A lot of people mistakenly believe that what makes you a great lead guitarist is playing super fast notes, aka, a guitar shredder. Playing super fast guitar licks and leads is great, but in my opinion, it’s not important in music. I’ve always believed that when a guitar player wants to play super fast solos all the time, just wants to be a show off. It’s like, “Hey, look at me, I can play fast”. Playing fast is just for entertainment purposes.

If you really want to impress people with your playing. Play guitar like you’re on fire and send chills down people’s spines, then you need to play lesser notes, and play a little slower. You need to make your solo sound musical. Something memorable. Make your solo sound like it’s somebody singing a song. That’s why I admire players like Jimmy Page, Joe Satriani, Hendrix, Clapton. Those guys can do that.

This is my goal that I want to achieve with lead guitar playing. I want to sound musical, instead of sounding like I’m playing a bunch of scales and exercises. You don’t want to sound like that at all. You want to play music with solos just like you do with chords.

There are too many bands out there that try too hard on solos, mostly showing off a bit way too much. You got to have passion in your soloing and it’s hard to do. You can play a long solo as long as you want to as long as you don’t bore the audience to death with it. You need to sound musical every time, if you don’t want the audience to walk away from your playing.

When your fans go see a rock or metal concert, they expect to hear good guitar solos live on the stage. So you have to take lead guitar seriously.

Believe me, the listener will let you know if you’re playing a good solo or not, no matter where you are. If someone sticks around listening to your playing, that means you’re doing something right. If someone tells you to stop playing or play something else, that means you got a lot more work to do.

You have to impress the listener if you want to be a great guitarist. You can’t call yourself a great guitar player, you have to let the listener say that to you. The people will let you know if you are great or not.

Kev

I know I don’t have many friends in local music with other musicians. I only have very few that are buddies of mine, that I actually get along with more than anyone. I won’t name them. Those few musicians that are buddies of mine, are pretty much loyal fans of my music too. They stuck with me and supported me no matter what anybody else thought and no matter what happened. Those few musicians, are not best friends, just “buddies”, that’s it. I just talk to them online all the time mostly. If I wanted to hang out with them in person, I’d go see a show of theirs, or they would go see one of my gigs.

A lot of people mistakenly believe that you should make friends with other musicians as much as possible. It seems to be a big thing going on with local music. Musicians becoming friends with other musicians. They start hanging out with them outside of music and becoming more close.

A lot of people mistakenly believe that local music is all love-able, wonderful, and kind. Well, it’s not. Not all of it, anyway.

There are plenty of musicians out there you can’t trust. You can’t trust anybody in the music scene. I’ve made friends with musicians in the past, that I thought that was my friend but finding out they weren’t after all this time. I’ve made friends with the wrong musicians in the past over the years, that I shouldn’t have been friends with. Musicians are crazy, they will do anything to make you look bad publicly out of ego & jealousy. That’s it, really. A lot of musicians will drag you into this drama and negativity ’cause they will find it entertaining to their other friends and amuse themselves.

Things like this is why I wouldn’t be in a romantic relationship with another woman who is a musician. Having a musician girlfriend is much more dangerous than being friends with other musicians. I would much rather date a woman who is not a musician.

Do I regret being friends with the wrong musicians in the past? No. Not at all. It was good publicity for my music,  for the most part and I got some gigs out of them. So I don’t feel guilty about it at all.

If you want to be friends with musicians, you must make friends with the right people. You don’t need to be friendly with all musicians that you lay eyes upon ’cause there’s too many douchebags out there, trust me. You would  know that a musician is a true friend of yours, when he/she keeps in touch with you all the time.

Don’t get me wrong. I am nice and polite to all musicians, of course, I am approachable to talk to, but I don’t make friends with every musician I see. A friendship with another musician, just happens.

With that being said, I’m not worried about making too many friends around here. I’m all about living my own life and playing my own music. There are quite several musicians around here that will try to be friends with me. I appreciate that but truthfully I don’t do music to make friends with other musicians even though it’s a nice thing and well appreciated. I’m all about playing guitar and writing the songs, that’s it. That’s pretty much what I mostly care about.

If other musicians want to live in their own fantasy world being friends with other musicians as much as possible, be it. Not all musicians have to be that way and that’s my point.

Kev