I realized while I was a jamming yesterday that I have been playing guitar for 13 years. Playing guitar is one of the things I've had that's remained consistent from my late childhood and early adulthood aside from writing. It is more of a hobby compared to writing which I aim to make my job. I do find much joy from playing as well as learning about and tinkering with the mechanics of guitar playing and electric guitar. I'm such a nerd for the guitar that I watch guitar demos on youtube for gear (I just discovered the MXR Hendrix compact effects collection and I want them now). I often wonder if I should've majored in electric engineering purely to work for Fender, Soldano, or Dunlap.
Perhaps this comes with my substantial appreciation of pop culture like movies (& tv), books, and music (all of which I consume). Yet, whereas I went through phases with various hobbies and aspirations like many of us guitar playing stuck with me. I look back though and think of how much of an amateur I was and how delusional I was, how selfish...how much of a teenager I was. So in light of these reflections, I wanted to share some advice with and for young guitarists (and beginning musicians in general).
If you want to be a serious musician (rockstar) you need to...
1) Focus on learning the basics.
Learn about the structure of your instrument. Learn about pickups, bridge, body, neck, and strings. Why? Because if you want to rock (or something similar) you need to understand your equipment. You need to understand how to get the desired sound you want. You may think it doesn't matter when you start...but it does. All those rock stars you listen to may seem like meatheads but they are serious about their art and they are serious in their knowledge about what equipment they use, about what they do with their guitars, etc. There's a reason some guitarists prefer Fender with bright single coil pickups vs. Gibson and its fat, warm sounding PAF (or EMG if that's your thing...ugh) humbuckers. There's a reason your guitar shop has different gauges for strings. It's not to fuck with you. It's there because people get a different sound from how light and how heavy the strings are. Jimi Hendrix used light gauge strings so he could bend them crazy and according to Eddie Kramer he sometimes even used banjo strings.
It's not just pickups, resonant holes, and so forth. You need to understand keys, chords, and how to tune your guitar without a tuner. Learning how to tune a guitar is something I struggled with and it is something I wished I learned to do when I was younger.
Now there is a basic that requires it's own section which is...
2) Timing.
Learn timing. Learn the shit out of timing. If you don't know timing you aren't a musician.
Ever notice how math minded majors seem to be guided towards music or why child prodigies learn violin? Music isn't just free ass do whatever the hell you want. There's a quantitative element to music, a design. Even free form jazz and improvisation is performed with a reasonable design and by people who are insanely skilled musicians.
Want to play punk? Great, but you still need to learn 3/4 and 4/4 basic timing and you'll have to learn it in a fast tempo. If you don't you'll sound like shit. Want to know how Greg Ginn or Johnny Ramone get acclaim yet don't do solos? Because they can keep time and still play more than 400 and 500 bpm.
If you want to be a rockstar, especially in a band, you are going to need to learn how to count 1 & 2 & 3 & 4.
3) Start with simple songs.
You need to learn melody, tempo, timing, so forth.
Don't start with Dragon Force.
Or if you're me, don't start with "Stairway To Heaven."
Any art is work. Learning to be skilled requires practice. You don't just learn to play guitar with no effort. Just like learning to cook requires time, effort and diligence, so does guitar. You don't start to cook by learning to cook soufflee. No, you start with scrambled eggs and you learn to perfect scrambled eggs and then move on. Same thing with guitar. You don't start off with "Manic Depression" by Jimi Hendrix because you'll need to learn timing, pentatonic scaling, and blues/jazz style guitar. You'll get there, but you need to start off with something like AC/DC. I don't mean learn Angus Young's part either; start off with Malcom Young's part.
It may hurt your ego to be told not to learn something juicy like Jimi Hendrix...or Dragon Force if that's your thing...but what will hurt your ego even more is the absolute frustration of fucking up a song. Doing that might lead you to decide to not do it again, that there's something innate about playing guitar and you don't have it. No. You're just being asinine and you're trying to dunk without knowing how to dribble. Learn "TNT" or "Blitzkreig Bop." Why? Because you can learn those songs with basic knowledge, work on it for days or weeks (yes weeks) and get it down pat. That looks more impressive than shitting on a Led Zeppelin song.
4) Don't try to embellish yet.
When you get good, when you learn timing, chords, melody you'll develop the ability to embellish, solo, play fills (if you play drums), etc.
That takes time though, learning the song, getting its melody, song structure, rhythm down.
I say this because when I started a skilled player told me to learn rhythm guitar first instead of trying to learn lead. I didn't quite listen and now I know he is right. If you try to learn solos and so forth you'll be a selfish player and you won't get the songs down well.
The same goes for drums especially. If you play drums your job is to keep rhythm. You may hear John Bonham and Keith Moon and want to play fills to look impressive but those guys are ridiculously good and they put in those fills when they learn the rhythm and the timing.
I once learned to play drums and a friend's brother got onto me. "Every time you play a fill you're messing up the timing." He was right. I was of course affronted by the confrontation, but he was dead right.
In reality you don't even need to embellish. Phil Selway, the drummer of Radiohead doesn't embellish; he plays straight and Radiohead ends up getting a killer beat because they don't need a drum solo for every song.
Learn to play rhythm, then solo.
5) Don't take out a loan to buy your equipment
...at first. If you get good, play for a few years, there's nothing more satisfying than getting a Fender Jazzmaster or a Marshall JCM2000 or a Guild Acoustic or whatever you fancy.
But don't start off with those. Why? Because if you're a young musician you're less a musician and more young. That means, like anything, this could be a phase you're going through. You don't want to get professional equipment unless you're a professional. Don't ruin your parents' credit because you wanted the guitar Jimmy Page uses.
That being said, there's not just a monetary reason for this. You need to learn to play first. You need discipline, you need something that you can train with.
At the same time, understand unless playing guitar or being a rockstar is what you absolutely want to do, there's no reason to buy a ridiculously expensive piece of equipment. There's no reason to have three Marshall amps if you're just playing for yourself. Get a 15 or 30 watt amp, a reasonably priced guitar, and just play.
6) You're not going to sound like the album
There's a difference between live and studio recording. What is done in the studio involves 15 guitar track songs ie 15 different layers of guitar versus your puny one. It means that all glitches are erased, some post-production glimmer like reverb (or Mutt Langeing it), mic set up. Studio musicianship is a whole different animal and that requires the understanding of studio recording, mic set up, mixing, so forth. You don't need to worry with that yet. Worry about your live sound; now we have youtube and it is fantastic. Find live versions of your favorite songs and learn to play from those. You should still play from your records, cd's, MP3's, etc but don't expect them to sound so damn perfect because they won't.
7) Don't just play with yourself
Hehe.
What makes one better at anything is being around people with your similar interest and learning from each other either through collaboration and/or mutual criticism. That means you need to find people interested in playing other instruments than what you have and start a band or at the very least have cohorts you jam with.
As a young or aspiring musician you need a band if you want to be a rockstar, but you also need to understand selflessness, to learn your part, and better your knowledge of a song and timing.
Plus, when you're with musicians that are talented you feed off each other. There's a reason your favorite musicians are usually bands or had talented collaborators. There might be one or two primary authors of the music (auteurs), but when you're in a band with the baddest ass members you'll be bad ass yourself.
Does that mean you'll always play with bad ass musicians? No, especially if you're starting out. You'll play with people who suck, who have issues, who are vain, or who are just going through a phase. That's part of the learning process too. Chances are you're not going to marry the first person you date; chances are you have hangups, he or she has hangups, or you have conflicting interests and aren't compatible. That's fine because you use that to learn about who you can't be with and what qualities you want or more importantly don't want from someone. The same principle applies in a band; you learn who can't play with, why you can't play with someone, so forth. Learn from your experiences.
8) Don't just play for yourself
Notice the "for." If you are serious about being a rockstar and you have a band, timing down, an understanding of basic chords...go play. Play for friends, a party, open mic night, whatever. Just like you get better with people playing with you giving you feedback, you get better when you play for someone and get live reactions.
There will be applause, silence, so forth. People will walk out. It all matters though.
This is something I always regretted. I always made excuses to not perform in front of people in high school and I should've just played. I didn't play in front of an audience until I was 20. What I discovered was that in front of an audience I had an urge to please which meant no sloppiness, intense focus. It makes you a better musician. Play for people. That's the point of art; it's for someone.
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