Recently I ve noticed a whole new crop of exceptionally talented teenagers who are already so far beyond what me and

my peers were doing in our teens it makes me dizzy. However, the day is right around the corner when you doing music well for such a young person is going to evaporate, and then it will just come down to whe ther or not you are any good. Being young and good is a positive, but the window of using it to your advantage is closing and you want to play longer than a few years don t you? If you play for as long as I have, and I was one of those for his age he s amazing, a prodigy! (I wasn t a prodigy ..see fans) it will be but a blip of time on your career path. The bulk of what you do will be stacked up against the best in the business. You re in a competition with the people who influenced you. Many people find it hard to take advice, and there are usually a whole lot of pe ople who want to give it out. Evidently I m not an exception. For what it s worth, if I could meet myself at 16 there are some of the things I w ould tell myself and my band mates. Always play and or sing it like you mean it. There is never an appropriate time to phone in your performance. In a cover band, when you re learning a song, try to at least start by doing exactly what it was the original artists did to have a song good enough that now, you re learning to copy it. Chances are your reinterpre tation is a less than , experience for everyone else. And the odds are, your embell ishments are not very good. Ever heard the expression reinventing the wheel ? You re not doing that are you? That said, I think the greatest obstacle to young bands sounding good is often, players over playing. Guitar players; Almost nobody cares or notices the difference, other than the vi sual, when you change guitars from one song to the next, so the only justifiable reason is that you broke a string or you need a different tuning, otherwise, un less you can do it really quickly, it s probably unnecessary, and it s a lot more ge ar for everyone to haul around. Oh, it has a different tone? You think that has enough of an impact at a live gig do you? OK if you must, do it as fast as possi ble. Pedals. You really don t need that many. I know, I m guilty too, but I m telling you, a cranked up amp usually sounds better than a distortion box. Simple is better, all around. Half the time the pedals just make it sound mushy .I m talking live. And distortion? You re probably using too much. Play with the amp cleaner and play ha rder and use heavier strings and perhaps a heavier pick. I ve seen people get anno yed at the statement, it s in the hands. (on the gear pages anyway) Sorry, but it s tr ue. It is in the hands, period, assuming your guitar is set up nicely. Play clea ner and harder if you want to rock. You can t use a wimpy pick and wimpy strings w ith a light touch through a distortion pedal and expect it to sound like rock. R ock has energy, so you have to put energy into it, in order to make it rock. All the guys whos playing you like, dig in. Trust me. Wimpy attack, thin strings, e quals thin, wimpy sound. You need to move air, and that is done with more mass a nd intensity. Now I know there are examples of guitar players that use thin stri ngs and thin picks and sound great, Billy Gibbons springs to mind, but I would s ay they are exceptions. They are already professionals to start with and their t echnique is very accurate. I m not talking about them. I m talking about guitar play ers in general that have trouble cutting through the mix. Solos. Few people care about solos beyond other guitarists. People like them eno ugh, but then they move on. Solos can be a nice departure especially if you incl ude melodic elements or add some kind of excitement factor, but they re more of a side dish than a main course. Truly. Don t believe the hype. Yes there is an entir e industry built around pedals, amps, guitars, solos, but that isn t the general p ublic. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail and it s in the best interest of

music gear manufacturers to sell you on the next great pedal or amp. Are you rea lly interested in playing almost exclusively for male guitar players? How many g irls are at a Joe Satriani concert? There are probably some, but it s mostly guys that play guitar. I d be willing to bet there are very few girls who don t play guit ar that even listen to guitar player records let alone pay money to see them liv e. And do you really think we need another person playing blues licks? Stevie Ra y, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Moore, the list goes on and on and on. OK, two of the afo rementioned are dead, but I promise you there are plenty of guys in the pipeline . And there are enough guys that can play their asses off and sing their asses o ff simultaneously. Plus many of them are great performers. Chances are, you don t have it covered so ask yourself, honestly, why does the world really need to hea r from me? What s in it for them? Ask that one again and again. What is in it for the public? Why, why, why should they be paying attention to your blues licks? W hy? Because you re adding your own thing to it? Sorry, you aren t. You re imitating th e people that influenced you. OK at a back yard cookout or a little local club. Go ahead, learn them all, you need to and they re fantastic. Do a cover of Texas Fl ood . Your buddies will tell you, you sound just like Stevie Ray. Smile and thank them, but privately don t believe them. And don t make the mistake of trying to base a whole career around it. Unless you are truly a badass, and you d know if you we re. If you think you might be, you probably aren t. You d be 90 percent sure, and do n t kid yourself. Define badass? Derek Trucks pops to mind. Jeff Beck. Are you tha t good? Not can you play some of those licks the way he does, but are you going to give him a run for his money? Because nobody is interested in Derek Trucks or Jeff Beck lite. Nobody, other than your friends. Why, why do we need another De rek Trucks? We don t. We ll go straight to him if we want that. Sure, you can do it at a local club, but if it comes to someone parting with their hard earned money why would they buy your CD over his? Really, you would do well not to focus you r energy too much on playing hot blues based guitar, all night long, in public. Or putting together a rhythm section so you can go out and imitate it exclusivel y. You can get club gigs, but that s where your career is going to stall. There ar e really so many mediocre blues bands in the world you should really try to thin k of a twist. (Songs!?) Yes, you can get away with it for a long time and it mig ht be better than nothing in some towns but examine your motives carefully. It m ight be a vanity effort, so don t be disappointed if the crowds don t show up. And i t s not that I believe artists need to focus on crowd pleasing. It s more that I bel ieve good artists are rare. Rhythm guitar etc. This is so important you just can t believe how important it is . It s the cornerstone of guitar playing assuming you agree that it s song based mus ic that moves the general public. It s hard to be a good rhythm player. Many playe rs rush and lose the groove or just don t dig in. Play simply and cleanly and resi st, resist, resist, adding all kinds of extra shit. Too many licks between chord s, licks that step all over the vocal, licks licks licks, enough already! I like them as much as anybody and I play a ton of them, alone, but you re probably over doing it. It s your ego that wants you to play so many licks and then it becomes all about you and not about the songs. Look at me, look at me, look at me! Look at me I can play licks ! And? Why? Why is that an important enough skill that I should be watching? It doesn t matter if it s good for you, that you ve come a long wa y in your playing. Nobody cares about your personal struggle to play well, and w hen people want blues, they want the real thing done really well with real feeli ng and the assumption is you ll have chops and be good. They can sense it when it s just some suburban ego wank fest and they will respond to that by not showing up to your gigs and not buying your CD. They wont come up and tell you they think you re mediocre. They ll just ignore you or worse, feign interest because they like the idea of someone making an effort. I think there are probably more instances of audiences clapping because they feel sorry for the artists and want them to f eel appreciated and loved than anyone cares to admit to. Most of the time they re being nice when they clap and real when they don t. And try not to be keeping the groove going by doing all sorts of chunky time kee

ping stuff in between with the pick. Play more like a keyboard player in this re gard. It s on or it s off. All that, in between time keeping crap, contributes to ma king it sound messy. To a point. A little bit is O.K. Listen to Angus and Malcom . Clean, fat, sharp. I know, I know, you get less attention when you play rhythm . Less people are paying attention to you and you want attention don t you? Of cou rse you do. There is no shame in that. Otherwise, just play in your bedroom or b asement. But I know you think, they think rhythm playing is what you do when you don t know how to play lead. True only in some instances, but you want to make a career out of this don t you? If you play solid rhythm more people will want you i n their bands. Songwriters, singers, bass players, drummers, good ones, all will like working with you. In fact everybody likes working with guitar players that can sing and hold it down. You ll get your chance to play some hot licks, until t hen you ve got an important job to do. Playing guitar on songs. Think for a minute about the demand in bands for hot soloists? How often do you see ads looking fo r a hot lead soloist in song oriented bands? They might be looking for a lead gu itar player, but secretly they re hoping that you aren t going to show up and be all Yngwie or Steve Vai d out. It s boring when guitar players are all about soloing, especially over blues progressions.. They d rather you be a parts player, capable of letting it rip in the right moment, as an addition to a song, a vocal and a p oint of view. And turn down during the verses. Dynamics. Leave some head room to get louder. Don t play on 10 all the time. Sing. Learn to at least sing back ups. That s more important in the long run, than the ability to play licks. If you thi nk songs exist as a platform for soloing you re wrong. Get your priorities straight. D on t forget, this is coming from a guy who actually can play world class licks! I m telling you this because I want you to be valued as a band guy. And it s a bitter pill to swallow, especially if you ve put some serious time into learning to play, to realize that although you think there a whole lot of people who bought Dire Straits records because of the great guitar playing, the fact is, the people who recognize the great guitar playing are in the minority. The bulk of the people who bought Dire Straits records, liked the songs. It s a huge plus that the perfor mances are so great, but without the songs the interest factor drops way off. I m not saying don t practice or learn to play licks. You need to learn them and you a bsolutely need to practice, but unfortunately the hours and hours and hours of t ime you put into playing are so you can get good. And then when you ve gotten good , you ll only do a little of it. It s OK. Think about a factory that makes after dinner mints. I m guessing there are huge expensive machines made to produce a simple after dinner mint. Whole crews , engineers making serious money, buying property, getting bank loans, hiring la wyers, constructing buildings, taste testers, chocolate makers, mint flavor prod uction facilities, water lines, electric lines, heating systems, phone systems, employee lounges, employee lounge furniture, secretaries, all so they can produc e a simple after dinner mint. That s what your time spent practicing is like. When someone pops that after dinner mint in their mouth, they aren t interested in all the machines that produce them, or how difficult it was to get the financing fo r the mint o matic. They just want to eat the mint, enjoy it for a few seconds a nd move on. That s the value of your licks and solos pretty much. Regular folk lik e songs and vocals and a beat you can dance to. And regular folk will be your br ead and butter, like it or not. I m not talking about jazz. That s a whole different subject. That s all about soloists and then it s all turned around. I m talking here about playing guitar in people pleasing rock music songs. Take a good look at music fans and the people that buy CD s. How much do they care or not ice that your Les Paul is a rare one? They don t care one teeny tiny bit. Do not aim exclusively to please other musicians. If you re any good, they will co me around anyway, and they will applaud you for your restraint. Drummers; That double pedal? It has really limited value buddy. 60% less please. Easy on the fills, don t step on the vocal. You re speeding up when you do that fil l, so please, use sparingly. Oh you re Neil Peart? Sorry, didn t realize. My mistake

. And if you re learning a cover, again, get the real tempo in your head and try t o cop the exact part the original guy played, at least to start with. It ll be har der doing what the original guy did than doing your own thing. And not harder fo r the reasons you think it s harder. Harder because of the restraint and accuracy needed to evoke the original groove. He didn t speed up during his fills and he di dn t play gratuitous fancy double kick drum licks either. I can t tell you how many times I ve suffered through Play That Funky Music on a gig and it was so unfunky it was sad. Speaking of, if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of playin g Play That Funky Music for the thousandth time, you owe it to the rest of us to at least do like the name says and make it funky. It s slower, simpler and drier s ounding than you think. Same thing with Brick House. Never played Brick House? Y ou will. It s slower than you re feeling it. AC DC too, that stuff is slower than yo u think. Fat and heavy. Not sprightly and eager. Oh, you re doing covers but with your own twist? Why? Oh, I see, the original was hit n all but your version is di fferent and actually better in some ways. Kind of like how the Red Hot Chili Pep pers doing Higher Ground is better in some ways than Stevie Wonder? OK, go on Gr oovesharkright now and listen to both back to back. I rest my case. I m not saying there is no value in the Chili Peppers reinterpretation, I m saying just because it s easier to do it your own way, when you are learning you may need to do things that require more effort and focus, and it s often a harder route.

Singers; Sorry, I know you can t hear yourself cause we re too loud back here. It s is rock music however, so you might need to either sing with more presence, (bette r) or get in ear monitors and we will try to turn down a little. But I m not sure our volume is an excuse for singing flat. I think that s something else. And truly , the rest of us need to understand, you are the most important person up there. I m not being facetious. It s fact. But the hand held percussion? Tambourines and s hakers etc? You know, there are full time professional percussion guys, that do nothing but play those instruments, really well, so you would be served well to think twice about how necessary tambourine is on every song. Usually it s used spa ringly for accent and often it s a part and not a non stop rattling. I m sorry if yo u need something to do, but the base music is built on is silence. Then you add stuff as needed, so non stop extra percussion is over playing. And speaking of u nnecessary, bad back ground vocals from the rest of the band don t add, they detra ct. Tell them, unless they can sing on pitch, it s probably better they keep quiet . But while we re on the subject ..I know if you re a front person you like to be the center of attention, and the audience likes it too. Good, someone needs to step into those robes. But that doesn t mean your every utterance is worthy of our atte ntion. Don t ask how everyone is doing tonight, please don t ! You aren t really liste ning, you don t really want to know how everyone is doing tonight. You just want t hem to yell out and prove to you that they re paying attention. Or you re filling sp ace because you feel awkward. Either way it s disingenuous. If you really wanted t o know how everyone is doing tonight you wouldn t ask them all at once and you wou ldn t be able to tell the ones that weren t doing well tonight anyway. Those people aren t doing well so they probably won t yell out Poorly . I know, you re thinking, Oh c mo , Robert everybody knows that when a singer asks how s everybody doing tonight they aren t really asking. It s just a custom. Everybody does it I don t think you can affo rd to fall back into default behavior. You re up against the best of the best. Be real. Listen, you love the sound of your own voice. That s fine, you should love t he sound of your own voice, but talking too much on stage, in jokes, or lengthy explanations of where you were and why you wrote the song? Unless you re a hit alr eady, save it. It s not working and it makes you look pompous. Further more, only the most clearly stated announcements over a low budget PA system can ever be un derstood by the bulk of the people. You do not have their undivided attention. J ust run one song into the next, then you won t have to talk so much. And if it s the guitar player changing guitars? See above. Keyboard players. On a keyboard sound that isn t a piano, in a band, I think you n eed to do less left hand stuff. We have a bass player for that. You would do wel l to view playing in a band differently from accompanying a singer solo. Otherwi

se we love you, and if you re any good, you re hard to find. But play parts in a ban d. Don t play the song as if the rest of the band isn t playing. It quite possibly s ounds messy. If you play the parts you play, when the band is not playing, and i t still sounds like the whole song, you might be doing it wrong. You don t need to keep the groove going with your left hand all the time. Bass players. Well if you re any good, and that means you have a great groove and play with conviction and don t speed up or slow down my only suggestion is, please slap and pop sparingly in a rock band. Otherwise you can get away with a lot if y ou want to, especially if you have a guitar player that isn t over playing. That s aid, it s safer to keep it simple, but by all means explore the chords. But when you drop out to fiddle with something, the whole bottom drops out, so w ait til the song is over if possible to tweak that crucial amp setting. Hammering on is not the same. Tell your drummer the same thing. We notice when you play w ith one hand to adjust something. Can it possibly wait til the song is over? Woul d you do that if you were recording live? You know, someone might be recording y ou live. Sax players, harp players etc; You can t really play chords. That just means you h ave to do something else, like nothing, when you aren t needed. Gratuitous percuss ion? See above under singers. You re usually playing solos and some parts, so no n eed to keep busy trying to seem valuable. You are already valuable, because we c an t play your instrument. In a serious, professional band you won t get to play any thing that isn t pre thought out. Think about that. Serious professionals won t let you free associate on your instrument. Noodling. You know what noodling is don t you? Fiddling around on your instrument. It s different from serious practicing. Lots of players noodle and it has value. For example; it s a rehearsal and you have a riff or progression and you aren t sure if you want to officially present it to the rest of the band, but you d like them to sort of over hear it, so you play it, hoping someone will say what s that? becau se they like it. I know songs have been written that way or cover songs added to the set because of it. But on stage or sound check think twice. Yes, you need t o test out your volume etc, but to then continue noodling it looks like you want to strut the stuff you don t get to play within the parameters of the songs or th e band. Your motives are mostly transparent to professionals. And house monitor guys, sound guys and your band mates now they have to yell their communication o ver you. If you re any good they ll probably hear you later when you play anyway. Bu t by noodling at volume you re not adding to the smoothness of the business at han d, you re now making it difficult. There is a lot of resisting you have to do as a professional musician. Resisting playing extra shit and having faith that the p eople you re working with already think you re good. And you don t really need to warm up at volume if you re a keyboard player, guitar player, bass player or drummer. Regarding fans; They tell you what they think you want to hear, and then they ex aggerate. Don t believe it. They re in your face, they want you to like them, they l ike you, they re impressed that you re up there doing it and they aren t, and they wan t to like you in advance, but will they follow through? Odds are once they ve made the effort to see you they might feel like they paid the bill, especially if th ere isn t much in it for them. Will they actually track down buying a CD of your o riginal music? Will they make plans around your upcoming gig? They re wonderful an d they make the music business go around, but they re fickle. And they like other artists too. Never take them for granted but don t believe everything they tell yo u about how they feel about your music when they re in front of you. They re just be ing supportive. They say things like definitely let us know when you re playing aga in! . They tell you they re your biggest fans and that they listen to your CD all th e time. If you re feeling mean, quiz them. Ask them to recite some of the song tit les on this record that means so much to them. Bless them, but a lot of what the y say is bullshit. They ll tell you you re their favorite singer or drummer or guita r player etc but the fact is, their real favorite is a professional that they d ra

ther be seeing if they only had the money or tickets. You might be only better t han nothing to them. They don t owe you a thing, not honesty, not undying support, nothing. You owe them. Write songs; You would do well to try to write songs as much as possible. The en tire music business is built upon good songs. This will always be your trump car d. Start writing about anything and everything. The more real or personal, the b etter in my book. At the very least, try to come up with catchy riffs or section s and progressions and then be open and willing to work with others. And try not to cling too tightly when you do work with others. I want you to go forth and Rock, and if you do it better, it s going to help every one. Just zoom out of your reality and take a cold calculated long look at yours elf from the outside and don t cut yourself slack or make excuses. If you sing or play badly on your live recordings, your excuse, whatever it may be, is an excus e and nobody else cares why. You re judged by the public on results, not efforts. Stack yourself up against the best. I certainly don t know it all and I would do w ell to take my own advice too, in fact I have. Writing this has helped me trim o ut some of my own bullshit and clarify my own motives. And after I wrote the fir st draft I even got rid of my distortion box!