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.

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

By Tom Hess

Ever wonder why so few musicians seem to have great success in the music business compared to the thousands who are trying to make it? Truth is, most musicians are totally clueless about ‘what to do’ and ‘how to do it’ so they follow the advice of friends/family in hopes that it will lead them down the right path. However, this approach fails because friends and family do not really understand the music industry because they have never been successful in it. With this in mind, if you haven’t already read my previous article on how to become a professional musician.

On the other hand, musicians who build and sustain successful music careers utilize an entirely different set of skills, thought processes and values that help them achieve music business success. These things are not music business secrets that are only available to rock stars and music industry executives – anyone can learn and utilize them (this includes you). Throughout the rest of this article I will discuss these various qualities and help you understand how you can use them to benefit your personal music career.

Get ready to be surprised, because the qualities I will be mentioning will not have anything to do with your musical skills. The reason for this is because it is ‘understood’ in the music industry that you must develop ‘pro’ level musical skills (by working with a great teacher) at the same time as you work on your career. Having great musical skills is really only a small piece of the puzzle for music career success. In fact, there are countless people who are great ‘musicians’, but never go anywhere in their music careers.

The majority of the material covered below deals with your own way of thinking rather than the things you ‘do’. Most people do not think in a way that will lead them to a high level of success in the music industry. However, you CAN learn and develop the right mindset for success with proper training. I know this from personal experience after spending years to develop the right qualities in myself to reach a high level in the music industry. Having reached my own goals in the music industry, I now mentor other musicians around the world to reach success in their own music careers.

The following are the most crucial qualities needed for achieving major success in the music industry.

The Right Work Ethic Mentality

Of course it is obvious that you will need to work hard to build a successful music career. However, most musicians do not understand what ‘kind’ of working mentality is required to truly ‘make it’. The type of dedication needed requires more than just working a lot on your career. It requires:

1. Understanding the ‘correct’ course of action to take in order to make progress. This means not just ‘working a lot’, but working on the ‘right things’ that will lead you where you want to go.

2. Working in the most effective and productive manner possible. Tons of people stay busy throughout the day, but never actually accomplish anything important. You don’t want to become one of these people.

3. Being aware of how everything you do factors into the growth of your music career in the long term.

4. Having the patience and commitment to do all the hard work ‘up front’, long before you get a payoff of any kind. A common example of this would be recording a full length album in the studio before actually making any profit from it.

To develop the right work ethic mindset, work to clearly understand your long term music career goals and find a mentor who will help you determine the steps you must take to reach them.

Loyalty

In the music industry, you will not reach a high level of success alone. Music companies, musicians, promoters, managers and other music industry types will all act as your business partners at one point or another in your music career. These people will all invest their time, energy and resources into you and because of this they will expect your loyalty (as you will likewise expect it from them). Musicians who are not loyal are frequently banned from future business ventures and music career opportunities. The majority of musicians take loyalty for granted and only ‘pretend’ to be loyal until they can take advantage of an opportunity at the expense of their partners.

Certainly there are many different concepts of what it means to maintain loyalty to someone. In this case, loyalty describes not taking advantage of an opportunity to ‘get ahead’ while simultaneously creating conflict with those who you are working with. At the same time (of course), you cannot let others take advantage of you and bring you down for the sake of ‘loyalty’ itself. You must learn how to become perceptive in this area in order to truly achieve high success in your music career.

Use this music business assessment to better understand what people in the music industry will be looking for in you.

The Ability To Bring More To The Table Than Just Playing Your Instrument

No matter if you are working as an independent musician or together with a music company, you will greatly benefit by knowing how to negotiate, book shows, build a following of fans, put together a tour, communicate effectively, think of profitable business ideas and much more.

That said, you don’t have to be highly skilled in each of these areas. After all, this is why you should be working together with a team of other people who are strong in the different areas where you are weak. However, when you posses the ability to bring value to the table in these different areas, you will gain the power to:

1. Become the ‘best choice’ for any bands looking for a new member

2. Think of many different ways to earn money in the music business

3. Not lose money when you have to hire others to perform tasks you cannot do

4. Earn a lot more money because you have more value to offer to others

5. Transform any project you are working on into a success

The idea to take away from this is that the most successful musicians do a lot more than just play their instruments. This is why they are able to quickly climb the ranks and make good money by working together with others.

A Win/Win Thinking Mentality

The majority of musicians are always looking out for themselves without thinking about the effect their actions have on others. Of course, you will need to get your own needs met, but you do not need to do so while bringing others down at the same time. The musicians who become the most successful and gain access to the greatest opportunities in this business are always getting what they want while ALSO finding a way to help the people they work with do the same. In nearly all scenarios, you can find a way to create a great outcome for everyone involved. To do this, you will need to think from a totally different perspective than most musicians (and people in general). In my music career success program, I help musicians understand how to consistently think with this mindset.

Freedom To Pursue Music Industry Opportunities

It’s a lot a less difficult to pursue any music industry related opportunities when you are free to do so. Gaining this freedom while putting together a music career is part of becoming a successful musician. Learn about gaining the freedom to pursue the things you want to do in your music career with the advice in this article about how to begin a career in music.

Knowing How To Keep Calm During Situations Of Stress

As a professional musician you will encounter many situations that cause you to experience a high level of stress. These situations may include things like recording in the studio, going on tour, attempting to pursue different projects at once and many other scenarios that involve working together with tons of other people who all have different preferences and demands. This is a huge challenge that most musicians are unable to overcome.

Highly successful musicians have the ability to press forward through situations of stress and excel, while others (who think they are skilled in this area) are surprised when they find themselves crumbling under pressure. In my music career mentoring program, I help musicians prepare mentally for situations of high stress. This helps most musicians avoid very negative consequences that could hurt their music career.

The Ability To Always Think About ‘The Big Picture’

The music industry contains tons of opportunities and challenges no matter which path you decide to take in your career. Additionally, no matter what path you go down, you will always have limited time and resources to use. To make things even more challenging, you will often have to do most of your work well before seeing any of the benefits of your efforts.

If you do not have a perfect vision of where you want to go in the music business, it will be very difficult not to become torn in different directions that take you far away from your original goals.

The musicians who become successful in the music business are always focusing to align their actions up with the end goals they desire most. This gives them the ability to judge what is best for their music career and make the right choice whenever a potential opportunity comes their way. By doing this, they are able to achieve their goals quickly and effectively.

Now that you have read about the crucial qualities needed for success in the music business, here are 4 things you should do to start building a successful long term music career:

1. Increase your chances for success in the music business by reading this article on how to become a professional musician.

2. Prepare yourself for a successful music career with this music business assessment.

3. Using the results from step 2 above, put together a plan for how you will improve your weaknesses and make progress in your music career.

4. Get trained by a mentor who has already achieved the things you want to do in the music industry to reach your music career goals faster.

 

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.

 

By Tom Hess

Do you feel like your 7 string guitar playing is not as creative as you would like it to be? Chances are, you have not fully explored the instrument’s creative possibilities and limited your approach to simply trying make your 6 string ideas work with the low B string.

Unlike most guitarists, truly great guitar players are well aware of the differences between 6 and 7 string guitar. As a result, they are able to play creatively on their instrument.

In an past article I made, I covered several 7 string guitar ideas. This gave you many additional ideas for how to use your instrument as well as how to smoothly transition from 6 string guitar to 7 string guitar. This article will focus on some more specific ideas that will help you use 7 string guitar to improve your overall guitar playing ability.

Implement these five concepts into your regular guitar practice routine in order to become much better and more creative in your 7 string guitar playing:

Use Variety When Playing With Palm Muting In Your Rhythm Guitar Riffs

You might think that palm muting is a very easy and basic guitar technique, however, developing it to a level of true mastery requires great skill and focus (as with most techniques). As discussed in this resource about how to record guitar parts, many guitarists use sloppy palm muting technique during their recordings. As a result, they have to buy more time in the studio just so they can redo their recordings.

With this in mind, you know you have truly mastered palm muting when you have the ability to consciously adjust the precise amount of muting you apply while playing rhythm guitar ideas. A good illustration of this is when you use palm muting technique while playing a power chord and slowly decrease the pressure of your palm on the strings to allow them to ring out openly. This technique can sound really intense when applied on the low B string due to the natural ‘heaviness’ of the lower register. Applying this technique consistently and accurately requires practice, especially if you are going to ‘record’ a double tracked rhythm guitar part that uses it. This palm muting application is not at all the same as playing guitar with inconsistent muting without being aware of what you are doing.

Learn how to play 7 string rhythm guitar using this palm muting style to enhance your guitar riffs.

Use String Skipping To Enhance The Intensity Of Your Guitar Riffs

One of the first things that guitar players are drawn to with 7 string guitar is playing rhythm patterns on the low B string. The expanded pitch range of this string gives you the opportunity to use string skipping as a tool to make really intense and killer rhythm guitar riffs. In many cases, string skipping would normally be used as a lead guitar technique. However, on 7 string guitar the low B string allows you to use string skipping while still remaining in the lower pitch range normally associated with rhythm guitar.

When you begin skipping strings from the low B string, you give yourself more options to be creative as well as improve your ability to pick with a much higher degree of accuracy. Why is this? While playing on 7 string guitar, not only must you adjust for the wider neck, but you must overcome these two obstacles as well:

1. You have to move your picking hand a greater distance between each string.

2. The likeliness that extra noise will occur due to other strings ringing out increases with the additional string. You must use great focus to mute properly while skipping strings.

Expand your understanding of this string skipping idea by using the free examples in this resource about how to play 7 string rhythm guitar.

Utilize The Low 7^th String To Enhance Your Picking Hand Accuracy

One unique way to develop your picking hand accuracy is to take advantage of the thickness of the low B string. Here’s how to do this: First, think of several licks, scale patterns or riffs that only use the lowest two strings. Then take your time and develop the ability to play them fast with an emphasis on perfect accuracy for each note (use palm muting as well to improve your muting technique).

Increase the difficulty of this exercise by temporarily turning your gain or distortion settings OFF so that it becomes harder to cleanly articulate each note. By doing this, you will expose any weaknesses in your picking attack and force yourself to make adjustments in order to get better. Once you return to your normal distortion settings you will quickly notice that it feels much easier to articulate and play each note more accurately than you could previously.

Using Irregular Rhythms To Build Musical Intensity

Many people associated the term ‘irregular rhythm’ with ‘irregular meter’. However, these terms are not interchangeable. While irregular meter refers specifically to the meter of the music (such as 7/4 or 5/8), irregular rhythm refers to how the beats are divided within a single measure. Generally speaking, irregular rhythm has to do with using unexpected syncopation, silence or note groupings that surprise the listener.

Of course you can use irregular rhythms while playing 6 string guitar as well, however when you use them on the low 7^th string it combines with the natural intensity of playing in the lower register to add MASSIVE tension and power to your music. For instance, I like to occasionally add in silence during the middle of a measure to create an irregular feel to the music. While doing this, I catch the listener off guard by changing their rhythmic expectations and create a lot of extra tension in the music with the intense feel of the low B string.

Want to hear how this sounds? Listen to the mp3 examples in this 7 string guitar playing resource.

Play Using A Higher Register By Stringing Your Guitar With A High “A” String

It is overwhelmingly common for 7 string guitar players to use a low B string. After all, this is how most 7 string guitars are sold at guitar shops. However, this does not mean that you are limited to only playing with this string. It is perfectly acceptable to use a high “A” string (in standard tuning) that expands the higher register rather than a low B string. When you do this, you will open the door to creative lead guitar possibilities that are totally unavailable in both 6 string guitar and typical 7 string guitar set ups.

Warning: Just like with the low B string, it is very easy to over-emphasize the high A string and cause your guitar playing to lose a sense of variety. Keep this in mind and use a balanced approach to keep your guitar playing fresh.

As you have found out in this article, there are far more creative possibilities for 7 string guitar than you might first expect. Certainly 6 string and 7 string guitars are played very similarly, however when you think creatively you can use the 7 string guitar to enhance your guitar playing and musicianship in interesting ways.

Get more information to help you get the maximum value out of this article and learn how to play 7 string rhythm guitar with more creativity.

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and the guitar player for the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He helps guitar players internationally to become better players with his customized guitar lessons. Check out free guitar playing videos and use a guitar practice guide on his website with effective guitar lessons to learn effective methods for improving your guitar playing.

By Tom Hess

Are you trying to find the best way to promote your music and gain a huge following of fans? This is a major concern for the majority of musicians; both for those who are just starting their music careers and for those who have been in the music business for a long time. There is no doubt that having a major following of fans for your music is crucial to big and long lasting success in the music industry.

However, the truth is that there is no all encompassing answer on the topic of how to promote your music. This is because you or the band you are playing in are likely facing many unique challenges that would need to be overcome before you could gain more fans and effectively promote your music. The good news is, whether you are just starting in the music business or are a seasoned pro, being able to get more music fans and promote your music really comes down to reaching the following three goals:

1. You have to get more people to check out your music.

2. You need the people who check out your music to give you some kind of support (either by buying your music, coming out to your shows, purchasing products your release, etc.)

3. You need to turn your fans into FANATICS to where they will tell others (on their own) about how great you and your music are.

No matter what it is that you are trying to achieve in the music business, the three goals mentioned above will apply to anything you do as long as you are trying to develop a strong relationship with your fans.

These goals may all seem to be separate from one another; however, they are in fact all connected. Once you are able to achieve success with any single one of them, you will greatly improve your chances for success with any of the others. As soon as you truly ‘get’ this basic truth, you will find it much easier to be productive in your efforts.

In order to achieve great success as you promote you music to your fans, you must learn how to think in a strategic manner rather than just taking inconsistent and isolated actions (a mistake that most musicians and bands make). Instead of trying to find a general formula that you can apply to help you get more fans for your music, you need to begin thinking in the same manner as most professional musicians. While training other musicians to succeed in their music careers, I help them understand how to find creative ideas that they can apply in their own music career in order to quickly gain more music fans. Once you gain the ability to think this way in your own music career, it will become much easier for you to overcome any obstacles that stand in the way of your promotional efforts.

To illustrate what I mean and give you various steps (that you can take right now to get more music fans), here are some quick and easy things you can do to accomplish all three of the music promotion goals mentioned above.

However, before I discuss this in more detail, you will be able to get much more benefit from reading this article if you take the time (right now) to assess your current understanding of how to attract music fans. Take this free test on how to promote a music career now before you read the following sections of this article. Open a separate tab in your browser now, finish the assessment and then come back when you are done.

Now that you have measured your current music promotion abilities, I am going to show you a few ways to promote your music. While you are reading, try to think creatively and focus on the ‘style’ of thinking that makes up the foundation for these ideas rather than just the ideas themselves. This will help you to better understand what makes them effective and how you can use them in your own music career.

Promoting Your Music Objective: Get more people to hear your music

Solution #1: Release music with other musicians on a compilation album. While releasing a compilation record with other artists, you not only release your own music, but the songs of others. This is important because once you do this you are able to promote your music to both your fans AND the fans of every other musician on the record. Remember, your main objective here is not necessarily to make a lot of money; but to utilize the album as an inexpensive tool for gaining much more exposure to new fans than what you would gain on your own. Later on, you can get maximum leverage out of this by promoting your own records, products or merchandise to your new extended network of fans. This idea of using one action to produce MANY benefits is one of the many success strategies that I train musicians to use in my Music Careers Mentoring Program.

Solution #2: Work together with other musicians locally. Instead of considering other local musicians to be your competition (for gaining more fans), work together with local musical artists of a similar genre to help you gain access to larger amount of fans who are interested in hearing and seeing you play music. One method for achieving this is to work with another band to perform at the same venue in an effort to bring together the fan base of both bands. By doing this, you will not only improve your relationship with the owner of the venue (because you are bringing in more people), but you will have the opportunity to advertise your music to the other band’s fan base (and them to yours). This idea is very fundamental, but in reality not many bands take initiative to actually go out and do it. On top of that, many bands make the mistake of sharing the venue with other bands who are not in their target market, or with bands who do not make a strong effort to attract their fans to the venue (thus taking away the mutual benefit). One example of pulling this idea off (which is fairly common in the music business) is when a band with a small following becomes and opening act for a much larger band. However, if you cannot find a highly successful band to open for you can still achieve this; you will need to simply find a band that contains musicians who have enough ambition to take ACTION and implement this strategy.

Promoting Your Music Objective: Get your fans to take the next step

Solution #1: Make sure that people have incentive to both be a fan of your music AND purchase your music. Those who have mastered the ability to successfully promote music find ways to get their fan base to buy their music as opposed to downloading it online for free. Additionally, they are able to take an average listener and turn him/her into a loyal fan. A great way to do this is to offer something special to people who actually BUY your music (that cannot be obtained by simply downloading it for free). To effectively do this, it is important that whatever you are offering cannot be easily reproduced through digital media. This could include things such as VIP passes to your concerts, merchandise or other creative and unique items. The main thing to get out this idea is that you can implement a single strategy to achieve good music promotion while also developing a stronger relationship between you and your fans.

Solution #2: Become familiar with your current fan base. It is easy to successfully promote yourself as a musician when you can put yourself out there to those who already give you their support whenever you pursue new projects in your musical career. Most musicians think that their biggest problem is a lack of music fans, when in fact, they simply do not know who their real fans are and how to get in touch with them. Instead of contacting these specific fans, a lot of musicians focus their efforts on the general public. The truth is, this approach can work; however, promoting your music in this manner will cost a great deal of money and time. To dramatically cut down on your costs with regards to money, energy and time; make your musical promotion more effective by finding an easy way to stay in touch with your fan base at all times.

Promoting Your Music Objective: Changing Casual Music Fans Into True Fanatics

Solution #1: Create unique events around your music that encourages your fans to interact with you in ways other than just listening to your songs or coming to your shows. There exist many different ways to do this (limited only by your personal creativity); however, no matter what you do, your main goal should always be to expand upon the relationship you have with your fans in order to close the gap between you are your fans.

Solution #2: Reward your greatest fans with unique items and attention that casual fans do not have access to. This can easily be tied together with the point made in solution #1 above or as an independent idea on its own. If you want the fans of your music to take initiative in a specific way (such as spreading your band’s reputation or music to their friends), think of things that you can offer to them that will really get them enthusiastic about what is going on beyond your music. When you do this, offer something that really helps to spread your band’s image as opposed to merely offering cash or “free t-shirts”. Go the extra mile to really offer your most loyal music fans something special.

As you have read, once you take a more detailed approach to understanding specifically what it is that you want to do when it comes to “gaining more music fans”, it’s a lot easier to understand specifically which action steps you must perform to make this happen. The majority of musicians only think about improving their music while trying to appeal to the general public, but doing this is only one aspect of musical promotion. Of course, your music is important; however there are aspects of your music career that you must work on in order to effectively get more fans for your music. As soon as you begin focusing on these aspects, you will start to gain much greater results in your music promotion efforts.

Start getting more fans of your music career by assessing your current promotional skills in this free assessment on how to promote a music career.

About The Author:
Tom Hess is an electric guitar teacher online and a music career mentor. He plays guitar and tours with the band Rhapsody Of Fire. Tom also trains musicians on how to succeed in the music business. On his professional musician website tomhess.net you can read many more articles about making a living with a music career.

By Tom Hess

Many guitar players think that having great technical playing skills is crucial to writing incredible guitar solos. In reality, there exist tons of great guitarists who play truly inspiring guitar phrases without playing in a very ‘technical’ manner… and you can do this to when you follow the steps in this article.

To create killer guitar solo ideas that simply ‘can’t be ignored’ by your listeners, you will need to do two things: 1. Establish a familiar pattern to create a ‘musical expectation’ AND 2. Go against this expectation to surprise your listener. Fact is, this is ‘not’ hard and there are countless ways to accomplish this in your lead guitar phrasing. For the rest of this article, I will show you an effective step by step approach to creating attention-grabbing guitar solos.

Before I continue, it is ESSENTIAL for you watch the video below to see the demonstration of this guitar soloing method. When I say it is ESSENTIAL, I mean it – If you do not do this first, you will not get the maximum benefit from the information in the rest of this article. Once you have watched the full video, come back and I will take you through the steps to writing your own killer guitar solo phrases.

Okay, assuming you have already watched the video above, you are ready to continue reading this article. Follow these steps to write guitar solos with phrasing that ‘demands’ the attention of your listeners:

Step Number One: Begin by writing a guitar phrase in common time (4/4) that uses one of the following choices: a group of eighth notes or a group of sixteenth notes. The phrase should be a repeating pattern that can be easily played over and over (starting over every 8 or 16 notes), so it’s important to use the same note values here. After making your selection, play the phrase you created over a backing track. After making your selection, play the phrase you created over a backing track. Play your melody over this 4/4 track with drums now.

HINT: By using pedal point phrasing (as demonstrated in the video above) you will make the following steps easier to do. Additionally, you can use a similar idea to the one seen below, where every note is picked two times:

(I encourage you to create your own ideas as well) 

Step Number Two: Play the short guitar phrase you created over the 4/4 track with drums and repeat it several times in a row. This step is important because:

A. By repeating your guitar phrase over and over, you are solidifying the expectation for your listeners that: the pattern itself and the 4/4 beat will continue (as you saw in the video). B. It helps make the next step even more surprising and powerful.

Step Number Three: It’s time to really surprise the listener by doing something totally unexpected. You are going to create the feel of ‘three against four’ with your guitar phrase (as you heard in the video). A very easy way to accomplish this feel is to shorten the phrase you came up with so that it can fit into a meter that uses three beats per measure while you keep playing over the backing track that uses FOUR beats per measure. Compare the image below to the first one from above to see how you can change your guitar phrase to give it the feel of three against four:

Pay close attention to the fact that the rhythm of the notes remains unchanged (as you noticed in the video). By following this example, the music will play in 4/4 while your shorter guitar phrase will play against it – beginning again on a different pulse than the music itself. This creates a sense of strong musical tension that will be unavoidable to anyone who listens to your guitar solo. This will absolutely DEMAND their attention!

 

Step Number Four. At some point, the new guitar phrase will eventually line up with the beat of the backing track (remember the value of each note remained the same). Once this happens, you will need to decide on what to do next. You can choose between any of the following actions:

A. Keep playing the altered guitar phrase in order to maintain the feel of three against four. B. Revert back to your original phrase and play in perfect time with the backing track. C. Start over by creating a new guitar solo phrase.

Notice: Although playing guitar in this manner will certainly create unexpected results for your listeners (in a good way), if you play the same idea over many times it will create new expectations for them. In other words, you must ‘balance’ the process of introducing new ideas and ‘developing’ them in order to keep your playing interesting for your audience. The longer you repeat an idea, the less ‘novel’ it feels to the listener (even if it is a really cool idea).

Additionally, do not limit yourself to using this three against four approach only in lead guitar playing scenarios. All of the steps in this article can be followed to create cool riffs for rhythm guitar as well. There are countless ways to creatively integrate this idea into your music and many more basic examples than I can get into in a single article.

Now that you have learned the unique guitar phrasing approach discussed in this article, apply it into your guitar solos to unlock endless musical possibilities for your guitar playing!

Get powerful tips for playing guitar solos and become a better lead guitarist.

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar player, composer and the guitarist of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He also trains musicians to reach their guitar playing goals in his metal guitar lessons online. Go to his personal website and read more articles about guitar playing, plus get guitar player tips and free guitarist resources.

by Tom Hess

Are you tired of watching your guitar students make progress at a very slow rate? Many guitar teachers struggle at some point to get their students to make fast progress and as a result their guitar teaching business suffers. The good news is, it is not as hard as you might think to get your students to make incredible progress in a short period of time… but first you must make a fundamental change to your overall guitar teaching approach.

Although there are tons of reasons why most guitarists who take lessons never become great musicians, in the end a lot of your success as a guitar teacher will depend on your ability to effectively teach your students ‘how to practice’.

You can be a great teacher at everything else in your guitar lessons, but until your students fully understand how to properly practice guitar they will never really be able to reach high levels in their guitar playing. In fact, they could stay with you for years at a time and never make any real progress. It is for this reason that you MUST show your guitar students how to practice and take this subject very seriously.

Once you can effectively train your students to practice guitar you will enable them to play guitar in the way that they always wanted. On top of that, you will create a name for yourself in your local community and build a great reputation (helping you to quickly build your guitar teaching business).

Now, before I reveal the most effective ways for teaching your students to practice guitar, it is crucial that you assess your own guitar teaching skills. Take this guitar teacher skill assessment first (then continue reading the rest of the article).

The THREE Major Reasons Why So Many Guitar Students Don’t Know How To Practice

Reason 1: The great majority of guitar teachers out there use up nearly every moment of each guitar lesson teaching their students new information such as new scales, licks, techniques and so forth. The reason why this happens so much is because most guitar teachers feel obligated to teach new material so that their students don’t feel like they are being “ripped off”. Because guitar teachers are so afraid of this, they overwhelm students with tons of new ideas but only spend a fraction of the time actually showing them how to practice what they learn on guitar.

Reason 2: Whenever a guitar teacher actually does make the attempt to teach guitar practice concepts to a student, the teacher quickly tells them all of the steps that they need to do and assumes that they will both remember what was said and actually ‘do it’. For instance, while teaching two-handed tapping licks, guitar students frequently make the mistake of not muting the strings that are not being played (resulting in excess noise). Most guitar teachers will simply tell their students, “Remember to mute those strings when you practice on your own”, and will show them maybe once or twice how to mute the strings. That said, next week when the student returns… the strings still are not being muted properly! Why does such a thing happen?:

a) Students often assume they understood how to practice something you showed them but will often do it incorrectly at home.

b) If the student even remembers you telling them about the mistake, it is still unlikely that they will remember ‘how’ you told them to practice in order to fix it.

c) The majority of guitar students will totally forget what you said was the cause of the mistake in their playing and will practice incorrectly on their own until they see you again.

Because of these things, you will need to waste time going over what the student was supposed to have learned the previous week once again. This guitar teaching method totally fails for the following reasons:

1. You never check to assure that your guitar students are practicing properly because you have never actually observed the way that they practice. Watching your students ‘practice’ is different than just listening to them play. When you hear them play, you hear the ‘end result’, but you don’t actually see the process they used in order to produce it.

2. During the lesson, your students might think they know what needs to get done to practice effectively, but when they get home and pick up their guitar; they practice incorrectly or forget.

3. The student doesn’t have enough time to truly absorb the process for practicing guitar effectively.

Reason 3: In most cases, guitar teachers give their students very generalized practice advice as it applies to ‘anything’ on guitar. On the other hand, expert guitar teachers show their students many specific strategies for guitar practice based upon the students’ musical goals AND the specific challenges they are facing in their playing. This helps the student to make improvements and advance his/her guitar playing more easily than the student who only received ‘general’ advice on how to practice guitar.

Here Is What You Should Do

Now you should be totally on board with the idea that teaching guitar students how to practice is a crucial part of teaching guitar. I’ve shown you the way that guitar teachers fail to teach this, now here are the solutions that will help you get your guitar students to practice effectively and make better progress:

Solution Number One. Don’t give in whenever one of your guitar students tries to blow off the guitar practice section of their lesson. In many cases, students will tell you that they “Got it” when in fact, they really might not “Get it”. Remember, it is absolutely crucial for them to learn how to practice guitar correctly in order to get results. In situations when you can sense that your student is trying to rush through practice in order to learn something “new”, remind them that they will get better at a much faster pace once they can practice guitar effectively.

Solution Number Two. Your guitar students will not remember how to practice something when they get home if all you did was merely tell them for a brief moment how to practice it. You’ve got to both show them how to do it yourself AND then also have them show you. This is a subject that makes many guitar teachers feel nervous. Most teachers think that if they do not constantly flood the student with new material then the student will get bored and stop taking lessons. This is not true! The truth is, understanding how to effectively practice guitar is the key that will unlock your student’s potential and get them to advance toward the results that they desire. In essence, knowing how to practice guitar is the main thing they need to learn from you to get the RESULTS they want in their guitar playing. If they do not know how to practice guitar effectively, they will not make progress… THIS is the true reason why a student might stop taking lessons with you. With this in mind, getting your students to practice guitar properly (when they are at home away from you) should be your number one priority!

Solution Number Three. Use no more than 75% of the guitar lesson time for showing your students something new – reserving the rest of the time to teach them how to practice that idea effectively on guitar. Simply showing them how to practice for one or two minutes will not help.

Solution Number Four. Don’t make the same mistake that so many mediocre guitar teachers make by repeatedly asking your students to ‘play’ something several times so that you can observe what they are doing and ‘make corrections’. Truly successful guitar teachers have their students show them how they PRACTICED the material from the previous week so that they can see the root cause of any playing issues. Next, the guitar teacher will show the student in real time (as they are practicing) what needs to be fixed. This way the student gets the experience of correcting the mistake for himself/herself. When your guitar students can correct their own mistakes, they will quickly begin to make progress in their playing.

Solution Number Five. Don’t fall into the trap of making assumptions for your students. You are the expert for guitar, so naturally you will understand exactly why something doesn’t sound right, or what needs to be done in order to fix this or that issue. However, your students are NOT experts. You must show them precisely what to look and listen for when they practice guitar so that they do not forget. Additionally, write all of this information down for them so that when they get home they can easily identify all important steps and instructions.

Here are the steps that you should take right now in order to maximize the benefit you get from reading the information in this article:

1. Test your knowledge of how well you can get results for your students while teaching them to practice with this guitar teacher skill assessment.

2. Take the time to help your guitar students understand why learning how to practice guitar effectively is a major factor for their progress as a guitar player.

3. Don’t ‘wait’ to use what you learned in this article – begin implementing the ideas from above into every guitar lesson that you teach from now on.

Once you utilize the knowledge you have gained from this article you will start to see massive progress in your student’s guitar playing. Additionally, you will begin to develop a positive reputation for yourself as the very best guitar teacher in town!

About The Author: Tom Hess is an electric guitar teacher online, recording artist and the guitar player of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He shows guitar teachers from around the world how to develop their guitar teaching businesses in his guitar teacher success program. Visit his website to receive many free guitar teacher training resources, and learn more about how to teach guitar.

If there is “one” thing about guitar practicing that is “most important”, it’s that there is NO single “right” guitar practice method. In order to overcome a variety of guitar practice problems and reach a wide range of musical goals, you need to use multiple effective approaches to see results in the shortest amount of time.

To help you maximize your guitar practice efficiency and effectiveness, read below to learn 7 of the best guitar practice tips and strategies to use to become a better guitarist right now.

1. Discover The Reasons Behind Your Guitar Playing Challenges The single most important thing you must learn to do if you want to get consistent results from your guitar practice is to learn to identify the sources of all guitar playing problems you face. Most commonly, guitarists aren’t able to specifically pinpoint the exact reasons why they struggle to play something on guitar, and at best they are only vaguely aware that some problem “exists”. In order to get crystal clear about what is causing you to struggle to play something, make the challenging part even MORE difficult by making greater demands on your picking hand or fretting hand (or both). This will bring the problem (or problems) into clearer focus. Check out the video below where I demonstrate an example of one of the ways to do this on guitar:

To learn more about the practicing approach described in the video, visit this page about guitar practice advice.

2. Track How Much Progress Is Being Made In Your Guitar Playing Ultimately, you need to know whether or not your guitar practicing efforts are bringing you the results you want. You will need to measure not only the obvious skills (such as your speed of playing with a metronome) but also the intangible areas of your creativity, improvising and phrasing. One of the ways you can track your progress with the latter areas is by recording yourself and listening to your playing over time.

Knowing how well your guitar playing is improving will let you know if/when anything needs to be adjusted to make your guitar practicing more effective. Unfortunately, few guitar players ever track their progress “over time” (that means CONSISTENTLY) and this is one of the main reasons why most have no idea what they need to do to start seeing greater results in their guitar playing.

3. Know What You Are Going To Achieve Each Time You Pick Up The Guitar To Practice To maximize your guitar practice results, you need to start each session by clearly defining specific results you intend to reach when you are done practicing. This will help your concentration to stay high and will direct all your efforts towards making that goal a reality. Doing this will help you to keep track of your results and know exactly what aspects of your practicing may need to improve or be refined further.

4. Learn How To Create Guitar Exercises Out Of Everything You Practice When you find yourself struggling to play something on guitar, there are often a variety of reasons why that is the case. However, most people simply “assume” (or guess) what the problem is and therefore are not likely to find the correct solutions to their challenges.

To prevent this, make exercises out of the very music you are learning on guitar. Isolate the sections that are challenging to play and treat them as “exercises” for improving your general guitar playing. This is a much more efficient way to allocate your limited practice time.

To be clear, I am not implying that you must abandon all guitar exercises you practice, I’m only saying that most of the time you already have the exact exercises you should be working on within the songs and solos you are practicing.

5. Practice For Greater Efficiency In Your Picking Hand Technique You will always improve in every aspect of your guitar playing by making your picking hand technique better – no matter how advanced your guitar technique is right now. The single fastest way to do this is to learn how to make your picking motions very efficient and economical (without sacrificing tone). To see an effective practicing approach for developing this skill, study this guitar picking techniques video.

6. Have A Clear Vision For “How” EVERY Practice Item Is Helping Your Guitar Playing Most guitar players have no shortage of “exercises to practice”, but few guitarists ever give much thought to the role each of those items plays on their musical development. To test if you are one of such guitarists, go through your list of practice items and ask: “What is this doing for my guitar playing?” for every exercise. Like most players you will likely find that you are not able to clearly articulate the reasons why you are spending time on certain guitar practice materials. This leads to several problems:

• Lack of clarity over your rate of musical improvement. When you are not sure what results you should be expecting, it becomes impossible to measure them.
• Slow overall progress. Since you never took the time to select specific exercises for your “specific” guitar challenges, any results that come from your practicing happen largely on a “hit-or-miss” basis.

To solve this problem once and for all, ask yourself the basic test question for every exercise you plan to include into your practicing to determine how much it is helping you to progress towards your ultimate goals.

7. Group All Guitar Exercises By The Goal They Help You Work Towards To maximize your rate of progress on guitar, you must break down your guitar playing goals into a series of steps to go through in order to achieve your objectives. To increase your efficiency in going through this process, you must sort all guitar practice items you are working on into groups based on what result they help you to achieve. This is important for a number of reasons:

A. You will be growing in several simultaneous areas of guitar playing in an intelligent and predictable (rather than “random”) way. By knowing exactly what skills a certain guitar practice item is helping you improve, you will be less likely to end up out of balance in your playing. B. Having the clarity described above will help you to avoid making your practicing a monotonous process. If you have multiple exercises in each group, you can rotate between them at any time, keeping your practicing focused on the same general objectives without spending too long on any single item.

Armed with what you have learned from this article, begin using these strategies in your guitar practice sessions, starting TODAY! If you are consistent in applying this guitar practice advice into your playing, you will soon see your results on guitar and your confidence in your ability to reach your goals improve like never before.

About the author: Mike Philippov is a recording artist, guitar teacher and author. His articles on practicing guitar are read worldwide. Visit http://PracticeGuitarNow.com to find more free articles on practicing guitar and lessons on improving your guitar playing.

Have you been experiencing a lack of motivation in your guitar practice? Are you unsure about what and how to practice? Do you wish you could practice guitar effectively and get better results? If so, you are not alone. It take most guitar players many years before they learn how to practice guitar in a way that is both productive and enjoyable.

As a guitar teacher, I come across all kinds of guitar playing issues through my guitar students. Over the years, I have noticed that most of my guitar students have very specific reasons for why they lose motivation for guitar practice. In order to help you increase your motivation, I have created a list of the 5 most common reasons why guitar players are unable to get great results when they practice guitar:

Reason Number 1: Not having fun with guitar practice

Many guitar players have conditioned themselves to believe that guitar practice is nothing more than a boring set of repetitive tasks. If you have this mindset, you are truly misunderstanding the basic idea behind guitar practice. In order to gain motivation to practice your instrument, you must learn how to create an effective practice schedule that helps you enjoy the learning process as you work toward your guitar playing goals. Once you obtain the right tools to create a such a highly productive and inspirational practice schedule, you will find it much easier to have fun with the time you spend practicing guitar. When you learn how to practice guitar so effectively that you see yourself getting better on a regular basis, it becomes much easier to look forward to your next guitar practice session.

To gain more insight on how you can have more fun while practicing guitar with greater motivation, check out this guitar practice methods article.

Reason Number 2: Not sure what needs to be practiced on guitar.

The majority of guitar players do not know exactly what they should be practicing and why they should be practicing it. This causes them to attempt learning as many new ideas on guitar as possible. Then, by practicing so many different ideas for guitar at once, the guitarist becomes overwhelmed. This happens because they simply do not give themselves enough time to fully process all the new information they are learning.

The key to practicing guitar effectively is to fully understand ‘what’ you must practice and ‘why’ you must practice it. Understand what you should be practicing on guitar by checking out this unique article about manifesting musical goals.

Reason Number 3: Not focusing enough on long term goals.

It takes many years to become a great guitar player. If you want to become a great guitarist, you must clearly determine the best paths to take in order to achieve your long term goals. Once you have clearly identified your long term music goals, you will need to focus on using your guitar practice time effectively to reach them. To illustrate a point, think of each of your guitar practice sessions as separate pieces of a puzzle that make up the big picture of your guitar playing goals. The more clearly you can see the big picture that you are trying to create, the easier it will be to think of ways to effectively practice guitar.

Reason Number 4: Losing motivation due to lack of quick progress.

Even if you understand the best way to effectively practice guitar, you will not achieve big results overnight. Many guitar players expect instant results when using a new practice method. Unfortunately, when they do not get the quick results they are looking for, they end up abandoning (what might be) a truly effective guitar practice method. This results in inconsistent guitar playing progress since you do not give yourself the time to get the benefits from the guitar practice methods you use. This practicing method is like listening to 15 different songs, but stopping the music after one or two seconds in each song before you can hear what the music is about. When practicing guitar, give your practice methods time to develop so that you can determine whether or not the methods are effective.

Reason Number 5: Unorganized and ineffective practicing habits

Most guitarists practice in a totally unorganized and ineffective manner. Unfortunately, they are usually unaware of this and go for weeks, months, or even years at a time using the same ineffective guitar practice methods! One example of a commonly used, yet ineffective method is the idea of using an equal amount of time on every task in your guitar practice. This is just like trying to prepare a dish by using an equal amount of ingredients without thinking about how each of the ingredients will affect the taste of the food. This guitar practice method will cause you to spend too much time on things that are not important to your overall guitar playing progress.

Another mistake that guitarists make during their guitar practice is that they spend a lot of time focusing on the guitar skills they WANT to practice rather than the guitar skills that they NEED to practice in order to achieve their musical goals. This causes their guitar playing skills to become imbalanced. As a result, their weak areas tend to hold back their ability to apply their well developed skills in musical situations.

In order to make progress in your guitar playing, it is essential to analyze your own practice methods so that you can develop an effective guitar practice schedule. To build a highly effective guitar practice routine, fill out the questions in this effective guitar practice assessment.

What should you do next?

After reading this article, you should have a better understanding of why you have a hard time staying motivated in your guitar practice. Think about how the guitar practice solutions mentioned above can apply to your current practice routine. Even though this article has only touched on a few of the problems that you might face as you develop your guitar skills, your guitar playing will benefit greatly by applying them in your everyday practice.

Learn more about the things you should be practicing during your guitar practice time by studying the information in this unique manifesting musical goals article. If you have yet to take the assessment on effective guitar practice, do this now and get personalized advice to help you improve your guitar practice methods.

About The Author: Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar player, composer and the guitarist of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He trains rock guitarists to reach their goals in music in his electric guitar lessons online. Visit his guitar lessons website to read more articles about becoming a better guitar player.

by Tom Hess

Tom Hess, virtuoso guitarist and musician, member of Rhapsody Of Fire and guitar teacher trainer helps guitar teachers understand the psychology behind achieving success in their guitar teaching businesses.

Have you ever noticed how some guitar teachers seem to “have it easy” when it comes to getting great results for their students? If you are like most guitar teachers, you have sometimes struggled to attract guitar students and take them to a new level in their guitar playing skills. This only becomes more frustrating after watching other guitar teachers succeed where you are unable to. However, the truth is that you can also achieve great things as a guitar teacher as well once you understand exactly what makes these teachers so successful.

After teaching over one thousand students as a professional guitar teacher and helping many other teachers learn how to become more productive in getting results for their students, I have spent a great deal of time figuring out the whole story behind what makes some teachers successful and others mediocre in order to best help my clients attain great results in their guitar teaching businesses. After much research, I have observed that most guitar teachers posses some kind of balance between two sides in their mindset. These sides consist of one side that focuses on strengths and another that focuses on weaknesses. The guitar teachers who have highly successful guitar teaching businesses have mastered the ability to channel the side of them that focuses on using their strengths to their advantage while guitar teachers who do not experience much success tend to think mostly from the side of them that focuses on weakness (more on this shortly).

Previously, I have created many guitar teaching articles that deal with specific ideas on what you should ‘do’ as a guitar teacher to make your guitar teaching business more successful (if you have not read them, check out this free earning a great living as a guitar teacher eBook to see how you can become financially stable while teaching guitar). For the purposes of this article, I am going to explain to you a concept that will be instrumental in your growth and success as a guitar teacher. When I personally train guitar teachers to become more effective in their teaching strategies, they become very familiar with this idea.

The Psychology Of A Guitar Teacher

As guitar teachers (and people in general), we all have different parts of our psychological makeup that direct our behavior in every action we take. Similarly, the way you develop expertise as a musician or guitar teacher depends on the skills that you focus on most. That said, for each ‘strong’ quality you possess in your musical or teaching abilities, there exists an opposing (and connected) ‘weak’ quality that often keeps you from reaching your full potential. If these weak qualities remain undetected, they will quickly overwhelm your strong qualities until you take the time to identify and correct them. This commonly occurs to all guitar teachers (experienced and inexperienced (usually without them even knowing about it).

If you have not yet become a successful guitar teacher, it will be very important for you to learn how to gain the most benefit from your strengths while avoiding the negative side effects of the weaknesses that come bundled together with them. If you are unable to do this, all of your efforts to learn how to become a great guitar teacher will be destined to FAIL!

Every guitar teacher will a successful guitar teaching business knows about this, and fortunately; you can learn this for yourself regardless of whether or not it is something that comes naturally to you.

To demonstrate my point, I am going to show you some of the most common traits I observe in the guitar teachers I train each day. In the chart below, I will show you how each personality strength also contains a weakness. The truth is, there are many more weaknesses per strength than what I have included, but I have narrowed it down to just one in order to keep this article from becoming too long.

It is essential to identify that each one of the strengths in the left column of this chart are certainly good characteristics to have and will be helpful in making you a better guitar teacher. However, you must also recognize the different ways that these strengths can also turn into weaknesses until you take the initiative to learn how to stop them from doing so.

Your Strength	Opposing Weakness
You have a passion to teach guitar and help your students achieve results.	Being passionate about teaching guitar is certainly a MUST if you want to become a successful guitar teacher. However, many guitar teachers who are highly passionate tend to ignore the business aspect of teaching guitar for a living. As a result, they end up teaching (and helping) less students overall since they do not earn enough money to expand their guitar teaching business. The truth is, the more money you make, the more you can invest it into building the value of your guitar lessons in order to give more to your students.
You already have a good amount of experience teaching guitar/music lessons.	After teaching guitar for a while, it becomes hard for these types of guitar teachers to break away from the methods they are used to. This approach becomes very limiting over time as continually using the same methods does not bring great results for new students. In order to achieve great results for your guitar students (and take a step forward in your teaching skills), you will need to innovate and break away from some of the methods you are accustomed to.
Your guitar playing skills are highly developed.	A lot of great guitar players have difficulty identifying with the challenges of low level guitarists (who are by the way – the majority of guitar students). As a result, these types of guitar teachers are lacking in an area that affects most of their potential students. You must be able to relate to the challenges of your students who are just starting (or are not at a high level in their playing yet). Many guitar teachers with great guitar playing skills fall short in this area.
You play several instruments in addition to guitar.	When guitar students look for someone to teach them guitar, they are much more prone to seek the help of an ‘expert’ who specializes in guitar rather than someone who teaches many different instruments. By marketing yourself as a teacher of many instruments, you may actually end up doing more harm than good to your reputation as a guitar teacher.
You have a very disciplined approach to learning guitar and take music very seriously.	Guitar teachers who possess this strength generally cannot relate to students who are learning guitar “just for fun”. The truth is that almost all of your guitar students will be interested in guitar as a hobby, and until you can relate to their basic guitar playing goals on their level, you will have a hard time getting them to come back for lessons.
You have a lot of ambition and many ideas for expanding your guitar teaching business.	The guitar teachers in this category are prone to beginning many new projects out of strong enthusiasm; but end up leaving most of them unfinished. To them, it feels like they are working very hard, but in reality they are making very little progress.
You have achieved many things in your professional music career.	As you invest a lot of time into your music career, it usually leaves very little time to improve your teaching skills so you can teach guitar at a high level. In fact, this is a major reason why many pro musicians who are already successful in their music careers are unable to help their students achieve BIG results.
You are very self-dependent.	Self-dependence is a great quality to have; however many guitar teachers who are strong in this area feel a resistance to asking for help when they need it. In order to develop your guitar teaching business, you can steer clear of many common obstacles by learning from someone who has already been down the same road as you.
You spend a lot of time rationalizing different possibilities in any given situation.	While it is a great quality to be able to map out different possibilities for the scenarios that may pop up in your guitar teaching business; this can often lead to “over-analyzation”. While it is important to think things through, it is also important that you take the necessary action to do what needs to get done in order to realize your guitar teaching goals.
You enjoy offering all you can for your guitar students and making every lesson as enjoyable as possible.	Guitar teachers who seek to give their guitar students as much value as they can have a tendency to overcompensate and give “too much”. Additionally, these types of teachers have a hard time with confrontation and struggle to enforce their teaching policies.
You have a great work ethic and persistence when working on important tasks.	It is very easy for someone who sticks to a task with great persistence to become “stubborn”. This can be highly counter-intuitive if the task you are working on is not very effective at accomplishing your guitar teaching goals.
You spend a lot of time coming up with creative new ideas.	These guitar teachers have a habit of overlooking common (yet successful) teaching or business methods in order to try new approaches. To be a great guitar teacher you must innovate; however, not at the expense of giving up conventional approaches that already work.

What do you need to do now?

Now that you understand the concept behind how your strong qualities also can contain weak qualities embedded within them; here are several steps that you can take now in order to get the most benefit from these ideas to develop your guitar teaching business:

1. Get more insight on how you can improve your strengths and minimize their negative side effects by taking this guitar teacher improvement test.

2. Invest the time to come up with a solid plan for how you will maximize the benefits you receive from your strengths while avoiding the negative aspects that may come along with them. Take note of the daily actions you take as a guitar teacher and compare them the chart above in order to help you identify and eliminate any limiting thoughts that will keep you from becoming a great guitar teacher.

3. Understand that knowing how to maintain a great balance between your strengths and weaknesses will require much insight, practice and continued training. Most guitar teachers have developed entrepreneurial mindsets and have a tendency to act on their “gut” instincts. They generally see planning as something that must be done, but nevertheless have a resistance to sitting down and mapping things out. If this resonates strongly with you, or if you are struggling to identify your own strengths and weaknesses, then you will benefit greatly by seeking the advice of someone who can show you how to effectively apply these things into your guitar teaching business.

4. Make a commitment to refine your current approach in your guitar teaching business by keeping the above ideas in mind.

That said, you should certainly continue learning more about the things that you need to “do” as a successful guitar teacher. However, remember that learning new teaching skills is not the only piece of the puzzle. In order to quickly become a great guitar teacher, you must first assess your strong and weak qualities as described in this article. Only then will you be able to take full advantage of all the things you learn. Once you have the ability to utilize the full potential of all your strongest qualities, your success as a guitar teacher will quickly take off.

To learn more on how to build your success teaching guitar, fill out this free guitar teacher improvement test and get the (no cost) eBook on earning a great living as a guitar teacher.

About The Author: Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar teacher, composer and the guitarist of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He also trains guitar teachers how to improve their guitar teaching methods. Visit his website, tomhess.net to read more articles about guitar teaching, get free guitar teacher skill assessments and guitar teaching tips.