The Three Biggest Mistakes I See Guitar Players Make

If you're a guitar player who wishes you could solo with more confidence, today's lesson is for you.

After teaching thousands of students, coaching folks one on one, and playing on Grammy nominated recordings, there's one thing I've noticed more than anything else. Folks are fumbling the fundamentals. They're messing up the easiest things to get right when they play and solo on the guitar.

These are the three I see over and over again. They're the simplest things on the list, and the crazy part is you can start fixing your playing right away just by doing all three.

Mistake one: your guitar is out of tune

Folks will send me a video, or I'll be coaching a client one on one, and their guitar is out of tune.

Listen to the two examples in the video. In the second one the rhythm is on time and all the timing is right, and it still sounds completely wrong, because the guitar is out of tune.

You would be surprised how many submissions I see where all you need to do is start tuning your guitar. That is the easiest, simplest lift there is.

So when you sit down at the instrument, before you even strum a chord, tune the guitar. Tune it twice. There are free tuners all over the internet, you can go to Google and search tuner, or you can buy a PolyTune, which is what I use. There are so many ways to fix this problem.

The process is just broken at the fundamental level. Instead of sitting down, practicing, and realizing you were out of tune 10 minutes later, you sit down, you tune, and then you start practicing.

I know that sounds dumb. It sounds fundamental. You would be shocked how many people are still playing out of tune.

Mistake two: you're practicing with no backing track

The second biggest mistake is playing without a backing track. No frame of reference, no reference point, nothing where everything's in time and the chords are going by. People are just taking their best guess at it.

And without a track, most of the time, folks are playing the wrong chord progression. Or they're dropping a beat. Or they're dropping a bar. Or the rhythm gets messed up and they're speeding up and slowing down.

The fix is simple. When you're soloing, when you're practicing, always have either a metronome or a backing track or something to keep you honest. Without it you are practicing bad habits, which means bad time, dropped bars, dropped phrases. I see it all the time.

It's so simple and so easy to fix, and yet I see it week after week. It's like layups. It's easy to correct, but you have to be conscious of it and you have to know about it.

When you're playing tight against a backing track, the rhythm is tight and you're following the chord progression. A lot of the submissions I get are wonky, and then time goes by and everything is wandering and aimless. The only way to hold yourself accountable and be honest is to have a track running.

Mistake three: you've never filmed yourself

I've coached folks who have been playing for 40, 50, 60 years who have literally never filmed themselves playing. And then they wonder why their patterns and their habits sound bad.

Here's the honest truth. When you film yourself playing, you get a totally different perspective on how things are sounding. You get an honest perspective.

It's the same reason Tom Brady and other athletes watch tape. You don't have an honest perspective when you're in the game. You have to remove yourself. It's the same reason Prince studied the tapes of his performances on the bus every night after he played. He was getting the honest perspective of an audience member so he could actually analyze his own playing.

Of course we all try our best in the moment. But if you've never filmed yourself, you really don't know all the weird little isms you're doing. You can't analyze the nitty gritty details of whether you're in time or out of time, whether you're hunching over, whether you've stopped tapping your foot, whether you're holding stress in your shoulders. You can't see or feel any of that while you're playing.

If you're an athlete you'd be filming yourself. You'd be watching tape. It's the same thing. We are guitar athletes.

So here's how to do it. If you're practicing 30 minutes a day, throw your phone up for the last 5 minutes once you're warmed up and make a little video log. You don't have to share it on social media or anywhere else. Just have it going in your home office, your bedroom studio, your family room, wherever you practice.

Have a day one and a day 30. Maybe a year one and a year five. Here's the thing: you're going to see your progress. And if you're logging it and writing it down, it keeps you honest. If you're not, I hate to break it to you, but a lot of folks are holding themselves back from becoming amazing.

All three, in one line

Tune your guitar. Have a reference point, a backing track or a metronome, every time. Film yourself.

And you don't have to be a guitar player to understand the last one. If you're in the legal profession, or you're a public speaker, or you have to make presentations to the C suite, you want to film yourself. You want to see how you look and how people view you. It's only going to help you.

Now that you understand the three biggest mistakes holding most guitar players back, read the nine levels of blues soloing for the full deep dive on how to actually solo over a blues, or the four step method in A for the system in one sitting.

Watch the original video: The 3 Biggest Mistakes My Clients Make

Want to go deeper?

Grab the free Blues Bootcamp. It walks through these concepts with tabs, downloadable PDFs, backing tracks, and a jam with me section.

And if you're ready to stop guessing and follow a system, check out The Blues Guitar System, my full course.