Please leave your ego at home!

Egos, endless improvisations and shredding are done at home, on stage you play music!

If you haven’t figured this out yet, you’re clearly not ready to perform in front of an audience. Make a clear distinction between playing guitar at home on your own, and playing guitar in front of an audience. At home you can experiment, jam, shred, noodling, whatever, … But on stage, you play music for other people. With the exception of those 2 other guitarists in the audience, no one is interested in your “genoodle”. Don’t forget your target audience … An audience asks for entertainment and comes to watch the “group” as a whole and is not so much interested in just the guitarist. Speed is sport! Playing fast on a guitar requires a lot of training (at just the speed) but gives little result compared to an audience.

Think of it this way: you can run fast and win the 400m, but running fast is not the same as being able to move nicely (like dancing). Ditto for music. Playing fast is very impressive… for a few seconds. But don’t forget to learn to play nicely first, speed does come with age. Hey, have you ever tried playing a solo with 1 note? Yes you don’t read wrong: 1 note !! Do! Only the best guitarists can do that, believe me a terribly difficult exercise!