are discovering new sounds and having ideas for new songs.

Another related benefit that you will get from practicing this way is that you will get to know your fretboard much better than before. Of course this is easier if you already know your notes on the fretboard. In case you don’t, just let me know and I will record my next video on the system I used to learn the notes on my guitar in little time and with little effort. In the meantime, enjoy your non-standard chords!

About the Author

A professional guitarist, teacher, and composer, Tommaso Zillio enjoys particularly writing about music theory and its application to guitar playing

The 7 Guitar Teaching Questions That Will Cause Your Failure

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By Tom Hess

Do you have a lot of questions about how to grow your guitar teaching business? Truth is, you must continue asking questions and learning before you will grow as a guitar teacher. However, you must also ask ‘the right’ questions. If you ask the wrong questions (like most teachers do), you will ‘never’ expand your business and become successful on a large scale.

As someone who has trained many guitar teachers around the globe, I have answered a massive amount of questions on what it takes to build a successful guitar teaching business. There are countless questions that should NEVER be asked, because they are based on false assumptions and myths about becoming a successful guitar teacher. Even if you are able to find an answer to one of these questions, you will still end up going down the wrong path, eventually to fail in your guitar teaching business. Understanding what these specific questions are and why they are so destructive for your guitar teaching career will help you succeed where most guitar teachers fail. The following are 7 destructive ‘common sense’ questions that will cause you to fail in your teaching career:

Question #1: What Is The Best Way To Advertise Guitar Lessons In A Bad Economy?

This question contains the entirely unfounded assumption that you must utilize different marketing whenever attracting students during a slow economy versus attracting students a booming economy. This dangerous misconception could not be more wrong. If you ever receive advice for this question from another guitar teacher, understand immediately that they do NOT run a highly successful business.

Guitar teachers who achieve massive success use the same marketing strategies no matter how well the economy is doing. Rather than asking how you should change your advertising/marketing approach in relation to the economy, you should learn the most effective way to build your guitar teaching business in any economic condition. Then, you must use that approach religiously throughout the year. This is the best and only way to make sure that your business will continue to expand as teachers in your local area lose more and more students when the economy struggles.

Question #2: Where Should I Advertise My Guitar Lessons?

This question will greatly limit your opportunity to develop a guitar teaching business for these reasons:

1. There does not exist any ‘perfect’ place where your advertisements will always be effective in bringing in more business for you. There are tons of ways to effectively market your guitar teaching business and you need to learn them all. This is how you will continually grow your business.

2. When you focus exclusively on a single method of gaining new students, you make your guitar teaching business extremely vulnerable. If you are unable to continually get great results from the single method you chose, your teaching business will crumble very quickly. You MUST diversify your advertising and marketing approaches so that you are not relying on only one all-or-nothing approach at any given time.

Moral of the story: Don’t look for a single, best approach to advertising your guitar lessons. Instead, learn how to develop an effective strategy consisting of ‘many’ approaches in order to expand your business faster in a much safer manner. You will learn a wide assortment of powerful strategies by working with a guitar teaching success trainer.

Question #3: How Do I Attract More Students?

Of course you DO need to attract new students on a consistent basis – however, guitar teachers typically (and falsely) believe that getting more new students is the ‘only’ way for them to grow their income from teaching.

Simply put, gaining additional guitar students is only one of many ways that you can earn money in your business. There are tons of additional ways to earn good money as a guitar teacher (many that you would never expect) and you must learn them all in order to be successful. A lot of these concepts are discussed and explained in this free resource about earn more money teaching guitar.

Question #4: “What Would You Like To Learn Today?” (Many Guitar Teachers Ask This To Their Students)

At first, it may seem logical to ask your guitar students what they would like to learn during each lesson. Fact is, this is an extremely damaging question to ask and it will actually hold your students back from making significant progress. Whenever I help a guitarist choose a teacher to work with, I ALWAYS tell them to avoid teachers who ask them such a question. These are the reasons why:

1. As the guitar teacher, YOU are the one with the expertise. Your guitar students are your ‘students’ for a reason, and it is not their job to decide how they will become better players.

2. Your students cannot differentiate between the things they ‘want’ to learn and the things they ‘need’ to learn. Certainly your students should be allowed to tell you what they ‘want’ to learn, but because they are inexperienced, it is impossible for them to know what they ‘ought’ to be learning to accomplish their goals. Students will do more harm than god by trying to dictate to you how to teach them.

To overcome this, you must put time into learning how to teach guitar in a way that will bring bigger results for your students.

Question #5: What Do I Need To Teach My Students?

Seeking an answer to this question is very destructive for both you and your guitar students. Why? Your students are not taking lessons with you just so you can show them random stuff on guitar. They come to you in order to get a very specific ‘result’ or ‘solution’. You must help them get this by creating a highly personalized strategy for each student.

The majority of guitar teachers make the all-too-common mental error of teaching random guitar playing information/licks/songs to their students because they think this is what they are supposed to do as ‘good teachers’. On the contrary, you must design a specific strategy around your students’ unique goals to truly help them make progress on guitar.

Here is what you should do:

1. Stop focusing on finding new ‘things to teach’ and start looking for ways to help your students accomplish their specific guitar playing goals.

2. Know how to analyze the ‘symptoms’ of problems that your students share with you and identify the core problems that must be solved.

3. Become effective at guiding your students toward their highest musical goals.

For a complete understanding of these things, get a guitar teaching success trainer.

Question #6: What Is The Best Way To Approach Teaching Make Up Lessons?

This is a very common question asked by guitar teachers. Unfortunately, no matter what answer you get to this question, you will end up damaging your guitar teaching business. True experts who have achieved massive success in their guitar teaching businesses will tell you that you should a) never teach make up lessons and b) completely abandon the idea of using a lesson cancellation policy. There are countless reasons why teaching make up lessons will ruin your guitar teaching business. Here are just two:

1. When you teach make up lessons, you are working additional ‘unpaid’ time. This causes you to lose money in two ways: First, you lose an extra spot in your teaching schedule where you could be earning more money with another student. Second, you lose time that you could be working to grow your guitar teaching business and bring in additional students. This effectively limits your growth as a guitar teacher and puts your free time in the hands of students who do not respect your time in the first place.

2. Your students will lose respect for you as a guitar teachers when they feel like they can walk all over you and ‘show up’ to lessons at their own convenience. Even worse, these kinds of students will not feel a need to practice at home or make a lot of improvement. As a result, they will make very slow progress. Eventually, you will end up damaging your reputation as a guitar teacher because word will get around that you have a schedule full of mediocre students who never reach their goals.

So what is the solution? You must require that all of your students pay for every single week of the year regardless of whether or not they decide to show up (with NO make up lessons). This is the same approach used by universities. They have a strict ‘no refunds’ policy that applies to all students whether they come to class or not. This is also the same policy that highly successful guitar teachers use to earn $100,000+ every year.

Question #7: How Much Money Should My Guitar Lessons Cost?

When you ask yourself this question, you immediately set yourself up for failure because you begin thinking with the mindset that you must ‘compete’ with the price of other teachers or charge something that is fair in relation to those in your local area. To make matters worse, basing your rates on the rates of everyone else makes your guitar lessons seem like a commodity. This forces potential students to focus ONLY on the cost of lessons, causing them to view your guitar teaching as ‘the same thing’ offered by any other teacher. This effectively drains all incentive from them to choose you over anyone else in your local community.

Additionally, by asking this question you make the assumption that there is only one way to offer guitar lessons (in 1 on 1 format), which is a completely limiting approach. Fact is, there are plenty of creative guitar teaching models you can use to get far greater results for students while developing a flourishing business and offering many pricing options to your customers. Discover these methods by checking out this free guitar teaching video.

The cost of your lessons should be directly based on the unique value you offer to your guitar students instead of whatever anyone else is charging in your community. Focus on working as hard as you can to increase the value you offer to your students, get big results for them and adjust your prices accordingly.

After reading this article you have learned how even the most ‘common sense’ guitar teaching questions break down because they are based on false assumptions on how to become successful as a guitar teacher. To keep these problems from damaging your guitar teaching business, follow these steps:

1. Use the resources mentioned throughout this article to find out more information on how to become the best guitar teacher in your community.

2. Alter your current style of thinking and start asking yourself high quality questions within the topics of each of the seven questions above. Then take action to implement the advice I gave to you in order to expand your business to new heights.

By doing these things you will put yourself years ahead of any local competition and will achieve great success as a guitar teacher.

 

 

About The Author: Tom Hess is an electric guitar teacher online, recording artist and the guitar player. He trains guitar teachers from around the world on how to build their guitar teaching businesses in his guitar teacher program. Visit his website tomhess.net to receive many free guitar teacher resources, and to read more articles about teaching guitar.

The Five Keys To Building A Successful Music Career

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By Tom Hess

Wish you knew why some musicians become massively successful (and how you can too)? Hint: It’s not by simply copying the actions of others in the industry – it’s by developing a success-oriented mindset as the foundation of your actions. Once you have the right ‘mindset’, everything else will fall into place in your music career and you will achieve success.

For the rest of this article I will assume that you have a great understanding of what you want to accomplish in your music career (if you don’t yet, stop reading right now and check out this article about how to plan a music career). To help you understand how you can achieve the greatest success in your music career, I am now going to compare the way ‘unsuccessful’ musicians think versus how ‘successful’ musicians think. By understanding the difference between the two, you will be able to reach your music career goals much faster.

Have Intense, Unbreakable Focus

Highly successful professional musicians make sure that everything they do works in congruence with their major goals. They have an intense focus on their goals and do not spend ‘any’ extra time, money or energy on things that will not help them achieve them. For instance, if your main goal was to release a solo album on your own, you will need to invest your time into writing and recording rather than simultaneously searching for a band or get local gigs.

Musicians who struggle to achieve success believe in the ‘common sense’ advice of ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ when it comes to their music careers. Because of this, they end up spreading themselves too thin and fail to achieve any ‘big’ results in anything they do. Truth is, becoming successful requires being the very best at whatever you do – this only happens once you line up all your thoughts, beliefs and actions to focus toward the achievement of a single goal.

An additional aspect of ‘being congruent’ is staying true to your deepest desires when it comes to your music career. If your true desire is to tour in a big band but you settle for a job as a session musician because it feels ‘safer’, you will have a very hard time lining up all your thoughts, beliefs and actions to focus on that which is not what you truly want.

How can you apply this information into your own music career? The easiest way is to ask yourself the following question: “How do my current actions help me reach and accomplish my greatest music career goals?” If you are unclear about this, you are likely on the wrong road with the actions you are taking and need to learn more about how to reach your goal. On top of that, even if you ‘are’ taking actions that can help you accomplish your ultimate goals, they will often have little effect until you understand how to fully integrate them into an effective music business strategy.

Additionally, some of the actions you take might seem entirely unrelated to your main goals when they are actually completely related to them. For instance, many musicians who want to tour the world in a band refuse teaching music for a living, thinking that this will keep them from achieving their goal. However, the truth is teaching music is the quickest, most stable and flexible way to earn a living as a musician while working on other activities in your music career (such as going on tour – something you could never do working a regular full time job).

To summarize, it is just as ‘crucial’ for you to understand how an action will help you build your music career as it is to actually do it. Test yourself now to see if you are prepared to become a highly successful pro musician survey.

Eliminate “Zero-Sum” Thinking From Your Mental Vocabulary

All highly successful musicians think, believe and act on the following two premises:

#1. It is not ‘wrong’ or unethical for a musician to desire to earn as much money as they can from what they do. Until you agree entirely with this idea, NO music company will want to work together with you to help you build your music career. Why? Because all companies in the music industry exist for one reason and one reason only: ‘to make a lot of money’. Music companies would never invest tons of money into a musician who thinks that money is the root of all evil and has no intention to help the company earn their investment back tenfold. It is for this reason that the industry is called the music ‘business’ and not music ‘donation’. Caution: Even if you think you can fool a music company into working with you while at the same time not wanting to help them earn money, they WILL know. Companies can ‘sense’ this in you way before you even realize it. This is just another strong reason why you must be congruent in your beliefs as I mentioned above.

#2. The world is filled with opportunity and you can achieve unlimited success for yourself and those associated with you by using a win/win mindset and forming mutually beneficial partnerships.

These two mental approaches are fundamental for getting musicians to take the correct actions to achieve their goals and become highly successful.

On the other side of things, unsuccessful musicians think with an opposing mindset to these two approaches. They believe that the amount of money available for everyone is limited and when someone becomes wealthy, it reduces opportunities for everyone else. In addition to these ideas being completely unproven, this style of thinking creates a mindset of ‘scarcity’ that leads musicians to think with in terms of ‘lose-lose’. No one in the music industry will want to work with someone who thinks like this.

This is a huge part of why it is ineffective to copy the tactics of other musicians. In addition to needing a complete, overall ‘strategy’, if you as missing the right belief system to make the foundation of the actions you take, you will never get the results you could in your music career.

Get Rid Of The Entitlement Mentality

Unsuccessful musicians assume that they need to beg people in the music industry for ‘a chance’ to get their big break (by sending off promo packs or demos for example). Whenever this doesn’t work, they complain that there is simply ‘too much competition’ and that making it in the music business is only for those who are privileged.

In contrast, people who go on to build successful music careers do not sit around waiting for someone to give them an opportunity just because they have written music or can play an instrument well. They are fully aware that they must ‘earn’ their success.

To do this, they must:

1. Understand exactly what the music company they intend to work with needs as well as what major goals the company has. Learn more about this by completing this short music career success assessment.

2. Create a well thought out plan for how they will meet the other side’s needs.

3. Make the other side ‘fully aware’ of the fact that working with them will bring great benefit for everyone involved.

4. Follow through completely to generate value for the other side and develop a reputation for being highly loyal, reliable and dependable.

Any musician who follows these four steps will put themselves at the head of the line in front of the other 99.9% of musicians. To learn how you can make your own opportunities and succeed in the music industry.

Be Able To Tell The Difference Between A ‘Strategy’ Versus A ‘Tactic’

Before you can hope to achieve any success with a career in music, you need to determine your medium and long-term goals. For instance, you may want to obtain a recording contract, get accepted into a great band, go on an international tour or gain the freedom to write your own songs without worrying about lacking the money to make ends meet. In order to accomplish these goals, you must develop an effectively organized combination of tactics that work as the glue to hold together an overall strategy.

A ‘tactic’ is an action you take that achieves a specific result in the short-term. Examples of this include: playing a show, trying to get your album reviewed or creating a new website for your band. Any single action you make is a tactic.

On the other hand, a ‘strategy’ generally means combining together many tactics as part of an entire system with the goal of reaching a longer term goal.

To illustrate the difference between the two ideas, think of this analogy: In football, a tactic could be making up a specific play while on offense or defense. A strategy would be understanding how that specific play ties into the big picture when it comes to beating the other team’s weaknesses in order to win. This means understanding how the play relates to the other plays you made before and the ones you will make afterwards to win the game.

Musicians who do not achieve success ‘only’ think with a mindset based around tactics. A lot of these musicians really try to ‘take action’ to move their careers forward, but struggle to make any progress because their actions are not part of an overall strategy. This is exactly why merely copying others does not help you achieve success (you are only copying the tactics without knowing the real strategy they are a part of).

Truth is, most musicians are not good at creating effective strategies to advance their careers (just like me when I first began). Because of this, it is essential to locate a mentor who will help you design a strategy to reach your music career goals.

Only Associate With People Who Will Help You Succeed

Everyone who is successful in the music industry is highly selective of who they invest time, money and energy into. You must also take on this trait if you wish to build a successful music career.

Here is a basic example that demonstrates how you can potential ruin your music career by associating with the wrong people:

In most cases, people who form bands (and desire to make it big someday) rarely consider anything about each band member other than musical skill. No one ever talks about each other’s long term goals, forms a strategy together or discusses a specific business plan for how the band will make money and advance in the industry. No one in these bands offers any real value to a music company, making the likeliness of the band becoming successful close to zero. These types of bands usually do not stay together for more than a couple of months.

Musicians who succeed know that there is much more to consider than musical skill alone. They look to find musicians who have the ‘complete package’ in terms of their mindset (made from the principles discussed in this article). To find out how to locate the right band members, study this free musician’s resource about how to find the best band members.

No matter what you plan on doing in the music industry, you must put together a network of success-minded musicians and business partners who will help you build your career just as you will help them. These people must be more than just ‘great musicians’. The must have all the same pieces of the puzzle as successful musicians.

After training and mentoring many musicians in my Music Careers Mentoring Program, I have truly seen the incredible value of building a network full of success-minded musicians who help each other earn money in their music careers, have joined bands together and toured internationally and constructed business relationships based on the principles of this article.

Now that you know the biggest differences between the mindsets of successful and unsuccessful musicians, you understand why only a handful of musicians ever ‘makes it’ in music. When it comes to developing your music career, your mindset will either be your strongest friend or your toughest enemy and you must learn how to make it work in your favor. After you develop the same mindset as professional musicians, you will achieve one hundred times more in your music career than you would have otherwise.

Complete this mini course on how to succeed in the music business to effectively apply all the concepts in this article into your music career right away.

 

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is an electric guitar teacher and musician success coach. As a professional music career coach, he works with musicians around the globe to help them learn how to build a career in music. Find out more by checking out this free music career assessment and reading these free music career building articles.

How To Transform Any Lick Into A Killer Shred Guitar Idea

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by Tom Hess

Do you want to become a better shred guitar player? Don’t make the mistake of listening to other guitarists who say you must only learn how to ‘play faster’. These players are unable to play tons of interesting shred guitar ideas because they ONLY think about playing as fast as they can and lack the creative mindset needed to play truly inspiring licks. Although playing fast is part of making cool shred licks, you must also understand ‘how to use’ the notes in your phrases to make them grab the attention of anyone listening.

You are about to learn an effective lead guitar method that will immediately enhance your shred guitar licks and make your lead guitar playing much more intense and awe-inspiring. Begin by checking out the shred guitar video on this page before you read any further (By doing this, you will be able to integrate all of the concepts on this page into your playing to instantly play much better shred guitar licks).

Ok, now you have seen the demonstration in the video above and are ready to apply what you have learned.

First Step: You are going to begin this exercise by using a common three string A minor arpeggio. Anytime you play through the pattern, make sure to use a ‘pull off’ when you are descending from the highest note to the second highest note. So for an A minor arpeggio in second inversion, you will pull off from the E on fret number 12 to the C on fret number 8 each time you descend in the pattern. Here is what this looks like:

Listen to it

Second Step: Play the pattern from step one a few times at a speed you are accustomed to.

Third Step: Once you have played through the pattern from step one a few times, start repeating the highest two pitches every time the pattern begins again (as you saw me do in the demonstration above). For example, while playing the A minor pattern (A C E), the highest pitches are E on the twelfth fret and C on the eighth fret. Each time you play the arpeggio, repeat these two pitches as you are descending like this: E to C to E to C. Then keep playing through the pattern. As you observed in the video above, once you add these two extra notes you completely alter the contour of the musical phrase. This accents the notes in the lick in a much different way, giving the lick a new feel in comparison to the original one. This simple alteration will immediately change your shred guitar licks, making them sound totally killer. See the example below:

Listen to it

Fourth Step: After repeating the new idea from the previous step, you are going to start creating additional variations of the original lick. To do this, simply change the pitch of the highest note in the arpeggio. For instance, if the highest note is an “E” (on the 12th fret), change it to an “F” or a “D” note instead. Then repeat the same idea from the previous step to pull off from the new note onto the second highest note of the pattern (which remains the same as before). Play through these new variations several times.

Fifth Step: Play the original arpeggio lick from the first step and combine it together with the new variations you thought up just now. You will notice a MAJOR increase in the tension level and intensity of the new licks when compared to the original one. Look below to see one possibility of what you can come up with:

Listen to it

After completing this exercise, start to combine the concepts discussed with different kinds of licks (scales, tapping, rhythm ideas, etc.) So instead of using only an arpeggio pattern, use any type of lick in its place and integrate the idea of ‘changing contour’ into your playing to make it much more intense. Then begin creating countless shred guitar licks by completing steps two through five of the exercise above. This will not only give you tons of new shred guitar ideas, but make you a much more creative guitar player in the process!

Take your shred guitar licks to a new level of creativity by watching this killer lead guitar playing video.

 

About The Author: Tom Hess is an online electric guitar teacher, recording artist and virtuoso guitarist. He trains guitar players from around the world how to reach their musical goals in his correspondence guitar lessons online. Visit his website tomhess.net to receive many free guitar playing resources, mini courses, guitar practice eBooks, and to read more articles about guitar playing.

The Key To Playing Awe-Inspiring Sweep Picking Arpeggios

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by Tom Hess

Tired of playing bland, repetitive sweep picking arpeggios? Although there are many guitarists who can sweep pick, there are only a few who can use the technique to creatively express themselves. In this article, I will show you an exercise that will help you not only become a better sweep picker, but understand how to transform any arpeggio into an incredible lead guitar lick that demands attention.

To use sweep picking as a tool that will ‘enhance’ the expression, you MUST avoid the following: only thinking about speed while playing sweep picking arpeggios. Why should you avoid this? When you only (and always) try to play an arpeggio lick as fast as you can, you sacrifice the musical quality of the lick for speed. The result of this is a continual stream of the same notes being played over and over – making your sweep picking licks sound like boring ‘exercises’ instead of awesome phrases. To play inspiring sweep picking arpeggios that demand the attention of others, you must play with speed and precision while ALSO building up an overwhelming feeling of tension.

With this in mind, I am now going to show you an exercise that will help you change any arpeggio into a powerful tool for expressing intensity in your guitar licks. That said, you don’t have to be a master lead guitar player in order to use the idea I will be teaching you. Get started by checking out this sweep picking arpeggios video to get the maximum benefit from the exercise below (it will help you understand precisely what you are supposed to be doing):

 

 

… Did you watch the video already? If not, watch it now (you’ll be glad you did). If you did watch it, continue reading the steps in the exercise below.

1. Select any given three string arpeggio pattern that you are able to play accurately. Play this arpeggio 3-5 times.

2. Now think of the specific note names that build the arpeggio you just played. Ex: If you picked out a C minor arpeggio, this arpeggio is made of notes C, Eb and G.

3. After watching the demonstration in the video, you found out that you can build powerful intensity by inserting silence before the next note in an arpeggio. While watching the video to see how this is done, play the arpeggio you picked from step one several times. Then after you have repeated the pattern enough times, immediately mute all the strings after you play the highest pitch of the arpeggio.

4. In this step, you will simply be ‘waiting’ a few moments in order to insert silence into your lick and begin building musical tension. As you are doing this, find one of the notes from the arpeggio you picked that is higher in pitch than the note you ended on in the previous step. Ex: If you picked a C minor arpeggio and you ended your phrase on a ‘G’, find one of the other notes of the arpeggio (C, Eb or G) that are higher in pitch on the fretboard. Do not play this note yet.

5. Next, play the note you selected from the previous step in order to release all the tension you built up. Finally, add incredible power to the entire phrase by using wide vibrato to accent this note. After doing this, you have successfully made a single variation of the sweep picking arpeggio pattern you began this exercise with.

6. Once you have completed steps one through five, you have created a new sweep picking lick (that is different from the original lick you started out with). Experiment with various new approaches by using the other phrasing ornamentations I demonstrated in the video above.

Do steps 1-6 with at least three different arpeggio patterns. After repeating this exercise several times, you will see a huge improvement in not only the overall intensity in your sweep picking arpeggios, but the quality of your lead guitar playing as well. Become a great lead guitar player by using the concepts in this free electric guitar licks video.

To improve your speed on guitar and have more creative freedom when applying your phrasing skills, study this free mini course on guitar speed development .

 

About The Author: Tom Hess is an online electric guitar teacher, recording artist and virtuoso guitarist. He trains guitar players from around the world how to reach their musical goals in his correspondence guitar lessons online. Visit his website tomhess.net to receive many free guitar playing resources, mini courses, guitar practice eBooks, and to read more articles about guitar playing.

The 5 Biggest Myths About Breaking Into The Music Industry

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By Tom Hess

Looking for a way to make it in the music industry? Before you can begin building a successful music career and reaching your goals as a professional musician, you must forget about everything you have heard about ‘how the music business works’. Fact is, there is a TON of misinformation on this topic that leads most musicians to fail in their careers. For example, here is a fact about the music business that you may not have been aware of:

Throughout the year, music companies around the world receive endless amounts of recordings from talented musicians. Many of the musicians who send their music to companies have been working to develop their musical skills since they were young. That said, the overwhelming majority of these musicians will not hear back from the companies they send their music to. The majority of music companies do not bother listening to everything they are sent. This leaves most musicians without a clue about why they can’t seem to ‘catch their big break’ in spite of their musical talent.

That said, there are many musicians who DO make it in music and go on to achieve great success. Building a music career and making a great living really isn’t as difficult as you might think. However, before you can do this you must abandon the methods used by unsuccessful musicians. Here are the five worst approaches for breaking into the music industry that you must avoid:

1. Thinking That A Degree In Music Will Help You Become Successful In The Music Industry

Many musicians think that going to university to get a degree in music is a great way to break into the music industry. In reality, going to university for music may increase your musical knowledge, but it will NOT guarantee your success as a professional musician. Here’s why:

a)   Most music courses do not cover the specific topic of ‘how to build a music career’. Even if you take classes about music business, they will only present you with a general model of how the music business works. They will NOT show you exactly how to build a successful career for yourself (by keeping your personal goals in mind). In fact, there are tons of musicians who graduate from big music universities only to realize that they are still clueless when it comes to actually earning a living through music. If you go to university with the intention of getting into the music business with a degree, you will ‘at best’ learn a lot about music – but end up back at square one in terms of building a music career. At worst, you will also have enormous amounts of fees and debts to pay back.

b)   People who work in the music industry are not concerned with whether you have a music degree or not. To them, it is MUCH more important that you know how to help them build their music careers, earn more money and become more successful (this requires a lot more than just musical talent). Learn how to become the ‘right’ musician to work with other successful pro musicians and music companies by filling out this pro musician assessment.

In reality, very few professional musicians have music degrees because they simply never needed them. They made it in the music business with music career mentoring where they learned all the skills they needed to build value for others and earn a great living in music.

2. Taking Music Career Advice From Others Who Have Never Succeeded In The Music Industry

Chances are, you have already received a lot of advice from the people in your life about what you should do to become successful in your music career. Most people will be happy to give out ‘expert’ tips or conventional wisdom even when they really have no authority to do so. Generally speaking, these people are sincere in wanting to help you, but since they have never achieved anything significant in the music industry, their advice is more likely to send you down the wrong path than to lead you toward success.

Consider this: Asking people for music career advice (when they have never actually succeeded in the music business) is like training for a marathon with a trainer who hasn’t run a mile in his life or asking your dentist for legal advice. Additionally, asking advice from musicians who attempted to succeed in music (and failed) is equally as dangerous for your music career. Although these people are perfectly willing to tell you how you should build your music career, they do not really have the authority to do so – they will only lead you down the same path they took (which ended in failure).

Truly successful musicians do not build their careers from the ‘conventional wisdom’ of people they know or amateur musicians who never made it. They work together with a mentor who has already achieved great success and can use his experience to help them effectively reach their music career goals.

3. Uploading Your Music To Different Websites Online To Earn Money And Get ‘Discovered’

One of the biggest questions musicians ask themselves when it comes to building a successful music career is “How do I get my music out there?” Most musicians believe that the answer to this question is uploading your songs to various websites online and waiting to ‘get discovered’ by new fans and people in the music industry. In reality, musicians who use this approach will only get their music heard by a handful of people at best (and NOT by the ‘right’ people who need to hear it) and will never earn a lot of money in the music industry. Here’s why:

·         They do not know how to effectively promote their music.

·         They don’t already have a massive following of fans who are ready to buy their music as soon as it is released.

·         They have no strategy for attracting new fans while simultaneously transforming their current fans into true FANATICS.

·         They do not have a strategy to help them earn a living through multiple sources of income at once.

Musicians who achieve the greatest success in their music careers do NOT merely upload their music online and wait around to get discovered. They create a strategy for working toward their musical goals while raising their personal value in the eyes of other in the music industry (by expanding their fan base and building other important music business skills). After doing this, they simply approach the companies they want to do business with and negotiate a partnership that will bring the most benefit to both sides of the deal. Learn more about this process by reading this free resource about getting signed to a record deal.

4. Working A Full Time Job While Building Your Music Career ‘On The Side’

Many musicians believe that they must work a steady-paying and secure job while pursuing their music career on the side. They think that you can only attempt to break into the music industry after spending many years working and saving the money you make at your day job. As someone who has helped a lot of musicians develop successful music careers, I can tell you that nearly all people who think this will end up working at an unsatisfying job until they retire. Additionally, these types of people are usually too busy working at their jobs to work on building their music careers. One of the worst things that can happen is that you watch your dreams pass you by and regret it later on. Truth is, the more you work in a non-musical field, the less time you have available to pursue becoming a successful pro musician.

To effectively get into the music business and build a long-lasting, successful career you must plan your time around your musical goals. Although you may currently need to work at a full time job, you can still build your music career by using a powerful ‘backup plan’. The best backup plan will be a safe and secure one that gives you the ability to transition out of your day job while gradually spending more time working on your music without leaving you financially broke. Learn how to create your own music career backup plan by watching this pro musician video.

5. Trying To Get Into The Music Business Alone

One of the most difficult ways to build a career in music is to try to do it alone. While using this approach, you are forced to advance your career through either trial-and-error or by copying what other people do. Without the training of an experienced and successful mentor, you will drastically decrease your chances of taking the right actions to move your career forward in the direction you want. Additionally, copying what others do will not help you because what works for them may not work for you (in your specific situation). When these approaches don’t work you will either:

a)   Give up on making it in music and return to working 40 hours per week at a job you loathe. OR

b)   Waste countless hours, days, months and years trying to make it in music… only to fail and become increasingly frustrated.

If you are 100% dedicated to becoming a successful professional musician, you MUST begin working with a mentor who can show you how to reach your music career goals in the shortest amount of time possible (because this person has already achieved them). Get music career mentoring now and start building a successful career as a professional musician.

Fill out this free pro musician assessment to learn how you can become highly valued by those in the music industry.

 

 

About The Author: Tom Hess is an online guitar teacher, recording artist and music career coach. As a music career coach, he helps musicians from many countries break into the music industry. On his music instruction website you can find out how to become a pro musician and learn how the music industry works.