Playing the guitar is easy, it’s becoming the guitar player you want to be that is the hard part.  Most people can reasonably learn to play a few chords, crank out a little lead piece, or make it over a hump or two in the learning process.  But, when they see the mountain that they must climb in order to be truly great on the guitar, it can sometimes be down right discouraging.  Even though I have been playing for the better part of the last 20-years, I still run across guys who blow my mind with their ability to play.  Honestly, it can send me into seclusion for days and sometimes weeks.  It’s no secret to anyone that I have a weakness for sound.  And I’ve been known to sit in my room for hours tweaking knobs, adjusting hand positions, and working out what ever subtle changes need to be made to get my guitar playing from where it is to where I want it to be.   But, the crazy thing about it all, is that the most important lessons I’ve learned about guitar playing, I didn’t get from a teacher or out of some book.  Rather, the most important things I learned about guitar playing came from embracing my own struggles on the guitar and taking the time to understand more precisely how I was relating to my instrument and/or how I was failing to relate to my instrument.

  How exactly does one relate to their guitar?  You can walk into a room of guitar players and you will often find that there is usually one guy in the pack who is head and shoulders above the rest.  And that guy isn’t going to tell you why he is better.  His lips are sealed, if he even understands why he is ahead of the pack himself.  But, I’m going to explain the big secret.  It’s not that he necessarily practices longer than you do.  The difference is summed up in a few key areas that automatically sets him apart from being another average guitar player.  And if you can start to develop these areas in your own playing, you will start to see massive results also because all these areas improve the overall relationship that you share with your axe.

1.   Confidence

  How you feel when you play effects how you express yourself on your axe 100%.  If you condition yourself to feel like a lousy guitarist, you will express a lousy performance when you play.  If you want a piece to come alive when you play it, then start to express that energy in yourself before you even pick up your guitar.  This is why two guys can play the same chords, the same riff, and use the same gear and sound completely different from one another.  When I pick up my axe, it is because I intend to play and let the musician inside me take the reigns.  If you just sit their and act sluggish, it will come through in your playing.  If you let the emotion course through your veins and feel what you want to express, eventually, you will notice a dramatic change in your playing.  The music that comes out when you play is simply an extension of who you believe you are on the inside.  Often people mistake confidence for attitude, and so a lot of musicians imagine that if they develop an irritating attitude this will make them a better player.  Usually, it just makes them irritating.  I always like to think of Satriani and his attitude, because he is almost always projecting a pleasant positive attitude, he exudes confidence with his playing, and he gives you the impression that he is having loads of fun.  It’s what truly great guitar is all about.  And when he plays, you hear what is truly inside him reaching out to you.  When you can encapsulate the value of that in your playing, you’re already a step ahead of the average guitar player.

2.   Awareness

  I see it all the time, guitarists who learn a technique, but never take the time to examine what the technique is all about.  If you want to achieve a higher level of playing, you have to become aware of what you are playing and aware of what it is that you must do to make the changes in your playing that need to take place to get you to that next level.  It’s not uncommon for me to take a three hour lesson and study one aspect of my playing, such as how I am executing a piece.  Making sure my picking hand and my fretting hand are cooperating harmoniously, making sure i am nailing notes solidly, and making sure that I am catching all the subtle pauses in the timing that give a piece that extra special feel are all important to making massive improvements and rising above the rut of being an average guitar player.

3.   Troubleshooting

  There is simply going to come a point when your teachers aren’t going to be able to help you over that next hump and the struggle will be between you and your guitar alone.  Trust me, that is a glorious day to have greet you.  Because it means that you are finally at a point when you can do some genuine learning on your own and maybe even a little much needed pioneering.  Your most creative work on guitar is still future to your current state, if you will allow the learning process to continue.  But, if you always look to teachers for every answer, you are just robbing yourself of some of the most important learning experiences around.  Of course, I think teachers are important to have.  A teacher can introduce you to concepts and ideas you may not be aware of and they can get you over many initial humps in the domain of common knowledge.  And they might even have some valuable uncommon knowledge to impart to you as well.  But, if you never take the time to develop a sense of how to get yourself over humps in the road with your playing, you will soon hit a brick wall that you nor your teachers will be able to help you over.  Because your teacher can only help you as far as they understand how to help you themselves.  It wasn’t until I started teaching other guitar players how to play that i began to see more clearly why certain techniques were better than others.  Why certain parts of music theory worked to get me what I wanted and others not so well.  In explaining these things to other people, I was actually helping myself more than I was helping them.  Because it forced me to have to think out why things worked the way that they do.  So, I encourage you to teach others what you know on the guitar any chance you get.  The more you explain what you know, the more familiar you will become with what you do and do not understand about the guitar.  This will in turn give you a sense of direction to help you see what areas need work.

4.   Make Mistakes

  I’m a big believer in making lots of valuable mistakes.  Yes, you heard that right.  Mistakes are opportunities for the door of real learning to open up to a guitarist.  If you are afraid of making mistakes, then you have a limiting belief that is holding your playing back unnecessarily.  The trick with mistakes is to be willing to examine the mistake, understand why it is happening, and to reason your way around the problem.  And whatever you do, make sure to write down the process and what you learned from the investigation.  It’s often a good idea to keep information like that on file so that you can refer back to it from time to time and chart your own progress.  Because having a general checklist of things to pay attention to while trying to help yourself through a mistake is handy to have around the next time you are thrown for a loop.

5.   Exploration

  I’m all for people sitting down and learning to play their favorite bands song note for note with a perfect ability to recreate the work of another great guitarist.  And in all honesty, this is where true genius begins even for a lot of exceptional guitar players.  Unfortunately, it’s where it ends for a lot of exceptional guitar players as well who never reach their full potential.  The true innovators and masters of the guitar don’t spend their lives following in other people’s footsteps.  Rather, they spend more time looking for ideas that have not been overused already.  For some this means finding a new chord progression that has an unusual flavor.  For others, it’s learning a new way to bend the guitar string to get a unique sound out of it.  For others it means dropping their B string down to an A and exploring an entirely new way of tuning the guitar and learning music theory for that tuning all over again.  When you take a step off the beaten path and start playing around in unfamiliar territory on the guitar, you are undoubtedly going to run into a plethora of roadblocks along the way.  You might learn a new cool sounding chord, but have no idea how to use it in conjunction with other chords.  In fact, you might even find yourself on a college campus flipping through old music theory books or talking it over with some professor in his 60’s who has an expertise in jazz.  And that’s just to get a grip on what you have discovered and to find a few useful ways to apply it.  But, the key to exploration is to learn for the purpose of developing something new and fresh to add to your playing style to escape sounding average.

  By focusing on these five areas, you will develop a much deeper relationship with your guitar than you started out with.  These areas help you to identify what it is your guitar is capable of and more importantly what it is capable of in your hands.  So, I hope this has helped to shed some light on how one becomes the guitar player they want to be.

       By Corey Bray

       Choosing the right distortion pedal for your rig can make the difference between a mediocre and an absolutely fabulous playing experience.  But, with hundreds of distortion pedals out on the market, where do you begin?  If you are into older rock, a classic distortion pedal to check out is the Electro Harmonix Big Muff pedal.

THE ELECTRO-HARMONIX BIG MUFF

       Though I love EH pedals, I was not as impressed with the Big Muff as I had imagined I would be.  But, if you just want a basic pedal to get you started in working on defining your distorted sound, the Big Muff is not a bad pedal to start out with.

If you just need a decent distortion pedal that gives you a lot of flexibility, the Boss MT2 Metal Zone might be right up your alley.

THE BOSS MT2 METAL ZONE

       You really can dial in a lot of different distortion sounds with this pedal.  I sometimes use an MT2 through a Lexicon PCM-81 effects rack to get an almost violin sound.  Which is kind of ironic, because the cost of the MT2 is around $90 and the cost of a Lexicon PCM-81 is close to $2000 new.  So, sometimes the best sounds come from mixing cheap and expensive gear together.  You never know what is going to give you precisely what you need.

       Now, if you are really into the sound of players like Joe Satriani, you can begin to approach his signature sound with the new Vox Saturator pedal.

THE VOX SATURATOR

       Though I think the Saturator pedal is likely going to find its way into my pedal chain in the near future, the Ibanez Jemini distortion pedal seems to give more of the control I’m personally looking for in my own playing.

       
THE IBANEZ JAMINI

       Of course, you should really go out and check out a lot of different distortion pedals before deciding which one belongs in your rig.  When trying out distortion pedals in the music store, I recommend running a distortion pedal through an Equalizer Pedal as well as a decent sounding reverb pedal.  Often, pedal demos online tend to present a pedals raw sound, but in reality, that sort of demo is really pretty useless. Knowing how a pedal is going to work along with other effects is typically a far better way to gage its performance and whether or not it is right for your rig.  So, don’t be shy and make those sales reps down at the music store really work their butts off to prove to you that they have helped you to find the right distortion pedal for the job.

       Neoclassical rock guitar virtuoso, Corey Bray, is a featured artist on the Roadie Rage network.  www.roadierage.com

By Corey Bray

Your band might have a creative sound and a lot of talent, but if you don’t have a solid marketing strategy, you aren’t likely going to be getting outside of your mother’s garage anytime soon. The first step to developing a sound marketing strategy is to do a little basic market research. Although it is helpful to have a manager and a team of promoters to help market your band for you, chances are you will probably have to learn to do a lot of this leg work for yourself until you can afford a team of professionals to take over the bulk of this part of the music business for your band. In the meantime, understanding your local music industry is an important step towards a more successful music career for the members of your band.
Mastering your local music industry starts with evaluating who your band is and what venues you should be playing in. So, getting your hands on a basic list of venues in your area that host live talent is a good starting point. Often there is a local area publication for most cities that makes this information publicly available. From here, you need to isolate the particular venues in your area that hire bands for gigs that play your type of music. Once you have narrowed the choices down to a list of appropriate venues, then you will want to start visiting these venues and take some notes on what it takes to get your band hired. You will also want to take notes on what goes on in each venue. Who is the owner, who works behind the counter, who are the regulars, is it a rough joint, and which nights are scheduled for live shows etc., etc., etc.. It’s helpful to keep a computer profile on each establishment you would like to play in for your personal reference. Remember, you are not just an entertainer, but you are also a business person and a representative of the venues that hire you. And if you want venues to hire your band again and again, it is a good idea to learn to interact professionally and competently with both the staff and the patrons. So, you might have a computerized listing that looks something like this.

Name:
Joe’s Night Club

Location:
3974 Spikeheart Lane
Atlanta GA, 34091

Phone:
770-335-CLUB

Owner:
Joe Prescott” JP@Joe’sclub.com

Staff:
Jack Taylor: Door man
Jimmy Joseph: Bouncer
Jeff Daily: Bar Tender

Regular Patrons:
Andrew Mills: Amills@aka.net
Kate Lemon: Katelem@riverside.com

Comments:
Joe does not advertise gigs and expects bands to do their own advertising.
He seems to be more pleasant if you return his calls promptly.
He mentioned that our pres kit didn’t look very professional (We will want to check into that).
Live bands play every Tuesday and Saturday nights.

Jack says that Joe doesn’t always pay bands what he promises.

Andrew likes it when we play Satriani covers (Remember to throw in a couple next time).

Kate is a big Rush fan (We don’t know any Rush tunes, but maybe we should learn one and add it to our third set).

As you learn more about a venue and the people who frequent it, it is useful to update your information about that establishment. Of course, you will learn through trial and error how much information you really need to keep on hand about a venue, but the more you know the easier it is to avoid problems and insure that things go smoothly when you perform. It also helps when you make the necessary improvements to your band, which both improves your professional image and often works to impress the guy responsible for hiring local talent at the venue. It’s little things like this that other bands fail to do that will give you the competitive edge. Knowing that Andrew likes Satriani covers, for example, helps you to immediately improve your image among your fans, if you give them what they want. Remember, people like Andrew and Kate are paying to see you play, so in part keeping them happy can go a long way towards improving your overall job security, if Joe sees that you keep his regulars satisfied and returning from week to week.

Beyond the bars and parties, there are also key music industry professionals who are involved in other aspects of the music industry in your area. Sound engineers, producers, radio announcers, and the like. You should make it a point to keep tabs on these individuals as well in your informational data base. You never know when you will need the services of a competent sound engineer, or when going out of your way to greet a radio announcer will have that announcer talking positively about you on their show the next time they are on the air. Building solid contacts and getting free advertising like that is all part of what is involved in mastering your local music industry.
Another way to get in touch with your local music industry is to become a supporting member of online music sites like roadierage.com. By creating an artist profile on the Roadie Rage website and getting your band listed in the Ragelist directory, you make it easier for fans and other music industry professionals in your area to find out about your band. If you actively blog about your music on your blog site, you can also get your blog listed in the Roadie Rage directory in the blog section as well. This also helps local people in your area to keep in touch with what is going on with your band. The best part is that it is free marketing for your band and your music. So, make sure to take advantage of these free marketing resources.

Joe Satriani:
Great Lesson On Applying Modes

PART 1:

PART 2:

Joe Satriani:
Other tips and tricks

Getting your band ragelisted is easy.
Just visit: ragelist.com