Tommaso Zillio

Do you always us the same few phrases and tricks in your playing? And despite your efforts to learn new things, your music seems to be the same? Here is why you might be unable to use in real life what you learned in your practice.

The problem that most people have when they try to apply their “exercises” in actual songs is that they simply try to play the exercise on the song as they learned it. And they quickly discover that the exercises does not “feel” right, does not “groove” with the song. What is happening here? This: they learned the exercise, but they have not mastered the possible rhythm variations of the exercise.

Rhythm is what I call an “invisible area” of musicianship: it’s something that everybody thinks should be “natural” and able to “feel”. As a result, most people either do not practice their rhythm, or they don’t practice it enough, or in the right way. Fact is, with just a little effort you would be able to be so much more flexible in your rhythm skills that you would be able to “adapt” most licks to most song, on the spot.

What can be done about it? Well, the very first thing is to learn how to manipulate rhythm by displacing the accents in a phrase (whoa, that was a mouthful). This allows you to do two important things:

•     It makes “old” like sound “new” because now their rhythm is different, and

•     It helps you “fitting” the exercises you know into songs that may have a different rhythm.

Now, I could explain how to do that forever, but I think that the best way to learn it is by a direct and simple example, so you can HEAR what I am doing. If you play the video below I will show you a very simple example and some suggestions on how to apply this to everything you do. It’s so simple and you will use it so often that you will wonder how could you live without it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG78AbLUSlo

After watching the video, it is your turn to take your licks and change their rhythm as shown in the video. this system will work beautifully also (and especially) with the licks that you think you play “too much”. If there is a lick that you don’t want to play because you have played it too many times, this procedure will make it fresh and new.

You don’t need to know thousands of licks: you need to know just a few of them and then master all their variations: this way you will sound with a coherent style and it will be much easier for you to improvise and write your solos.

Enjoy!

About the Author

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

 By Tom Hess

Climbing Mt. Everest and achieving massive success as a guitar teacher are two very similar achievements… How is this so?

Read these three critical similarities:

1. Only a select few people ever successfully accomplish these goals.

2. Anyone who was ever able to make it to the top of Everest was extensively trained by someone who already had experience climbing to the summit of the mountain. Similarly, guitar teachers who worked closely with expert trainers were able to achieve massive success. Alternatively, ZERO climbers have ever made it to the summit of Everest with no training at all and zero guitar teachers have ever become highly successful without the training of an expert.

3. Getting to the summit of Everest is truly a live-changing experience that will leave you feeling a sense of accomplishment that few can even fathom. Similarly, developing the leading guitar teaching business in your community will give you a huge sense of satisfaction in terms of personal accomplishment and freedom that most people can’t relate to.

How Does This Relate To You As A Guitar Teacher?

Starting right now, I’d like you to imagine that reaching your goals as a guitar teacher as climbing to the top of Mt. Everest. On the summit of the mountain is a glowing chest. Once opened, this will give you the power to attain any goals you have for your guitar teaching business, like: earning $100,000+ per year, producing incredible musicians through your teaching and gaining tons of freedom to use your time for achieving great things in your music career.

Now, think of this: If all you had to do to get these things was simply get to the peak of the mountain and open the chest… would you climb the mountain? If you would, then you have to do anything you can to assure that you reach the top of the mountain as quickly as possible.

Of course, no one would attempt to climb to the top of Mt. Everest without the guidance of an experienced trainer and expect to succeed (or survive). Likewise, trying to develop a successful guitar teaching business with zero training will lead you down the exact same path of failure.

Why Do Guitar Teachers Fail When They Try To Figure Everything Out By Themselves?

Becoming the most successful guitar teacher around takes a lot more than just music teaching skills. All guitar teachers who have achieved massive success do so by working on becoming ‘excellent’ in these seven areas:

• Getting contacted by countless people every month of the year who are looking for guitar lessons
• Helping potential students understand why they MUST take lessons with you (and only you) if they want to become great players
• Getting ‘former’ students to start taking lessons again
• Gaining time for yourself and your students through effective execution of day to day guitar teaching tasks
• Getting much bigger and better RESULTS for your students than anyone else by expanding your guitar teaching effectiveness
• Retaining guitar students for years at a time because your teaching consistently gets big results for them
• Building your guitar teaching business using referrals and word of mouth marketing

All of these aspects of your guitar teaching business require acquiring a unique set of skills in order to become successful, much like climbing Everest requires many new skills to be developed before one can make it to the summit. That said, most guitar teachers try to build their businesses on their own and set themselves up to fail for these reasons:

1. They begin teaching guitar with zero awareness of the above 7 areas.

2. They don’t understand ‘what’ they must do to grow in these areas or ‘how’ to do it.

I’m not trying to discourage you, I’m merely letting you know ‘how it really is’. As someone who trains guitar teachers to become successful, I know all of the challenges that any guitar teacher could face.

The truth is, it’s fairly easy to learn the steps for becoming highly successful in the 7 areas mentioned above (anyone can do it). Additionally, all the challenges that guitar teachers come up against can be overcome with proper coaching, training and mentoring.

If you are unhappy with where you are at in your guitar teaching business, understand that it’s not because you lack the potential to succeed or have fallen victim to outside circumstances. You’re just at the bottom of Mt. Everest, looking for ways to climb to the top with no knowledge of what steps to take to get there. The only thing you need to do is locate an excellent trainer who will take your hand and guide you along on every step of the way until you have made it to the summit… where you can open the chest and collect the treasure that lies within it.

To begin your ascent of the mountain, learn the best approach for teaching guitar from an expert.

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional electric guitar teacher and composer. He also mentors guitar teachers from around the world in his guitar teacher training program. Visit tomhess.net to get free guitar teaching tipsand read more guitar teacher articles.

By Tom Hess

Climbing Mt. Everest and achieving massive success as a guitar teacher are two very similar achievements… How is this so?

Read these three critical similarities:

1. Only a select few people ever successfully accomplish these goals.

2. Anyone who was ever able to make it to the top of Everest was extensively trained by someone who already had experience climbing to the summit of the mountain. Similarly, guitar teachers who worked closely with expert trainers were able to achieve massive success. Alternatively, ZERO climbers have ever made it to the summit of Everest with no training at all and zero guitar teachers have ever become highly successful without the training of an expert.

3. Getting to the summit of Everest is truly a live-changing experience that will leave you feeling a sense of accomplishment that few can even fathom. Similarly, developing the leading guitar teaching business in your community will give you a huge sense of satisfaction in terms of personal accomplishment and freedom that most people can’t relate to.

How Does This Relate To You As A Guitar Teacher?

Starting right now, I’d like you to imagine that reaching your goals as a guitar teacher as climbing to the top of Mt. Everest. On the summit of the mountain is a glowing chest. Once opened, this will give you the power to attain any goals you have for your guitar teaching business, like: earning $100,000+ per year, producing incredible musicians through your teaching and gaining tons of freedom to use your time for achieving great things in your music career.

Now, think of this: If all you had to do to get these things was simply get to the peak of the mountain and open the chest… would you climb the mountain? If you would, then you have to do anything you can to assure that you reach the top of the mountain as quickly as possible.

Of course, no one would attempt to climb to the top of Mt. Everest without the guidance of an experienced trainer and expect to succeed (or survive). Likewise, trying to develop a successful guitar teaching business with zero training will lead you down the exact same path of failure.

Why Do Guitar Teachers Fail When They Try To Figure Everything Out By Themselves?

Becoming the most successful guitar teacher around takes a lot more than just music teaching skills. All guitar teachers who have achieved massive success do so by working on becoming ‘excellent’ in these seven areas:

• Getting contacted by countless people every month of the year who are looking for guitar lessons
• Helping potential students understand why they MUST take lessons with you (and only you) if they want to become great players
• Getting ‘former’ students to start taking lessons again
• Gaining time for yourself and your students through effective execution of day to day guitar teaching tasks
• Getting much bigger and better RESULTS for your students than anyone else by expanding your guitar teaching effectiveness
• Retaining guitar students for years at a time because your teaching consistently gets big results for them
• Building your guitar teaching business using referrals and word of mouth marketing

All of these aspects of your guitar teaching business require acquiring a unique set of skills in order to become successful, much like climbing Everest requires many new skills to be developed before one can make it to the summit. That said, most guitar teachers try to build their businesses on their own and set themselves up to fail for these reasons:

1. They begin teaching guitar with zero awareness of the above 7 areas.

2. They don’t understand ‘what’ they must do to grow in these areas or ‘how’ to do it.

I’m not trying to discourage you, I’m merely letting you know ‘how it really is’. As someone who trains guitar teachers to become successful, I know all of the challenges that any guitar teacher could face.

The truth is, it’s fairly easy to learn the steps for becoming highly successful in the 7 areas mentioned above (anyone can do it). Additionally, all the challenges that guitar teachers come up against can be overcome with proper coaching, training and mentoring.

If you are unhappy with where you are at in your guitar teaching business, understand that it’s not because you lack the potential to succeed or have fallen victim to outside circumstances. You’re just at the bottom of Mt. Everest, looking for ways to climb to the top with no knowledge of what steps to take to get there. The only thing you need to do is locate an excellent trainer who will take your hand and guide you along on every step of the way until you have made it to the summit… where you can open the chest and collect the treasure that lies within it.

To begin your ascent of the mountain, learn the best approach for teaching guitar from an expert.

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional electric guitar teacher and composer. He also mentors guitar teachers from around the world in his guitar teacher training program. Visit tomhess.net to get free guitar teaching tipsand read more guitar teacher articles.

Become an online guitar teacher and reach a world wide audience www.internet-guitar-lessons.com – become a guitar teacher.

by Tom Hess

No matter what your skill level is as a guitar player, you want to ‘get it right’ just like anyone else whenever you are practicing. When you practice guitar properly, you will gain better command over the instrument and be able to express yourself more freely. This will increase your excitement at first, but as you improve and seek to take your playing to the next level (whether it be performing live or recording an album) this excitement often transforms into ‘fear’. You become afraid of making mistakes. This opens the door for a lot of big problems…

It’s weird how so many guitarists become much better players than they were previously, yet become fearful of making mistakes instead of inspired to keep getting better. These are the worst fears guitar players have and they affect all guitarists. They keep intermediate players from taking action to become advanced players and sabotage the future careers of guitar players who are highly talented.

As a real world example of this, one of the students in my music career mentoring program recently had the chance to become a member in a band and tour throughout Europe. He had been dreaming of doing this ever since he was a kid, but almost didn’t take the opportunity because he thought he would be ‘good enough’. After I talked with him about this, I helped him understand why he was feeling these fears and coached him to practice guitar much more effectively than ever before. Only a short while afterwards he overcame his fears and toured with the band – having the time of his life in the process.

So how was he able to overcome his fears and succeed? And how can YOU do the same so that you get better and become a great musician?

The reason why guitar players become insecure about their playing as they advance is because they practice with the mindset of ‘playing things right’, vs. to ‘never play them wrong’. Here is how these two mindsets differ and what it means for your guitar playing:

Practicing Guitar To ‘Play It Right’ - this is the step everyone must take when they begin learning to play something for the firs time. Your first task is to play the notes correctly, gain confidence in yourself and play whatever you are trying to play. A lot of guitarists stall at this point (after making mistakes) and assume that their playing will just get better on its own. This is NOT how it works! Mastery will ONLY happen after you’ve begun a higher level of practice, such as:

Practicing Guitar To ‘Never Play It Wrong’ – Once you’ve learned to play something on its own in the privacy of your own room, you need to practice it ‘for the real world’. There are three main ‘real world’ situations you must practice for: playing on stage, recording music and integrating all your musical skills together. After you can ‘play it right’, you must answer this question: “what is the scenario in which I will use this item in my guitar playing?” This will tell you precisely how to practice in order to fully master the material and ‘never play it wrong’.

Here are some examples of how to practice guitar in this way:

Practice Integrating Your Musical Skills

Even if you aren’t going to be playing live or recording anytime soon, you still need to work on using your skills with other techniques as well as in ‘musical’ situations (such as guitar solos, songs, etc.). To do this, you need to stop practicing skills in isolation and start combining them together with other techniques. For instance, after you learn a new scale sequence, you should be practicing it together with other techniques, fast and slow, and with a variety of different rhythms. You also need to learn the best way to apply these sequences into a musical context. Study these ideas in this video about the best way to practice guitar.

Depending on your unique goals with each item in your guitar practice routine, you will have to practice it in each situation above or perhaps just one or two.

Practicing Guitar For Recording In A Studio Situation:

Many guitar players are afraid of making mistakes, so they avoid recording themselves. As a result, they never improve their skills in this area. Once you think you’ve mastered the ability to play something right, you go to record it and suddenly can’t stop making mistakes. Hey, we’ve all been there

To get better in recording situations, you must do these two things: First, get into the habit of frequently recording yourself playing guitar (on audio and video). Try to play as perfectly as you can using as few takes as possible. By taking this simple action, you will quickly build confidence and start playing more accurately in any recording situation. Second, learn all of the unique subtleties of your guitar playing that require practice in order to make a high quality recording. To understand these things in great detail, study this free guitarist recording guide.

Practice Guitar For Playing Great On Stage:

To become a great live guitarist, you must be familiar with the scenarios that occur most often while playing on stage and prepare for them in your guitar practice time. Common examples include: standing up and moving around while playing, playing without being able to see your instrument, playing with distractions, staying in control of your playing without worrying about making mistakes in front of others, playing guitar in different types of weather and playing with equipment you aren’t accustomed to. Of course, this does not cover everything – simply use these ideas to make your own list to work on while practicing.

When you take anything you can ‘play right’ and try to play it in any of the situations above, you will usually crack under the pressure. It’s great for this to happen during your practice, because then you know precisely what needs to be improved in your playing so that you never get it wrong in the actual situation.

As you practice, repeatedly put yourself in the scenarios above and start building your confidence to make your playing become more reliable.

How To Use This Information To Get Better:

Apply the information above by following these steps:

Step One: Identify your specific musical goals. Learn more by studying this article about how to build musical goals.

Step Two: Understand how every practice item brings you one step closer to reaching the goals from the previous step. Read this article about what to practice on guitar to learn more. If you don’t know the purpose of practicing something, stop wasting your time by practicing it!

Step Three: Effectively organize your guitar practice so you can reach your goals as fast as possible.

Step Four: Always seek the answer to this question: “What is the main objective/scenario in which I will use this practice item or music in my guitar playing?” This will keep your guitar practice in line with your highest goals and help you make the transition from ‘playing it right’ to ‘never playing it wrong’.

When you integrate the ideas in this article into your guitar practice on a regular basis, you will stop being afraid of making mistakes and start practicing with confidence and excitement as you begin realizing your ultimate musical goals.

Learn how to effectively organize your guitar practice so you can reach your musical goals much faster.

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 freeguitar playing resources. Then use his practice generator to organize your guitar practice.

By Tom Hess

The biggest mistake you can make for your musical creativity when trying to improve the sound of your guitar solos is to use the same approaches every time. Most guitar players exclusively use these approaches:

Approach 1:They add notes onto the existing ideas in the solo.

Approach 2:They replace old notes or licks in the solo with totally new ones.

You can experience ‘some’ success while using these approaches in isolation… However, to massively improve the quality of your guitar solos, you must also do this:

Approach 3:Dissect your guitar solo lick by lick and enhance it by changing HOW every note is played. Truth is, by simply changing the way the notes in a lick are played (without actually changing the notes themselves) you can easily end up with a much higher quality guitar solo. On the other hand, if you never invest time into improving the way you play the notes, you will only be able to add new notes to the solo that are just as ‘average’ sounding as the ones you began with.

Watch the video below to see how I enhanced one of my student’s solos using this idea. By making just a few small changes to the way he played the notes in the licks of his solo, we were able to make the overall solo sound A LOT better:

Here is how YOU are going to learn how to do this… Pick a solo that you want to improve and use the techniques below to slightly alter the licks that make up that solo. There are three options to choose from while doing this:

Option 1: If you have written your own guitar solos, use it.

Option 2: If you know how to play the guitar solo(s) of your favorite band/guitarist, choose one of them.

Option 3: If none of the above options apply for you, think of several guitar licks (in the same key) that you can play consecutively. This will allow you to play through the exercise even if you don’t know how to play an entire solo yet.

Here are a few ideas for some licks you can use in the key of C major/A minor:

Lick 1- Hear It	Lick 2- Hear It	Lick 3- Hear It

Previously, I explained in an article the different ways you can learn how to improve any guitar lick with various lead guitar techniques. You will now learn how to use bends in highly creative and unique ways to play better solos than you’ve ever played before. Note: Yes, bends are not an extremely complicated technique, but there is A LOT more to the nuances of bending strings than most guitarists realize. If you struggle to make your guitar solos sound awesome, then you haven’t yet mastered the creative bending variations I will have you practice below. So DO the exercise and watch it improve your lead guitar skills:

Guitar Soloing Technique #1: Using Bends To Add Depth To Your Licks

Step 1: Select any guitar lick within your guitar solo.

Step 2: Look for ways to connect the notes in this lick together using bends. In general, the beginning and ending notes are the easiest ones to enhance with bends. Note: Remember to keep your bends in tune at all times.

Step 3 (optional): After bending up to the desired note, increase the intensity and aggression of the lick by using wide vibrato. The following is an example of how steps 2 and 3 would sound like together:

Example– This small guitar lick uses bends and vibrato on the third note and the last note. You will hear two variations: one with vibrato on the third note and one without it: Hear It

(See how this is used in the context of an actual solo by watching the video above.)

Step 4: Play the new variation of your lick several times.

Step 5: Go back and repeat steps two through four by bending up to a different note in the lick. Observe the difference in sound between the variations you made. Go through this same process for every note in the phrase.

Step 6: Once you’ve done this for every note, decide which variation of the lick you like the best and use it in the place of the original lick.

Step 7: Repeat this with a new lick in your solo or implement the ideas in technique #2 (and #3) below.

Guitar Soloing Technique #2: Using Bends Of Varying Speeds

Guitar players will often use bends in the following manner: First, they will strike the note, then they will instantly bend up to the desired pitch. Here’s how it sounds: Hear It

Your guitar solos will sound much more creative when you use bends at varying speeds rather than always ‘immediately’ bending to the target note. Here is how to do this:

Step 1: Take a single lick within your guitar solo and select a couple of notes within it (that are a half step apart).

Step 2: Strike the string and ‘slowly’ begin bending the string from the original note to the higher one. This will move the lower note up in pitch just a little bit (this will make it feel out of tune for the moment).

Step 3: As you get closer to hitting the target note of your bend (after you began the bend slowly), ‘immediately’ speed up the bend to reach the target pitch. Then you can either return the string to the original pitch or follow the next step:

Step 4 (optional): Apply wide and aggressive vibrato to the note before you continue finishing the rest of the lick.

Example– Using a bend with a slow beginning and quick ending: Hear It

(Check out the video above to see exactly how this is used in the context of a solo.)

Step 5: Repeat this with a new lick in your solo or implement the ideas in technique #3 below.

Guitar Soloing Technique #3: Using A Pre-Bend

A pre-bend occurs when you bend the string without actually picking it, then strike the string in order to sound the ‘release’ of the bend. Here is an example: Hear It

Choose any note within your guitar lick and enhance it using a pre-bend. Begin by bending the string up (without picking it) by either a half or whole step, THEN picking it and finally releasing it. Experiment with different notes in the lick to see which one sounds best when played with a pre-bend.

Example: Hear It Observe the slow pre-bend on the first note of this guitar lick (it’s a variation of Lick 1 shown at the beginning of the article)

Keep going through this process for the rest of your solo in order to build tons of innovative variations for each individual lick. Then determine which licks you like best and record the new (slightly changed) solo. Once you’ve done this, observe the creative difference between the original lick you began with and the newer version… you’ll be totally surprised by how much better the new one sounds than the original!

String bends are just a single tool you can use to enhance your guitar solos/licks. The main idea of this exercise is to demonstrate how many great ideas you can squeeze out of a single technique. You can also apply the same approaches in this article using other techniques, such as slides, vibrato, string muting, sweep picking, etc (as well as other types of string bending).

The simple techniques above can be used to make any of your guitar solos sound MASSIVELY better! That said, there are a lot of alternate concepts you must learn about being more creative and playing innovative guitar solos. Get started right now learning how to improve your lead guitar playing.

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, songwriter and a pro guitarist. He uses the best online guitar lessons to train guitar players to reach their musical goals. Go to tomhess.net to get more guitar playing resources, guitar playing eBooks, and to read more guitar playing articles.

By Tom Hess

Contrary to popular belief, lacking ‘natural talent’ is NOT the main reason why so many guitarists fail to become great players. The real reason why so many guitar players fall short of their musical goals is they are being ‘controlled’ by their own fears. In order to improve your guitar playing, you must overcome the same fears that hold so many other players back. To do this, you need to understand why these fears exist and what to do to keep them from sabotaging your musical progress.

The following are the most frequent fears possessed by most guitarists and what you must do to overcome them and reach your musical goals:

Fear Of Not Being ‘Young Enough’ To Become A Great Guitarist

Many guitar players come to me each year with concerns that they are too old to become good guitar players. In many cases, these students falsely think that they can’t become great because their favorite guitarists become awesome players at a young age. This causes the student to not even attempt to do the things that would make him/her into a much better player.

This is what I tell them (and YOU):

Guitar players do not fail to achieve greatness because they are ‘too old’. The concept of age is just a mental construct. You only fail to become a great player if you do not dedicate yourself to doing whatever it takes to get there. Rather than allowing ‘age’ to be your excuse for failure, focus on developing the skills you need to reach your goals, find out the best methods for practicing them and make ‘practicing guitar’ a high priority in your life. When you continually practice what is needed to reach your musical goals (in a correct manner), you WILL achieve them – no matter how old you are. Find out more about this process by checking out this article about choosing good guitar playing exercises.

I’ve worked with many guitar students who thought they were too old to make real progress on guitar, and every time, those who believed what I wrote above achieved their goals in a fraction of the time compared to those who did not trust in what I said above.

Fear Of Failing

Tons of guitarists believe from the very beginning that they aren’t good enough to set and achieve ambitious musical goals. When you fear that you can’t learn to play guitar exactly as you want, here’s what will happen:

*You stop pursuing musical goals that you really want and set lower, more ‘achievable’ goals that you think are more realistic.

*You start practicing things that you are already more comfortable with for the majority of your time, instead of working on materials that will force you to become a great player.

*Because you only set ‘realistic’ (small) musical goals, you will never become the great guitar player you COULD become. You’ll form a habit of giving up whenever something becomes difficult because you think you just ‘don’t have what it takes’.

The worst part is, you’ll end up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy because you spend so much time focusing on ‘failure’ rather than the things you actually want to achieve. To make sure you do not become overwhelmed with a fear of failure, do the following:

*Only focus your mind on the things you desire the most in your guitar playing (and look ahead to the day when your goal is finally achieved). No matter what, you will always face challenges when you try to achieve great things…but all obstacles can be overcome. If you’ve been working hard to learn something for a long time and you are having no success, it’s not because you lack talent – you just have to use an alternate approach. Change your approach to get different results.

*Determine your exact guitar playing/musical goals, and put together a plan to reach them in as little time as possible. Once you’ve done this, don’t give up until you’ve reached the very end and achieved every last goal. Begin by using the ideas in this column about how to reach guitar playing goals.

It is much easier to overcome your fear of failure when you take lessons with a top tier guitar teacher who understands what it takes to accomplish any musical goal you may have. Over the past 25 years I’ve helped thousands of students achieve very big musical goals (who were afraid of failure at first). I invested ample time into mentoring them in order to raise their self-confidence and get them to truly believe in their own potential. This changed their outlook and helped them go on to become excellent guitarists.

Fear Of Playing Guitar In Front Of Others

It is very hard for many guitarists to move beyond their fear of playing in front of others. One moment you could be able to play something easily alone your room and the next you are struggling to play the exact same thing just because other people are watching. Some of the common symptoms of this fear include uncontrollable shakiness, excess sweating or temporary loss of memory. The worst part is, when you fear playing in front of other people, you avoid it at all costs. As a result, you are unable to gain the benefits and musical growth you get from doing things like playing with other musicians, performing in a band or being part of a show in front of a live audience.

To overcome this fear, you must stop believing in the idea that other people (watching you play) are waiting for you to fail so they can ‘make fun of you’ or criticize you. Fact is, the people watching you play are generally NOT thinking about you at all – they are only thinking about themselves. They are jealous of your musical skills and wish they had the ‘guts’ to play in front of others, like you. No one will really notice your mistakes unless you point them out yourself.

The key is to forget about what others might think and use every time you play for others as an opportunity to improve your performance skills (NOT as a once in a lifetime chance to play something 100% perfect). For instance, if your hands become extremely shaky because you feel nervous, make it your main focus to reduce this problem every time you play for others. Each time you perform, track your results on a piece of paper and measure your improvement. By doing this, you eliminate the concern of what other people are thinking and replace it with a concern for self-improvement. Then, over time you will become more relaxed.

Discover more ways you can improve your live performances by learning how to overcome stage fright.

Fear Of Criticism

A lot of guitar players fear having their guitar playing criticized and will do anything they can to avoid situations where others could judge their skills (causing them to ‘feel bad’ about their playing). They will do this even if it means sabotaging their own progress or missing opportunities to get useful feedback! That’s right: people will sabotage their own potential to become better guitarists because they are afraid of what other people might say!

Here is an example of the harmful effects of this fear: I run various training events for guitarists each year who travel overseas to train with me for the entire day (for several days in a row) to totally transform their guitar technique, soloing ability, phrasing and musical expression. Whenever one of these events takes place, I observe a total transformation in literally every person who attended. At the same time, there are a lot of people who talk themselves out of coming to these events, although they have the time, money and a strong desire to attend and KNOW the event will completely change their playing for the better. I get an overflow of emails from these types of people, who give me excuses for not showing up, and I know their excuses are deeply rooted in fear. Later, most of these people contact me again to reveal that they deeply regret not coming to the event. Since they gave in to their fear about what others would think of their playing, they blocked themselves from a massive opportunity to improve their musical skills. That is why they will continue to struggle to achieve their musical goals and regret their decision to hide behind fear.

Even for guitarists who are very advanced players, this type of fear can hold them back from achieving their musical goals. For example, great players will often delay writing and recording an album (for many years) by chasing ‘perfection’. This is caused by the fear that someone might criticize their music/playing. As a result, they never experience the significant growth one receives from this type of musical activity.

To overcome this fear, do the following:

*Know that the greatest way to become a better musician is putting yourself into situations where you are challenged to grow and improve. This is what the best players do on a consistent basis.

*Understand that perfection is something worth reaching for, but not something you can ever actually ‘reach’. It’s important to make mistakes in order to grow as a musician. Instead of avoiding mistakes, embrace them and utilize them as opportunities for learning how to get better.

*Get a clear understanding of what areas in your playing you need to work on in order to improve. Get a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses by using this guitar skills assessment.

You’ve now learned how to overcome the fears that prevent many guitarists from taking the next step to become better players. Take advantage of this, by applying what you’ve learned here to move closer to your ultimate musical goals. To get more help with developing your musical skills, take this free mini course about pursuing musical goals and become a great guitarist fast.

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional touring musician, recording artist and online guitar teacher who teaches guitarists from all over the world in his online guitar lessons. On his website, tomhess.net, you can get additional free tips about guitar playing, guitar playing resources, mini courses and surveys.

By Tom Hess

Do you feel unsatisfied with your current guitar playing skills? Chances are, you have inherited many bad playing habits over the years that are currently holding you back from becoming the player you want to become. If you are like most guitarists, this makes you feel helpless because you think you have to rebuild your guitar playing from the ground up while learning new techniques or skills.

Unfortunately, if you have already reached a major plateau in your guitar playing, you are very likely to experience this kind of frustration before seeing any progress toward your musical goals. If you are a self-taught guitar player, you are much more likely to develop bad habits and go through this because you have no teacher to guide you when your playing gets off course. This is something I see all the time when teaching new guitar students who have been trying to teach themselves how to play for many years.

After turning countless average electric guitarists into great electric guitarists, I’ve observed pretty much any guitar playing issue you could possibly imagine. The following are just a few of the bad habits that I have helped my students eliminate:

1. Guitar practicing methods that are not effective, because they are based off of misinformation or faulty premises. These types of practice approaches make it nearly impossible to accomplish what you want on guitar. I talk more extensively about these bad practicing habits (and how to fix them) in this free video about how to get results from guitar practice.

2. Very inefficient picking hand technique that stems from many years of practice using inefficient picking movements or a limited picking system. Watch this free guitar video on the topic of how to build guitar speed to check out an example of this.

3. Untwisting a knot of poor guitar technique habits caused by years of using too much tension and lacking finger independence in the fretting hand.

4. Frequently using the CAGED method as a means to memorize the fretboard and learn scales. The CAGED method is one of the worst things a guitar player can learn – it causes so many problems that I’d have to devote an entire article (or book!) to cover them all. At the very least, this system will greatly limit your ability to creatively improvise on guitar. Many of my new students come to me frustrated after using CAGED system for a long time and we have to take the time to fix all the problems they developed from using it. However, once we are done, they always thank me because they have become MUCH better players.

Of course, the points above are only a few of the possible bad habits you might have. Whether you are suffering from ‘these’ specific bad habits or different ones, there are several steps you can take that will help you fix them and become a much better guitarist. These steps will help reduce the frustration described at the beginning of this article.

Here is the process you need to follow:

1. BECOME EXCITED when you discover a fundamental problem in your guitar playing, because you are about to become a much better player. Even if you feel a bit disappointed because you are not the player you thought you were, know that your guitar playing skills can only get better. Instead of allowing yourself to become a mediocre player, you can simply fix your current playing issues and take one step closer to becoming the guitarist you always wanted to become. This is a reason to celebrate!

2. Become very analytical. To entirely eliminate a core issue in your guitar playing, you need to:

A. Clearly identify the issue or bad habit (use these free guitar playing surveys to see what you should be fixing now in your playing).

B. Get a clear understanding of why the problem is keeping you from becoming the player you want to become

C. Know what steps to take to solve your problem

D. Figure precisely why these specific steps are the best solutions for solving the issue

E. Picture how much better you will be once you have solved the issue and improved your guitar playing skills

Every one of the five points above is absolutely crucial (and the assessments mentioned will serve as great tools for gaining clarity on these points). Simply ‘being motivated’ throughout the correction process of a core guitar playing problem is very important. In order to remain motivated, you must clearly understand both WHAT your specific issue is and WHY it holds you back from achieving your guitar playing goals. You will also find that visualizing how great you will be as a player after solving your problem is CRUCIAL for sustaining a high level of motivation.

The majority of guitar players only focus on one or two of the points mentioned above (usually A and C) while completely ignoring points B, D & E. This increases the chances that they will run out of motivation long before they totally fix their bad guitar playing habits. Find out more about preventing this from happening by studying this article on how to avoid musical burnout.

3. Focus on correcting one issue at a time. It is very easy to become overwhelmed when you learn that you have tons of issues to work on (essentially making you feel like you are starting over as a guitarist). You don’t need to feel this way and I’ll explain why:

Instead of feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, get organized by developing a highly effective guitar practice schedule and getting rid of your problems exactly how you would approach learning any new skill.

This takes me to the next point:

4. Don’t feel like you have to solve ALL of your guitar playing issues at once. In other words, don’t put your other guitar skills on hold in order to fix your bad habits. This is something that many guitar players do and their playing suffers as a result. Rather than doing this, simply set aside time to practice/improve your problem areas, but continue to develop in other areas of your playing as well. Learn more about this approach in this article about making fast guitar playing progress.

5. Don’t make the common mistake of trying to eliminate deeply rooted bad guitar playing habits by yourself. There is a reason why you were unable to see these issues in the first place. You need the guidance of an expert guitar teacher to help you completely eliminate any poor playing habits you have accumulated over the years. When looking for a great guitar teacher, always make sure that this person has a proven track record for helping guitarists – who are the same situation as you – effectively solve their playing issues. Learn how to do this by downloading this free resource on the topic of how to find a guitar teacher.

6. You become like the people you surround yourself with… so surround yourself with excellent guitar players who will support you as you work on correcting major guitar playing issues. By simply being around these types of people, you will gain a huge motivational boost to reach your musical goals faster. I know this is true, because I continually see the massive positive effect my private musician forum has on every new student who begins taking lessons with me.

7. Maintain your patience throughout the correction process and push through to the end. Eliminating very fundamental bad habits in your guitar playing is no easy task. As soon as you begin the process, you will have to strongly resist returning to your old, more comfortable playing methods. To make sure you stay on the right track, ALWAYS keep your mind focused on the end result you desire for your guitar playing. For help with this, read this column on the topic of persevering as a guitarist.

After reading this article, you are now prepared to begin fixing fundamental issues in your guitar playing. Fill out these free guitar playing surveys right now to start the process. Next, carefully follow the points in this article, apply the concepts into your current practicing methods and find a great guitar teacher who will guide you along the right path. Once you do this, you will quickly reach your highest guitar playing goals and become the guitarist you always wanted to be!

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, songwriter and a pro guitarist. He uses the best online guitar lessons to train guitar players to reach their musical goals. Go to tomhess.net to get more guitar playing resources, guitar playing eBooks, and to read more guitar playing articles.

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.