99 Ways To Play Better (And Sound Better) Right Now

If youre locked away in a basement for eight hours a day with a metronome and a torturous practice book that is equal parts Mel Bay/GuantanAmo Bay, youre still not assured of transcendent 6-string skills. Sure, you may get stenographer-like dexterity and harmonic book-smarts up the f-hole, but playing soul-shaking music often requires a more diverse skill set. But this doesnt mean that attaining the level of expression produced by someone like Jeff Beck necessitates a life of guitar monk-dom. First, dont worry about the transcendent and unattainable talent of Jeff Beck. Thats just silly. What you need to do is ensure that whatever you play makes the hair on your arms stand up and quiver with bliss and excitement. Here at GP you may as know their their-game practical, yours into , we figure that if youre going to expand and maximize your talents, well learn from the best. So we offer these 99 tips from cats who stufffrom rock royalty to jazz patriarchs to any-and-all, top-ofbad asses. Hopefully, youll find something in these cosmic, and musical nuggets of wisdom that will kick that rut-raddled mind of higher gears of inspiration.

1. Renew! Moving into uncharted territory is a key ingredient to making your practice sessions a success. Playing the same stuff over and over will only take you so far. Introduce a new set of chord voicings, tunings, or scale patterns to your routine every week. Its not necessary to know how to implement the stuff right away, just make your fingers go to new places, and let the musicality follow naturally. Joe Satriani 2. Sing, Sing, Sing Before you play a solo phrase, sing it first. Then youll know if its going to be effective or not. And if you start to sing a line, and find you have to gasp for breathwell, youve overextended yourself. Ronnie Montrose 3. Beat on the Brat Heres an unconventional technique for building your rhythmic chops and expanding your ideas about inventing phrases for solosand it involves zero notes! Mute the strings with your fretting hand. Now, forget about that hand completely, and start a groove with your right hand by scratching a beat on the muted strings. The minute you start getting bored, challenge yourself to come up with a variety of rhythmic phrasesboth busy and sparse. Think of the exercise as a drum solo that maintains the groove, and try to keep going for five minutes or more. Bob Brozman 4. Dynamics To work on picking dynamics, plug into a practice amp and turn your guitar all the way up. Then play arpeggiosvery quietly at the beginning, and then gradually louder by adjusting your touch. The goal is to vary your dynamics, but not change the position of your hands. Many guitarists change the way they hold their hands when changing dynamics. As a result, they end up with a lighttouch group of licksthe very fast stuffbut they dont develop any power. What you want to achieve is continually making those conversions back and forth from quiet to loud picking. Jerry Garcia 5. Unmask Try cutting back on the effects in your setup. It may help you to better discover the music. Bill Kirchen

6. Mess With Your Head Try to keep your playing as fresh as possible, and not rely on set patterns. When I practice, for example, I often tie off some strings with rubber bands to force myself to look at the fretboard differently. I might practice on the G and D strings only, or even the G and A strings. Jim Hall

7. Room Miking Theres a very old recording maxim that goes, Distance makes depth. Ive used that a hell of a lotwhether its tracking guitars or the whole band. People are used to close-miking amps, but Id have a mic out around the back, as well, and then balance the two. Also, you shouldnt have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound right. You should be able to get the right tones simply with the science of microphone placement. Jimmy Page 8. Relax The most important thing to remember when youre attempting to increase your speed is to relax. Dont push your muscles beyond what they can give. Practice for about a half hour, and then take a break. You can always resume after a few minutes. This is especially important when youre trying to get seriously twisted patterns under your fingers. I used to sit in front of the TV when I was a kid, and alternate-pick scales very lightly. I wasnt really paying attention, and it actually helped that I wasnt concentrating so much, because I stayed relaxed, and yet I was able to build up my technique and stamina. But never keep playing if you start to feel pain. Ever. Tendonitis is no joke. Steve Lukather

9. Get Sensitive If youre in a rut with your electric playing, pick up an acoustic. Theres something about playing the acoustic guitar that makes you think about songs. And if you work up solo versions of your favorite pop tunes, youll become more aware of how bass lines and harmony fit together. Then, when you go back to electric, those discoveries will help you play more empathetic solos. Buck Dharma 10. Get High Wherever your guitar is when youre sitting and practicing is where it should be when youre standing. I discovered this the hard way. Years ago, Id practice my solos sitting downand Id nail themonly to go to rehearsal and blow it because my right- and left-hand positioning was completely different when I stood up. Now, most players think it looks uncool to wear your guitar up high, but I think its cooler to sound kick ass than it is to look cool and suck! Zakk Wylde slings his Les Paul really low, but as soon as a solo comes up, hell put his foot on a stage monitor to raise his guitar up. Hell, Tom Morello wears his guitar so high that he says it sometimes hits him in the chin. So, for the sake of killer guitar playing, raise em up! Rusty Cooley 11. Expand Learn everything you know in all keys. Joe Pass 12. Move On Dont be precious about anythingmuch less a certain guitar sound. There is always another interesting sound or effect just waiting to be discovered. Robin Guthrie

13. Play Loud Start playing loud when youre young, and youll be one step ahead of the game. If you start off playing soft, it will get you into a lot of bad habits. Terrible, terrible, habits. Look at these jazz people. Of course they play soft. Its a trick so you cant hear them.Nigel Tufnel 14. Slide Right Play slide to records to develop accurate intonation. I prefer early Ricky Skaggs albums, because they are full of simple progressions with different grooves in different keys. You dont want to worry about exotic chords or tricky changes. Stay focused on I-IV-V progressions, and learn how to play through the changes without moving around the neck. You dont always want to start with the I chord, move up five frets to the IV, and then two more frets for the V.Will Ray 15. Be Challenged Play with others who are more advanced musically. They will help you rise to their level.Bill Kirchen 16. Cork Your Slide If you find a slide that sounds great, but is too big for your finger, try cutting a few strips from a wine bottle cork, and gluing them to the inside of the slide. A snug-fitting slide will improve your playing immensely. Chris Mule 17. Dig Deeper Seek out talented, but lesser known artists from the past and present. Some of the coolest jewels life can offer are found on dusty back roads, miles from the main corporate boulevards of life. And when you find an artist you love, find out who they love.Greg V. 18. Art Appreciation In the long run, its more important to look at paintings than to listen to the way somebody plays bebop lines.Jim Hall 19. Literary Soloing Think of a guitar solo as a paragraph. You need a clear beginning, a middle, and an end. Look at musical phrases like sentences, and make sure you break them up using punctuationor space. You pause naturally when conversing, right? If you dont, youll bore the listener. The same thing will happen with your audience if your solo is one dimensional. Youll wear them out and lose their attention. Tom Principato 20. The Bends One of the most useful exercises Ive come across was on a Larry Carlton instructional video. Larry would play a major scale in fifth position, going up one octave, from the third string to the first string. He then proceeded to do the same scale, but hed bend the majority of it. The best part of this exercise is that you do it the same way in reverse. This way, you learn to bend up in pitch, but also pre-bend and descend in pitch. The major scale is a wonderful reference for articulating and intonating your bends, because pretty much everyone can hear its intervals clearly, and will know if theyre sharp or flat. Its a demanding exercise, and yet its kind of pretty. Then, practice Beatles songs, standards, and folk songs by using bends to play the melody, rather than traditional fingering. This is a very demanding and

rewarding musical exercise that will teach you more than, say, approximating the solo of Little Wing. Jim Campilongo 21. Love You Less Listen more to the other players on the bandstand than you do to yourself. Bill Kirchen 22. Ear Training For some basic ear training, play any note on your guitar. In this case, lets say its an A. Then pick an interval out of the airsay a perfect fifth, E. Now, try to sing the E note, and then play the same note on your instrument. See how close you came. Dont play the interval before you try to sing it. Then youre only imitating, not ear training. Force your brain to seek out and determine the interval youve chosen. Start off easy with octaves, perfect fifths, major and minor thirds, and then move on to more difficult major sixths, sevenths, seconds, flat fifths, and so on. Rik Emmett 23. Screw Up Dont worry about a bit of slop. Instead, put truth in every note. Music isnt about playing with absolute perfectionits the intense and soulful commitment to the note.Greg V. 24. Seek Truth Dont listen to unimaginative naysayers when it comes to personal creative expression. At some point, there will no doubt emerge a conflict between the rules of instrumental mastery, and the need to follow ones own intuition. Be strong! The only so-called advancements in artforget about commercehave come about when someone has either boldly modified or completely disregarded the norm. Those who deviate must stay true to themselves. Nels Cline

25. Get Evocative What is it exactly that moves you when you hear a guitarist you love? I think its the relation between the players emotional feeling and their muscle action on the guitar. To connect with this idea, first experiment with the full range of your muscle power, trying to play the same riff with an angry feel, a tender feel, and everything in between. Then, take a song you know, and try to increase the sonic contrast from verse to chorus, or section to section. Use this range of sound to better sculpt the landscape of the song. Bob Brozman 26. Hello? Experiment with not being the loudest thing on stage.Bill Kirchen 27. Thanks, Dude Spend at least 15 minutes per Guitar Player magazine learning something from a GP lesson. Some of the concepts Ive learned by doing this have stuck with me for years! Dave Wronski 28. Get Bluesy Study jazz soloing using the 12-bar blues form. Most players want to start playing long bebop lines from the start, but the simpler the melodic material is, the sooner you begin to develop a sense of phrasing. In turn, this will give you greater soloing freedom, because youll have a larger rhythmic vocabulary at your disposal. Lenny Breau

29. Wrap it Up Remember that the reputations of some of the greatest jazzmen ever are built on eight-bar solos. Too many guitarists play solos that are way too long. Jim Hall 30. Do For Others Recording your own music is one thing, but having to deliver something for somebody else is entirely different. Session work makes you more critical about your playing. You cant hit notes all over the place, youve got to make each note count, and if you cant play really clean, it all sounds like a mess. You may think you sound fabulous onstage, but when you hear yourself played back in the studio, its just disastrous most of the time. But if you can play well in the studio, you can play well onstage. Ritchie Blackmore 31. Find You A good way to crave your individuality is to get a tape recorder and get into a room thats kind of darkwhere you dont have interruptionsand then just play with a rhythm machine. After a while, its like a deck of cards on the table, and you can begin to see the riffs that came from this guy, the riffs that came from that guy, and then the two or three riffs that are yours. Then you start concentrating on your riffs until you develop an individual sound. Carlos Santana 32. Mix It Up Treat each guitar trackand each songcompletely different. For example, if Im using a certain amp and guitar on one track, Ill deliberately use something else for the next tune or overdub. Keith Richards 33. Pickup Balance To balance your pickups, plug your guitar into something with level meters, such as a 4-track recorder. Play each string individually, and adjust the pickup height until the level of each string hits the same point on the meters. Typically, youll have to lower the bass side of the pickup. If your guitars overall output is quieter than what you had, simply turn up your amp to compensate. The benefit here is string-to-string clarity. Dave Wronski 34. Cut Back Sometimes that massive, high-gain, mid-cut, huge bass tone can sound about two inches tall in a concert setting. The guitars voice is in the midrange, so try adding some midrange and cutting the bass. For even more punch, attack, and clarity, cut your gain and distortion levels. Too much gain can be counterproductive, as it compresses your tone and kills dynamics. Greg V.

35. Shift Priorities Play what you would like to hear, rather than what you would like to play. Bill Kirchen 36. Rhythmic Solos If the band is playing in 7/4 time, try to play in 4/4. When you do that sort of thing, you begin to notice certain ways in which the two rhythms synchronize over a long period of time. Thinking in these long lengths, you automatically start to develop rhythmic ideas that have a way of interconnecting. Jerry Garcia

37. Grease Up Want to make a solo greasy? Start on the and of one.Dave Wronski 38. Get Funky Forget about the fancy chords, and just concentrate on a funky beat. John Lee Hooker 39. Lite FX Its best if people dont notice effects that much. If you overdo it, and everybody realizes youre using a phaser, then youre on the wrong track already. Youve got to use those things with a certain degree of subtlety. Keith Richards 40. Rhythm Chops To become a better rhythm player, you must listen to the drummer. Id also advise that you listen to the masters of rhythm guitar. The work that Steve Cropper did on the Stax records is the definitive document of how to play songs and accompaniment parts. Also listen to Chuck Berry. His rhythm playing is so intense that he can go out and perform with bands he has never seen or heard before and hold them together like glue.Danny Kortchmar 41. Go Big Use big strings. I like a set with a .013 E string, but Ive gone as high as a .018-.074 set. Theyll eat your hands, your tuning pegs, and your amp, but they sound great. Stevie Ray Vaughan

42. Moderation Over-indulgence in anything is wrongwhether its practicing 50 hours a day, or eating too much food. Theres a balance with me, as there should be with everything and everybody. Ive tried to keep it so that Im able to execute the ideas that come out, but practicing too much depresses me. I get good speed, but then I start playing nonsense because Im not thinking. A good layoff makes me think a lot. It helps me get both things togetherthe creativity and the speed. Jeff Beck 43. Play, Dont Worry Dont spend more time worrying about what it is youre supposed to be doing, rather than just doing the work. Once I was stuck while trying to write some new music, and I asked my friend Wayne Horvitz how he did it. He gave me a pencil sharpener. The moral? There are no short cuts, so stop whining and get on with it! Bill Frisell 44. Moving In Stereo Try using two amps and some stereo effects to get a bigger sound onstage. A ping-pong delay sounds huge when you stand between both amps, and any type of stereo chorus, flanger, phaser, or, in my case, a Leslie simulator, creates the illusion of an even wider sound. Panning your signal from side-to-side is a cool effect. I do it using a stereo Ernie Ball volume pedal. I like the amps to be almost identical, while othersincluding Stevie Ray Vaughanprefer two amps that have different sounds that compensate for each other. Finally, its important to understand that unless both of your amps are miked, and panned left and right in the house, nobody except you will hear the stereo effect. Oz Noy

45. Be A Sponge Listening is just as important as practicing. Your ears are your greatest assets, and they work on a subconscious level. You should steal from as many different guitarists as possible, as opposed to picking one and trying to emulate that persons style. Once you have assimilated a number of different approaches, try to blend them into one vision, instead of jumping from one style to another. Will Bernard 46. Vibrato Strengthen your vibrato technique by using each finger to play a note and bending it up and down continuously, in half steps. As you move to fingers two, three, and four, remember that all available fingers can help you attain this half-step movement. Jim Campilongo 47. Alternate Picking A good way to work on alternate picking is to choose three or four notes, and work on those. Too often, players who are trying to improve their right hand dexterity get hung up by trying to play too many notes with the left hand. I hear a lot of players running whole scales from the sixth string to the first, and playing them really sloppy. Keeping it very basicusing only a few notesand playing slowly with perfect rhythm is a task in itself. Al DiMeola 48. Ignore The Obvious When youre comping behind a vocalist or soloist, dont always play the root of the chord on the low stringsespecially if theres a bassist on the gig. Sometimes the third and the seventh of the chord is all you need if the bass player is playing the root. It will still sound full, and the sound wont be muddy.Tal Farlow 49 Stage Smarts A good band is not all about playing your instruments. You have to work on your stage sound, too, so that you sound good out front. For the guitarist, that means not being so loud. Now, I love loud, but I soon realized that if I turned down, there would be more separation between the instruments, and people would actually hear me better.Peter Frampton 50. Get Down For heavy rhythm, it has to be downpicking. Its absolutely key. Its tighter sounding, and a lot chunkier. James Hetfield 51. Stay Hot Keep your guitar out of the case and handy. Practice short periodsanywhere from five to 45 minutesmany times throughout the day, rather than for one prolonged period. Often times, five minutes is enough time to work on a technique or musical passage. The whole idea of practice is to get your reflexes working like a gunfighters, so you can pull out that gun and be instantly hot.Barney Kessel 52. Classical Gas When playing while sitting, rest the guitar on your left legjust like classical-guitar legend Andrs Segovia. This way, the guitar will be in the same position as when you stand. You can even get yourself one of those little foot stands to really anchor the guitar to your body when playing aggressive music. Dave Wronski

53. Cruise Control Fast playing begins with careful and sharply targeted slow playing. You must develop the ability to hear and think every note. A fast passage is a rapid succession of musical notesnot the product of a frantic, panic-stricken flapping of the fingers. Begin practicing with scales or patterns, which allow you to concentrate on getting your actions and timing in good shape. Always start slowly and deliberately. Increase speed gradually. Use some form of metronome or drum machine to monitor your work. When you reach a speed at which you can no longer get things right, stop. Any further attempted acceleration will do damage, not good. John Duarte 54. Dont Peek Adjust your amps volume and EQ settings by listening, rather than looking at the settings. Simply shut your eyes, and turn the knobs to where the amp sounds best. Im consistently surprised when I open my eyes to discover things such as the Bass being nearly full up in one situation, or the Treble on 10 in another. Cameron Williams 55. Teamwork When you sit in with musicians youve never played with before, do your thing in a way that compliments their sound. Listen attentively, and make sure that what youre doing isnt stepping on anyones toes. Play as if you were a member of the unit, and keep your eyes open to allow for good communication. Dan Lebowitz 56. Touch Tone has more to do with touch than gear, and the most important thing is dampening anywhere youre not playing. Dampening can be done underneath your fretting fingers or thumb, or with the outside of your strumming-hand palm or thumb. Also, the way your finger makes contact with the frets makes a big difference. You need to learn the sweet spots on your guitar like a violin player would. Eric Johnson 57. Improvisation During improvisation, a soloist should be influenced by the other musicians, and vice versa. The Miles Davis Quintet was a great example. As soon as the soloist paused, a band member would play something that would influence the solos direction from that point forward. This happened at every turn, so by the time the solo had finished, it would be completely different than if the soloist had played with nothing to respond to. The best improvisations come about this way. Equally important is how you respond to your tone. For example, if you are playing with a sound that doesnt sustain much, then its futile to play long notes. The low strings tend to sound better with a thinner tone, and high strings with a thicker tonewhich is why good guitarists continually change their settings on their toggle switch, volume, and tone controls throughout their solos. Warren Haynes 58. The Pinky Use your pinky! When I to keep practicing with was second nature. That fingersdont forget to 59. Think Different The ability to differentiate your playing while maintaining a support role in your band is crucial. Louder doesnt necessarily mean better. I try to find a first started playing, an older country musician told me my left-hand pinkyeven though it felt awkwarduntil it was the best advice I ever got. You were born with five use em all! Deke Dickerson

strong niche in each parteither by technique, or by finding an uninhabited frequency range. I sometimes distill ideas into a lean riff, rhythm, or melodic phrase that sits right in with the drums. Conversely, agile flourishes can make a skull-crushing riff seem nastier if you break from the pack. A fat, signature guitar tone is something we all chase after, but whether playing ensemble or stepping out front, choosing a complimentary or contrasting sound can get your point across, add structure, and make the song richer. Chuck Garvey 60. Damp Learn to damp notes to control feedback and noise when playing slide at high volumes. Many people play slide with a pick, and then use the heel of the hand or something to control the sound. The style I got from Duane Allman is to use the thumb and the first two fingers without a pick. If you have glass or steel on your left hand, and a plastic pick in your right, you are completely isolated from your instrument. What you have to learn to do is to strike a note, then stop the note with the fingers before you strike another one, so only one note sounds at a time. It works kind of like a damper pedal on a piano. Dickey Betts 61. Embrace History The greatest musicians are knowledgeable about musics roots. Experience provides authenticity for the music we create. Eric Clapton and Keith Richards can teach you a mess of blues, but its good to find out about the original artists whose tunes they covered, such as Robert Johnson. Its like the old saying: How can you know where you are going, if you dont understand where youve been? Marty Stuart 62. Circle Picking Use circle picking to play faster. Its an old jazz technique. Start by playing with your pick at an angle. Hit the string with one edge of the pick, and youll find that youre in position to come back on the upstroke with the opposite edge. Then, alternate pick with a rotating motion in either a clockwise or counterclockwise circle. The pick, while not changing its angle in relation to the string, is circling that area of the string. Its not done with the wrist, but with the fingers holding the pick. When first learning, start with a large circle, just to get the feeling. After a while, you should be able to get two or three notes going so fast that its like a quiver. The reason its faster is because your picking motion is not interrupted for a change in direction. The circle also gives the notes a flowing quality.Roy Buchanan 63. Compression Using compression is one of the best ways to get a consistently good tone. It makes the guitar feel electric and alive in your hands, because the notes sustain, rather than die on the vine as soon as you play them. Any stompbox compressor will do. I always place the compressor at the beginning of the signal chain, before going into the amp. Setting all the dials at 12 oclock is a good starting point because it should give you a lot of extra sustain and a little bit of breathiness without affecting your basic tone much.Adrian Belew 64. Hang In It takes time to develop every aspect of your technique. A lot of people dont realize the crises youve got to go through. I used to get headaches when I started doing the octave thing, but, over time, I was fine. All it takes is to hear a little improvement in your playing, and that little bit of inspiration is often enough to push you even further. Wes Montgomery

65. Delay Levels When youre mixing a tune and adding delay to a solo, adjust the effect level to match what you played. The right amount of delay for a slow passage or a high note is going to be different than the amount of delay you want for a fast passage or a low note. For example, a fast passage with a ton of delay sounds like garbage. Steve Morse 66. Picking To develop picking technique, start by playing a series of downstrokes on any open string. At the beginning of the attack, stay close to the string, following through just enough to sound the note. Immediately return to the starting point. Now, try the same sequence with upstrokes. Finally, combine movements so that youre strictly alternating strokes. Still on one string, meticulously practice the following: repeated down-strokes, repeated upstrokes, alternate downstroke and upstrokes, alternate upstrokes and downstrokes. Start slowly and gradually build up speed. Next, try moving to adjacent strings, and then to melodic skips on non-adjacent strings. Finally, apply the technique to alternate chordal picking, or crosspicking. Be sure to use alternate picking, playing downstrokes for notes that are on the beat, and upstrokes for ones that are off the beat. Focus on economizing the hand and finger movement of your picking hand, so that you dont use excessive motion between up- and downstrokes. Al DiMeola 67. Hello, Its Me Get in touch with your uniquenesseven if you dont like it. Once the crushing realization that I wasnt going to be Brian May or Steve Morse hit me, I had to start embracing the things I hated about my style. Ty Tabor

68. Be Aware Remind yourself that youre free to feel great instead of reserved or insecure. When youre feeling good, youre more apt to take chances onstage, and if you make a bunch of mistakes, it wont matter. Its almost like youre the instrument, and the music is flowing through you like electricity. Like John Coltrane saidthe paramount aspect of being a musician is to try to get more in touch and in tune with yourself. When you do that, its like returning to the center and everything emanates from there. You automatically become a better musician in becoming a more aware individual. Eric Johnson 69. Un-Straight Eights Practicing eighth-note lines with a triplet feel is very helpful for improving ones rhythmic feel for jazz. Of course, the best way to get a jazz feel is to play with records or with a group. Its something youve got to inherently feel. A lot of rock players have such a straight-eight feel that they cant play jazz. Theyre too stiff. Joe Pass 70. Get Out You must perform for an audience, because the real crunch happens when you get in front of people. You may discover that some things you played in rehearsal dont make any sense, because you fooled around too much with the frilly stuff and forgot the basic drive of the song. Playing live also teaches you deal with situations like dropping your pick or breaking a string, as well as forcing you to project. You have to direct your playing somewhereunless you want to sit in a room like a painter who wont show his paintings to anybody. Rory Gallagher

71. Noise Once you get off the beaten path of chords and notes, any noise can be its own microcosm of songwriting. There is a deep library of songs that go from G to C. There is not a deep library of songs that use a toggle switch and a wah pedal. Its a wide-open road. Tom Morello 72. Fiddlin Around Learn to play fiddle tunes note-for-note. Dont cheat, or play little slurs and things that you have a tendency to do when youre playing fast. Play the songs slowly at first, until you get the notes even, and keep increasing the speed until you can play them as fast as you want. There are so many notes in fiddle music that youll really get your technique and coordination down. And the exercises arent boring, because you are actually playing something. Roy Clark

73. Wacky Time If youre going to go out of the norm, go all the way. Dont just go out a little bit. If youre scared to go out there, then stay in the normjust learn to play really well in 4/4. But if you want to go beyond that, you must in a totally different direction. If you want to count odd meters, theyre all broken down into groups of twos and threes. And Im not just talking about tinier subdivisions. What it amounts to is ritardos [slowing down] and accelerandos [speeding up] inside of a bar, mathematically worked out so that instead of bomp, bomp, bomp, bompfour beats in a baryou get other kinds of action, where the time inside of the bar goes faster, goes slower, and goes faster again. But it all comes out on the downbeat of the next bar so you can still tap your foot to it. Frank Zappa 74. Groove Slowing down our tempos really opened things up for me. Suddenly, the songs had a real groove, instead of always being driving, relentless, and in your face. As a guitarist, that openness allowed more to explore parts that had more funk and feeling. Allison Robertson 75. Renew Play a new thing every day. Learning one new passing chord or a note combination will get you moving towards something that will serve you later on. Someday, a song will come along that all of those things will relate to. Ry Cooder 76.Patience... Take things real slow so that youre not making a lot of mistakes right off the bat. Youll learn faster if you dont have to spend time un-learning the things you screwed up at the beginning. Bill Frisell 77. Be Strong The enemy of inspiration is self-doubt. Nels Cline 78. Get Healthy Music is life force expressed in notes and phrases, so the more life force the player has, the more energized the music will sound. Concentrate on your health. Seek a nutritious diet, and drink lots of water every day. The better the quality and balance of food you eat, the less energy your body uses for digestion, and the more energy you have in reserve for your music. For your mental self, clear your mind of unnecessary chatter and negative messages that

distract your focus when youre performing or composing. For your emotional self, address nagging problems. Its hard to be honest and deal with things, but youll feel so much better afterwards, and the less internal stress sapping your energy, the more you can put into music.John Jorgenson 79. Separation Try to separate yourself from what your fingers are doing and listen to the amp. Steve Vai 80. Legato Levels When playing legato, try to make all of the notes come out at a consistent volume. To achieve even more control, practice accenting the notes that arent picked. Allan Holdsworth 81. Commit Dont be lazy. You have to want to play, and, most importantly, you have to love the guitar. Randy Rhoads 82. Open Up Self analysis can turn you into a selfish player, because its like saying, Look at what I can do. In popular music, people want to hear the song and the singer, and it should be your job to make sure the song feels great. To do that, you need to feel the song, not intellectualize it. After all, the tone is in your hands, and the attitude is in your heart, and thinking things to death wont change any of that. Neil Giraldo 83. Build Up Never forget that dynamics are a big part of the heavy factor in music. The quiet parts that build tension are what trigger a huge release that makes 100,000 kids jump up and down. Tom Morello 84. Adapt Take a note from me, put it with your own notes, and make it you. Hubert Sumlin 85. Avoid The Obvious Try to avoid ordinary licks. If Im watching somebody for the chords, I think about the relative minor and the relative minor 7th, and Ill do away with the root note. I find it interesting changing from minor to major, and, anyway, I always like to steer away from the obvious. Steve Howe

86. Absorb Incorporate the feel of what someone plays into your style, rather than the actual notes. Then, youre not judging whether you can play a song as well as the recording, because youre not trying to duplicate it. You just want to nail the emotion of how an artists singing and playing is making you feel, and how those feelings transform your own playing. Bonnie Raitt

87. Craft In commerce, the musician makes music. In craft, the music makes the musician. The musician of craft acts on principle and moves from intention. In this way,

nothing is wasted, and our playing is not accidental. There are ten important principles for the practice of craft: (1) Act from principle; (2) Begin where you are; (3) Define your aim simply, clearly, and briefly; (4) Establish the possible, and move gradually towards the impossible; (5) Honor necessity; (6) Honor sufficiency; (7) Offer no violence; (8) Suffer cheerfully; (9) Work, but not solemnly; (10) Without commitment, all the rules change. Robert Fripp

88. Set Limits If you want to keep things raw, try limiting yourself to only two guitars on a track. Once you get into three guitarsor three of any instrumentyou might as well put 60 on there. Jack White 89. Set Solos Free I enjoy solo lines that reflect the melody, but subtlely change it in a way that opens up another little window in the song. And these lines should have some freedomsome spontaneity. They shouldnt be totally planned out. Brian May 90. Restraint Dont play every lick you know before the end of the set, because then youre screwed. Youll just end up repeating yourself. But its a very youthful thing to jamits like sowing wild oats. But as grow older, you become interested in doing something more lasting. You have to settle down and make everything count make sure what you do is worthy of being heard again. Ive become more devoted to the song, and I feel that jamming, unless it has a goal at the end of it, is pretty much a waste of time. Eric Clapton 91. Mess Up Play sloppy, make mistakes, and let those mistakes lead you to different territories and ideas. Its important to take advantage of both the rational control and the irrational uncontrolled. Henry Kaiser 92. Acoustic Solos For an electric guitarist to solo effectively on an acoustic guitar you need to develop tricks to avoid the expectation of sustain that comes from playing electrics. Try cascades, for example. Drop arpeggios over open strings, and let the open strings sing as you pick with your fingers. Its kind of a country style of playing, but it works very well in-between heavily strummed parts and fingered lead lines. Pete Townshend 93. Surrender The best performances are completely unselfconsciouswhere youre inside the music, and its leading you, and you just follow where it goes. The minute you start to think about how the audience is going to reactwhether what youre doing is right, or wrong, or entertaining peopleyoure in trouble. All kinds of doubts and insecurities creep in, and you lose the music. Suddenly, the music is no longer this organic, living, breathing thing. It becomes something you try to knock into shape with a set of rules youve picked up throughout the years. Thinking should be done at an early stage in a musicians career. After that, you just let go. And it becomes a blissful experience to play. Bill Nelson

94. Move On When youre recording, if you havent got the take in three or four tries, then theres something wrong with the arrangement. Its madness to worry yourself to death listening to 15 takes of the same song. Dave Davies 95. Tonal Colors Paint pictures with sound. First, find your whitethe deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your blackwhich is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where youve got white, pick it where youve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and youll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar. Les Paul 96. Distortion Tailor your distortion tones to the material youre playing. If youre doing a slower, droning song, try a fuzz-style tonea sound with some low end that kind of hums. If youre doing something faster and more crazy, go for a sharp, midrange-heavy tone with a lot of harmonic content. For songs that are inbetween those two extreme, any vintage distortion tones usually sound great. Mick Murphy 97. Melodic Delays A bit of delay can smooth out the unpleasant, raw frequencies you get from a fuzz box. I have two units, and I have different echo settings on both. There are times when I have both running at the same time for certain effects. During solos, I usually try to set the delays to have some rhythmic time signature in common with the tune. I usually set them to a tripletthe notes all intertwine, so it doesnt really matter anyway, but I find that a triplet delay is very melodic. David Gilmour 98. The Show All music is theatre. All music is expression. So never let the music get in the way of your stage act. Pete Townshend

99. Trust Your Hands Your sound is in your hands as much as anything. Its the way you pick, and the way you hold the guitar, more than it is the amp or the guitar you use. Stevie Ray Vaughan