Guitar players are the coolest… or at least, that’s what 12-year-old me would have said. I still immensely enjoy playing the guitar, but there have been a few bumps and bruises over the 20+ years I’ve been playing this instrument. So, it’s time to confess a thing or two or ten!
Intonation
I learned how to properly tune a guitar fairly early in my journey. However, it wasn’t until I got into recording, many years later, that I started paying close attention to intonation. I found out that no matter how much time I spent tuning my guitar using the tuners, something was off with the pitch when I added synthesizers and other virtual instruments to my tracks.
Ironically, as my recording skills developed, I’ve become more sensitive to pitch, and now, something like an out-of-tune guitar or violin can completely ruin my listening experience.
Not Using Metronome
Besides playing guitar and classical piano, I was fortunate to study drums with a great teacher for about 18 months. That discipline didn’t translate to my guitar skills, though, as I never practiced with a metronome. It was only when I got into recording that I slowly realized my sense of rhythm wasn’t up to par with what I wanted to record.
Now, I still don’t practice with a metronome but instead use drum loops and grooves, which I find way more inspiring. That’s also how a lot of the songs you’ve heard on the channel came to be!
You don’t need music theory
For many years, I told myself that music theory was unnecessary, using it as an excuse to avoid practicing scales, chord inversions, learning harmony, and really getting to know the fretboard.
I still don’t think you need to be well-versed in music theory to be a great musician, but it certainly helps when trying to figure things out. For example, instead of spending an hour trying to harmonize a lead guitar line by trial and error, I could use different theory-based approaches.
Metal music requires the most skill
Yes, I was that kid at some point.
Metal is fast, requires a lot of technical skill to execute, and has an aggression that many other genres don’t. As a teenager, when you find a music style that feels ‘you’ and helps express all the emotions you experience, it’s very common to think you’ve found something that is just measurably better than any other music style.
So for a while I was a true metalhead dickensian…
More gain -> heavier tone
This is a classic mistake for beginners. I remember a school band night where my band played last, and we had a couple of Evanescence songs in our setlist. There I was with my first electric guitar, the school-owned amp’s gain turned to the max, and a Zoom 505ii pedal with its gain also maxed. Looking back, I bet it all sounded “awesome.”
The tone is in the amp
Speaking of gain, there was a point in my guitarist journey where I thought that in order for you to get great drive and distortion sounds, those had to always come from an amp.
At that point 99% of the time I played guitar was at home. And when you dial in tones at home by yourself, a huge bass heavy sound is usually what you end up with, because it just sounds awesome.
That is whyI really disliked tubescreamer and other pedals like that because they were messing with my tone.
Obviously the drive pedal market is also completely different than what it was 20 years ago and things like REVV G3 didn’t exist. This thing and few other pedals completely changed my mind on what a pedal can do.
Bass is the ‘easier’ guitar
This is what the teenage metalhead me was thinking back in the day. Bass ‘only’ has 4 or 5 strings and you play one at the time, so it has to be way easier, right?
Playing bass in school bands didn’t really change my opinion as I was able to play just fine hitting the root notes of each of the chords.
After I got into recording I suddenly noticed the wide gap between my bass takes and what my bass playing friends were able to do. It was a pretty humbling experience and since then I’ve really tried to learn the instrument, how to dial in the sounds and how to play to different styles that fit different genres.
Real bass players don’t play with a pick
Once I got over my ‘bass is the easier guitar’ lie and really started to learn bass I found a new lie to believe in for a while.
Also none of my bass playing friends used a pick, which put more fuel to the fire.
I like the tone I’m getting with my fingers more, but I lacked the technique to play evenly at higher tempos.
It was only a few years ago when I finally gave up. I had written a track that I wanted to use for a gear demo and the release of that unit was fast approaching. I didn’t have time to ask my friend to play bass on the track so I just grabbed my bass, a thin nylon pick and recorded the whole damn thing.
And guess what? Out of thousands of people who have watched that video, none of them have said how they can hear it was played with a pick.
People care about guitar solos
If I’m honest, I’ve spent way more time trying to learn lead guitar (poorly, I should add) than I’ve spent developing my rhythm guitar skills.
It took me almost 20 years to understand that unless your song is good, the solo is pretty much irrelevant.
In general I feel lot of guitar players, me included, focus too much on the 15 seconds we get to show our lead guitar skills and forget what really matters to an average listener.
Only amateur guitarists use capo
Another strange lie to believe in was something I picked up during the years I was part of this folk/pop group called Heartsong.
I played a lot of acoustic guitar in that band and at the time there was also a lot of debate in the American worship circles about using a capo and whether it was ‘cheating’
I don’t remember the exact reasons why that discourse hit me so badly but I basically became pretty angry at myself for not learning more ways to play the same chord and it bothered me for a while
7 or 8 years later I couldn’t care less whether someone is using a capo or not, especially if they’re also singing. Vocals are always more important than guitar and if using a capo helps me focus more on singing in tune and playing in rhythm, I’ll always use it.
Capo is just a means to an end and if using it angers one insecure guitarist in the audience, so be it.
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