The Muse's Muse  
Muses MailMuses Newsmuse chatsongwriting resource home
Tom Hess Guitar Lessons

Tom Hess By Tom Hess

© 2009-16, Tom Hess. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission (Please do not reprint without asking permission!)



Although there is a huge amount of helpful content for guitar players, the biggest problem most musicians face is trying to make sense of it all.  After teaching hundreds of guitarists from all over the world privately, and through my online guitar lessons, I can relate to the frustrations and struggle that you face in improving your musical skills.  With my lessons and columns I will point you in the right direction to taking your guitar playing to the level you want to be.

A short bio

Articles:

  • The Number One Misconception Guitar Players Have About Taking Guitar Lessons With A Teacher - However, even if it was the case that you could teach yourself the same things that a mediocre guitar teacher could teach you, know that simply “learning things” is extremely limited in its ability to help you achieve your guitar playing goals.
  • Five Incomplete Questions Guitar Players Often Ask And What You SHOULD Be Asking Instead - Tons of guitarists ask all the wrong questions when trying to make faster progress in their playing. These questions all are built on misconceptions and misinformed ideas that are commonly accepted as “correct” among mediocre players. If you ask yourself these same questions, you will struggle massively to make any progress at all.
  • The Five Things You Should Ask If You Want To Build A Music Career - Many amateur musicians try to get the answers to incorrect questions. These questions are often based on myths, assumptions and ignorance about how the music business truly works. Looking for the correct answers to these types of questions is a guaranteed way to sabotage your attempts at starting and building a successful career in music.
  • The Best Methods For Getting Your Guitar Students To Practice More - What is the one skill that all your guitar students need to understand in order to grow into top tier musicians fast? It’s not technical playing ability... it’s not music theory skills... Think it’s ear training? What about developing super-fast speed?
  • Four Errors Guitarists Make While Getting Ready For Live Performance & How To Avoid Them Before You - Does playing live on stage make you feel anxious? Almost everyone feels this exact way! But it doesn't have to be this way. Whenever you begin to understand how to best prepare for live guitar performing situations, you will enjoy playing live much more.
  • How To Make More Progress In Your Guitar Playing By Using More Effective Practice Exercises - One of the biggest reasons why you struggle to improve your guitar playing is that you never learned which of your guitar practice exercises are helping your improve your playing and which ones are not. Take these 5 steps and get back on track towards reaching your musical goals...
  • Want To Play Cool Arpeggio Guitar Licks? Do This: - Tired of playing boring arpeggio licks and want to make them more creative? Here’s how: focus a lot more on applying the arpeggio patterns you already know as creatively as possible instead of looking for tons of new patterns or exercises. This is not difficult to do and you can easily turn the patterns you know into badass guitar licks using the following 4 approaches...
  • How To Become A Highly Successful Guitar Teacher - Statistics revealed that the vast majority of guitar teachers almost never earn huge amount of money with their teaching businesses. For most of these guitar teachers, the idea alone of making $80,000 in a single year is an unrealistic dream.
  • How King Diamond’s Vocal Technique Will Help You Play Killer Guitar Solos Part 1 - Want to play killer guitar solos? Listen to your favorite singers! You heard right... Fact is, the majority of guitarists never even thought about studying singers to improve their guitar solos... they only take the conventional routes of increasing speed, researching new licks or attempting to learn different scale positions. If you understand how to integrate the vocal style of great singers with your own guitar playing style, you will be able to play amazing solos that sound highly emotional and expressive.
  • How To Become A Great Guitarist, Part 2 – Three Reasons Why You Haven’t Become A Great Musician Yet - What is keeping your from taking your guitar playing skills to the highest level? Is it terrible playing technique? No musical creativity? Little to no natural talent? Beyond your prime? Ineffective practice sessions? Fact is, it is none of these things. These are all just the symptoms of much deeper issues.
  • How To Improve Your Live Guitar Skills - Are you dissatisfied with your live playing skills and tired of being nervous every time you perform? Here is a little secret: these kinds of mistakes (and your fear of playing in live situations) can be improved upon with a specialized practice routine. Additionally, if you want to really improve your live playing skills, you must practice like the pros. Here’s how:
  • How To Become A Pro Musician & Build A Successful Music Career - Did you ever wonder to yourself how great musicians achieve success in the music industry? Of course, not all of them do the exact same things when building their career but each one of them has applied the very same key principles needed to become successful in the music industry.
  • How To Leave Your Day Job & Teach Guitar For A Living In The Least Risky Manner Possible - Wish you didn’t have to work 40 hours every week at a job you hate? If you’re a guitar player, this kind of job will both keep you from playing guitar, and stop you from pursuing a music career. However, you can change this if you really want to. Fact is, teaching guitar for a living is by far the greatest way to do something you love while also making good money.
  • 9 Damaging Things That Prevent You From Making Progress On Guitar - Are you tired and frustrated of not getting the results you want in your guitar playing, even though you’re practicing for long hours during the week? If you can relate with this, chances are you might be doing what many guitarists do.
  • The Most Effective Way To Make Progress On Guitar - Regardless your current guitar playing skill level, there is one thing you can do to get huge results from your guitar practice. Here it is: Monitor and track every element of your guitar playing.
  • How To Make Your Legato Guitar Technique Clean & Articulate - Is your legato technique in need of some serious improvement, but you’re not sure how to go about it? Fortunately, you don’t need to search for any special exercises to do this - you must simply use the best practicing methods for developing the technique, just like all the great players do. By doing this, the quality of your legato playing will quickly skyrocket.  
  • The Biggest Reason Great Guitarists Are Great And Mediocre Guitarists Are Not - Have you ever asked yourself what the single biggest thing that separates the best guitarists in the world from every other mediocre guitar player is? I’ll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with how much time you spend practicing.
  • Why You Struggle To Express Emotions On Guitar - Ever felt like expressing true passion and emotion with guitar is an ability you must have been born with or you’ve better forget about it?
  • How To Easily Get A Lot More Music Gigs - Are you unsure about what you must do to get more gigs? You could be causing problems for yourself by thinking that “venues aren’t looking for bands in this moment,” or “there’s too much competition for my band to stand a chance”. Fact is, these statements are based in excuses. Here are the actual facts when it comes to getting more gigs...
  • 4 HUGE Mistakes Guitar Teachers Make In Their Guitar Lesson Ads - Having problems getting brand new guitar students with the guitar lesson ads you created? Know that you are not alone.
  • How You Can Play Kick-Ass Pinch Harmonics On Guitar - Being able to play pinch harmonics will make your guitar playing sounds totally badass. With this single technique, you can add true passion, quickly and easily to your guitar playing. However, if done improperly, it can be a very frustrating technique to deal with.
  • Why You Are Not Making Progress In Your Guitar Playing & How To Start Improving - Does this scenario sounds familiar?: learning to play guitar at a higher levels, required you to practice various guitar skills and techniques for months or even years. Yet after invested all this hours into practicing, you still lose your bearings when playing in front of others, improvising, or recording music.
  • How To Play Excellent Lead Guitar Licks & Solos By Developing Better Musical Creativity - Do you know many guitar licks, scales and arpeggios but still can’t play very creatively? If so, you are not alone – many guitarists are in the same boat. However, you shouldn’t make the same mistake as them. Don’t waste your time trying to learn as many new licks/scales/etc. as possible... this will NOT make you a more creative player.
  • The Four Keys To Making An Effective Guitar Practice Schedule - How do you feel when practicing guitar for extended practice sessions and making few or no progress at all? Do you know why you are struggling to get better at guitar regardless all the time you are practicing?
  • How To Make 6-Figures Per Year Teaching Guitar & Turn So-So Guitar Students Into Great Players - Guitar teaching reality: you can achieve incredible success and earn great money teaching guitar whether you are a total beginner or have been teaching for many years. The world’s most profitable guitar teachers are not smarter than you and don’t have a lot more talent or potential than you... Fact is, they have all had to overcome the same (or greater) challenges than you in their guitar teaching journey.
  • 3 Reasons Why You Struggle To Play Guitar Both Fast And Clean - In Part 1 of this article, you learned that mastering your 2 hand synchronization is absolutely crucial to your ability to play guitar both fast and clean. The next logical step is learning why many guitar players struggle to perfectly synchronize their picking and fretting hands.

    Here are the 3 biggest reasons why most guitar players don’t improve their 2 hand synchronization and how you can overcome these problems in your own guitar playing.
  • How To Dramatically Improve Your Guitar Playing And Reach Your Musical Goals Fast - Are you absolutely positive, beyond any doubt, that the guitar exercises you practice are actually making you a better guitarist? If you aren’t 100% certain you are using the most effective guitar exercises in your practice routine, then you need to take these 5 essential steps to get you back on track towards reaching your musical goals.
  • How To Quickly Become A Highly Creative Guitarist - Do you believe that becoming a creative musician is a matter of being born naturally talented? That is what I used to think. When I was a young guitarist, negative beliefs like this nearly destroyed my dream of becoming a great musician.
  • Learn How To Play Guitar Super Fast & Clean Using Perfect Two-Hand Synchronization - Part 1 - Do you ever struggle to play guitar both fast and clean once you reach your top speed? Tons of guitar players have this same issue and attempt to resolve it by “moving their hands faster”. However, this will not help you play guitar fast and accurate. To do this, you must solve the fundamental cause of your problem. This takes more than simply practicing various speed exercises.
  • How To End The Cycle Of “Guitar Teaching Insanity” & Make A Great Income Teaching Guitar - INSANITY was defined by Einstein as: “committing the same errors over and over again while expecting to obtain new results.” Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of guitar teachers commit this mental error while trying to make a lot of money teaching guitar lessons… and this is the main reason why they simply will NOT be able to become highly successful.
  • 10 Things Every Fast Guitarist Knows - All of these elements of building great guitar speed have been followed and mastered by many of the world’s fastest guitar players. If you want to build insane guitar speed, follow these 10 rules consistently and you too will be an incredibly fast guitarist.
  • How To Quickly & Easily Play Difficult Guitar Licks And Solos - Even though you can practice advanced licks on their own and it CAN improve your skills for performing those licks - it won’t help you understand how to smoothly combine them together within an actual guitar solo. It is this problem that causes most guitarists struggle with playing complex guitar licks and it’s why their improvising often sounds more like a “collection of strung together licks” rather than a real “guitar solo”.
  • How To Become A Better Guitar Player By Learning From Steve Vai - Part 2 - Begin to analyze guitar players like Steve Vai and soon you will learn lots of thing…IF you know what to look for. Like any other great guitar player, Steve Vai’s musical greatness was NOT the results of his perfect guitar playing technique alone, but due to his ability to express himself with music.
  • 5 Additional Reasons Why 99% Of Guitar Teachers Will Never Make Six Figures Per Year & How YOU Can - You can very easily earn six figures per year teaching guitar once you understand how. The first step is to forget about the economy, how big your city is, how many other teachers are out there, or anything else like that. Instead, you must learn from the mistakes of others and apply what you learn into your guitar teaching business.
  • How To Play Awesome & Exotic Guitar Licks - Tired of playing the same guitar licks over and over using the pentatonic and blues scales? To become a more creative lead guitarist, you must learn how to play with tons of expression – this can sound especially cool when used together with exotic guitar licks.
  • Why Teaching Your Guitar Students To Be Creative Is Extremely Important - What is the best way to get tons of new guitar students, make your current students more enthusiastic about learning and make your competition jealous of your success? Answer: being able to turn average students into great musicians. To do this, you MUST teach them to be creative... in fact, this is also a major factor when it comes to making good money as a guitar teacher.
  • Steve Vai's Guitar Playing Can Make YOU A Better Guitar Player…Here's How - Part 1 - Steve Vai is undoubtedly one of the world's best guitarists. So how can you use this fact to make YOU a better guitar player? Hint: the answer is NOT "learning Steve Vai solos" or "looking up Steve Vai tabs". This is because these things will never allow you to the learn from the REASONS that Vai is great. If you can understand these reasons, you can use them to become a better guitar player yourself.
  • 7 Reasons The CAGED System Literally ‘Cages’ Your Guitar Playing - Don’t waste another second of your time learning the guitar scales by using the CAGED system.
  • How To Practice Guitar More Effectively To Regain Your Skills After Not Playing For A Long Time - Have you been playing guitar recently after taking a long break away from playing? It doesn’t matter if you were away from guitar for several weeks, a month or more – you were surely in for an unpleasant surprise after noticing a drop in your playing skills (when compared to how you used to play).
  • How Mastering Sweep Picking Can Help You Become A Better Guitar Player And Overcome Your Guitar Play - Sweep picking is hard for most guitar players to master…but it doesn’t have to be that way for you. I’m about to show you exactly how easy improving your sweep picking can be and (better yet) how doing so can help ALL of your guitar playing improve.
  • 4 Reasons Why You Haven’t Done Anything Big In Your Music Career - Tell me this: What’s the most significant reason why so many musicians don’t succeed with a career in music? ...FEAR.
  • How To Know Whether You Can Become A Great Guitar Player Pt. 1: Do You Want It Bad Enough? - The biggest obstacle standing in the way of your guitar playing greatness is NOT learning complicated techniques, becoming a faster player, memorizing scale patterns or anything else musical.
  • The Best Method For Playing Tremolo Picking Guitar Technique With Unbelievable Speed - Do you strongly desire to play with lightning fast tremolo picking guitar technique? It’s actually a lot easier than you might expect. In reality, tons of guitarists have a hard time playing fast tremolo picking lines because they are under the impression that merely moving their hands faster will lead them actually play faster. However, this conventional wisdom is entirely false and I’ll tell you why...
  • 5 Ways To Grow Your Guitar Teaching Business - Why are some guitar teachers able to easily grow highly successful guitar teaching businesses, while the majority struggle to make ends meet?. If you want to become a member of the special group of successful guitar teachers, you’d better learn what these teachers know the 5 ways about growing your teaching business.
  • How To Make It Easy To Play Guitar Fast - To make your fast guitar playing feel easy, follow this innovative guitar practice strategy that will help you break through any guitar speed plateau.
  • How To Create Awesome Sweep Picking Licks While Improving Your Guitar Technique - If you are having problems playing your sweep picking arpeggios fast and clean then you are not alone. Many guitarists have the same problem. I suffered from the same problem,
  • How To Quickly Become A Professional Musician - Learn what you need to do to become a professional musician. Read this article and start building a successful music career.
  • How To Play Guitar Lightning Fast Using The Most Effective Picking Technique - To easily play with greater speed, you’ll need to use the most effective picking technique possible. This doesn’t require learning many new exercises for guitar... you only need to change one thing in your current guitar playing approach. Follow this basic idea from now on to make your picking technique highly efficient, giving you the ability to play faster on guitar with ease...
  • Why You Make Slow Progress On Guitar (And How To Speed It Up) - Your guitar playing progress will be very slow until you get a clear picture of what must be corrected to reach your musical goals. Until you learn this, you will always be disappointed whenever you try to improve during your practice time.
  • How To Get Good At Playing Anything On Guitar - 3 Step Process For Effective Guitar Practice - Have you ever been practicing something on guitar (a solo, specific technique, song, etc.) for many months without seeing any results? Despite your hard work, you just can’t seem to get any better... Then you eventually become disappointed and begin wondering if you’ll ever play guitar like you want to.
  • How To Play Great Guitar Solos Part 4: Creating Strong Emotions Over Chords - It’s great to be able to use only one pitch to make your playing feel more emotional... but to make your guitar solos overflow with emotion, you need to squeeze as much feeling as possible out of every note in every guitar lick...
  • The Most Important Factors For Building A Music Career - No one succeeds in the music business who doesn't already utilize the five key elements used by massively successful pro musicians. Until you learn about these key elements and start creating a foundation based on them, your music career will quickly head off-course... never to recover again.
  • How To Play Awesome Lead Guitar Solos Pt. 3 - The Secret To Playing Emotional Solos - Learn the secrets of playing guitar solos with intense emotion by reading this article.
  • Why You Can’t Attract Guitar Students During The Summer - Chances are, you already understand that the summer is the slowest season for being contacted by potential guitar students. This makes earning a good living teaching guitar very challenging for most teachers. However, unlike most guitar teachers, YOU will be filling up your teaching schedule during the summertime. To do it, you just need to understand the right approaches to take...
  • Why General Guitar Speed Building Advice Fails & What You Should Do Instead - Most guitarists in the world are unable to play flawlessly at extremely high speeds because they approach guitar practice in one of two ways...
  • The Only Way To Succeed As A Guitar Teacher - Any guitar teacher who achieves great success fully understands how they share a lot in common with anyone who has ever climbed to the top of Mt. Everest. Not sure what I mean?
  • The Best Way To Practice Guitar And Eliminate Mistakes - The greatest guitar players and the worst guitar players are all the same in that they share one common goal: they want to ‘play it correctly’. When you use effective guitar practice techniques, you eventually gain confidence and look forward to learning new skills. This is great except for one thing... After you begin seeing progress (and want to move your skills to a very high level – such as performing live), you will often feel a lot of anxiety around making mistakes that will cause many problems for you.
  • How To Play Badass Lead Guitar Licks, Part Two: Creative Bend Application - Boring guitar solos are usually NOT the result of a lack of musical talent or technical skill. Instead, you will struggle to play killer guitar solos when you use the same process for improving your solos every time. For example, here are the two most common ways guitar players try to make their solos sound better...
  • The Music Career Questions That Lead To Failure - Every day I receive messages in my inbox from musicians asking me how they can build their music careers. Maybe 1% of these questions are ‘good’ questions... all the others are built from totally misguided assumptions and myths about how the music industry works. Although some of these questions may ‘seem’ like good questions, they actually achieve highly destructive effects on a musician’s mindset that lead him/her far away from their musical goals...
  • The Four Worst Fears Of Guitar Players - What is the real reason why you haven’t already become a great guitarist and musician? No, it’s not your inability to play perfect guitar solos, a shortage of natural talent or anything like that. It’s your ‘fear’ of negative outcomes. By focusing your mindset on what you ‘don’t want to happen’ you put yourself in a situation where you are more prone to NOT taking action to achieve your goals. Before you can become a better guitarist, you MUST figure out why these fears exist in you and what you can do to prevent them from controlling your musical future.
  • How To Play Badass Lead Guitar Licks, Part One: Creative Vibrato Application - I often hear complaints from guitarists about how their lead guitar playing doesn't sound as creative/good as they want. Reality is, there exist tons of reasons why this might happen, but there are answers to help you solve all of those problems as well.
  • Why You Aren’t Beating The Guitar Teaching Competition In Your City - Sad but true: almost 100% of guitar instructors choose ‘mediocrity’ as their standard of achievement. These teachers fail to make a big effort to move beyond merely having enough students to ‘get by’ and have no real commitment to getting great results for their students. In addition, of the guitar instructors who have great ambition, only a select few are able to reach their greatest potential because they have no clue of what can really be achieved.
  • Transform Your Blues Guitar Licks With Killer Double Stop Technique - Learn how to create killer blues guitar double stop licks.
  • The Missing Elements Needed For Your Guitar Teaching Success - Do you wonder why you can’t seem to achieve success in your guitar teaching business? In order to succeed in this business, you will need to do much more than the average guitar teacher. Consider the Olympics: in the Olympics, most athletes have similar physical attributes, yet only a few of them (who seem to possess ‘something extra’) are able to win medals while everyone else goes home empty-handed.
  • The Secret To Playing Badass Blues Guitar Licks Part 2 - Learn how to utilize the muting technique you learned in the previous part of this series along with several creative blues guitar techniques that will make your blues phrases sound much more expressive.
  • The Secret To Becoming A Successful Professional Musician - Have you always wanted to become a professional musician and wondered what it takes to reach the top of the music industry? Are you frustrated working at your current job because it has nothing to do with music? I can relate because I was once in the exact same spot you are in!
  • How To Quickly Correct Your Guitar Playing Problems - Tired of not making progress in your guitar playing? Most likely, your lack of progress is the result of years of bad playing habits. Until you correct your bad habits, you will be destined to experience the feeling of helplessness you get after realizing that you need to ‘begin from square one’ every time you try to learn something new.
  • 6 Ways To Attract Tons Of New Guitar Students - You’ll never build a highly successful guitar teaching business without being able to attract tons of new guitar students on a continual basis. If you’re like most guitar teachers, you have tried the approach of ‘advertising more’ with minimal results. Truth is, there is much more you must do before you will be able to consistently attract more students.
  • The Secret To Playing Badass Blues Guitar Licks - Before you can create truly intense and passionate blues guitar licks you must master the ability to mute ALL unused strings while you are playing. If you are unable to do this, your licks will sound sloppy and you will struggle to play music that sounds as expressive and inspiring as you want it to.
  • Quickly Become An Excellent Guitarist By Studying John Petrucci’s Playing - Here are the top five commonly passed over areas of Petrucci’s style that will help you become a better guitar player...
  • How Making ‘Fast Progress’ Might Keep You From Becoming A Great Guitarist - Do you assume that becoming a superb guitarist requires that you make progress as fast as possible? In reality, this assumption can actually prevent you from reaching your musical goals in a short period of time.
  • The Top 7 Guitar Teaching Questions You Shouldn’t Be Asking - Are you ready to become a more successful guitar teacher but struggle to solve many problems that seem to be holding you back? Truth is, this happens to all guitar teachers. In order to move forward and develop a flouring guitar teaching business you must continually ask the ‘right’ questions that will promote growth and prosperity. Unfortunately, if you ask the ‘wrong’ questions (as most guitar instructors do) you will condemn yourself to mediocre success at best.
  • The Five Keys To Building A Successful Music Career - Wish you knew why some musicians become massively successful (and how you can too)? Hint: It’s not by simply copying the actions of others in the industry – it’s by developing a success-oriented mindset as the foundation of your actions. Once you have the right ‘mindset’, everything else will fall into place in your music career and you will achieve success...
  • How To Create Awesome Shred Guitar Ideas Without Playing Faster - Do you love playing shred guitar licks but struggle to come up with cool ideas on your own? Chances are, you believe the myth that good shred guitar playing is only about playing fast. This approach is the same approach that keeps thousands of other lead guitarists from playing powerful and expressive guitar licks. Truth is, you must master the ability to play with both speed and creativity in order to make your licks stand out.
  • How To Play Creative Sweep Picking Arpeggios - Want to play amazing sweep picking arpeggios that demand the attention of everyone who hears you play? It’s actually much easier to do than you think. The key is focusing on building incredible amounts of musical tension by combining sweep picking technique with creative guitar phrasing ideas.
  • Five Methods For Getting Into The Music Business That Lead To Failure - Ready to break into the music industry but unsure about what you need to do? Before you will become a highly successful professional musician, you need to get rid of several false beliefs that will cause you to fail in your music career. With this in mind, you might be surprised to learn the following fact about how the music business really works...
  • 2 Reasons Why You Have A Hard Time Expressing Maximum Emotion In Your Guitar Playing - Do you want to have the musical skills that allow you to control the emotions your listeners will feel when they hear you play guitar? The single greatest skill you can develop as an artist is the ability to consistently create music that allows you to express yourself in this way. Read more in this article...
  • The Five Main Keys To Becoming A Truly Great Guitar Player - I have identified the five keys required for becoming a truly great guitar player. In this article I will address all five and explain how you can achieve greatness for yourself. The five main keys are...
  • How The Most Successful Musicians Are Making It In The Music Business - Are you committed to becoming a professional musician and making it in the music business? Learn how by reading this article...
  • Here Is What You Need To Know To Teach Guitar Lessons - Want to become a guitar teacher? Learn how while avoiding the most common mistakes made by new teachers.
  • How To Play Awesome Guitar Licks And Empower Your Lead Guitar Playing Pt. 2 - Do you struggle to play great lead guitar licks? Chances are you’re making the same mistake as most guitarists: You add extra notes to your licks in order to cover up your lack of guitar phrasing skill. To make your lead guitar playing sound great, you must understand how to play every single note in your licks with as much expression as possible. Read this article and learn how.
  • How To Play Awesome Guitar Licks And Empower Your Lead Guitar Playing Pt. 1 - Wish you could play killer guitar licks every time you pick up your guitar? The truth is many guitar players think that great guitar licks are made by playing specific notes or scales. However, this usually not the case. As you will find out in this article (and video), the key to playing killer guitar phrases is focusing on ‘how’ you play… not necessarily which notes you use.
  • Why You Should Forget About Most Common Guitar Teacher Advice - Are you tired of earning only a small amount of income from guitar teaching? Wish you had a schedule full of motivated students? Unsure about what you need to do to grow your guitar instruction business? Truth is, most guitar teachers never become successful, nor do they earn a lot of money. However, ALL teachers have the potential to do so...
  • Taking Lessons For Guitar? Here’s 7 Unfortunate Truths About Your Guitar Teacher - REALITY: Most guitar instructors have never taken the time to develop their teaching skills. Unfortunately, this means you must become their student ‘experiment’ as they learn through trial and error. Before you take another lesson, here are the seven things that your guitar teacher has never told you (that you need to know!)...
  • Use Your Favorite Singer's Voice To Write Guitar Solos - Would you like to have the ability to write guitar solos which are highly melodic, expressive, and passionate? If you are like the majority, then you have a hard time making your lead guitar playing sound exactly how you want it to. A great way to solve this problem is to start listening more closely to your favorite singers.Here's how...
  • How To Promote Your Music Career And Build Your Music Fan Base - Are you trying to find the best way to promote your music and gain a huge following of fans? Read this...
  • 5 Creative Tactics That Will Transform Your 7 String Guitar Playing - Do you feel like your 7 string guitar playing is not as creative as you would like it to be? Chances are, you have not fully explored the instrument’s creative possibilities and limited your approach to simply trying to make your 6 string ideas work with the low B string...
  • A Powerful And Unique Approach To Writing Guitar Solo Phrases - Many guitar players think that having great technical playing skills is crucial to writing incredible guitar solos. In reality, there exist tons of great guitarists who play truly inspiring guitar phrases without playing in a very ‘technical’ manner… and you can do this to when you follow the steps in this article.
  • How To Succeed At Teaching Guitar By Showing Your Students How To Practice - Have you ever had a hard time getting your guitar students to make significant progress from one lesson to the next? Although there are tons of reasons why most guitarists who take lessons never become great musicians, in the end a lot of your success as a guitar teacher will depend on your ability to effectively teach your students to practice.
  • How To Gain A Lot Of Motivation For Guitar Practice - Have you been experiencing a lack of motivation in your guitar practice? Are you unsure about what and how to practice? Get effective guitar practice tips and become a more motivated guitarist by reading this article.
  • The Secret To Achieving Great Success As A Guitar Teacher - Have you ever noticed how some guitar teachers seem to “have it easy” when it comes to getting great results for their students? You too can achieve great things as a guitar teacher once you understand exactly what makes these teachers so successful...
  • How To Create Rock Guitar Solo Improvisations - Learn how to write rock guitar solos and improvisations by reading this article.
  • Top Ten Reasons Why You Aren't Making Good Money Teaching Guitar - Most guitar teachers don’t believe it is possible to build a guitar teaching business that makes an annual income of $100k or more. The truth is that it is actually very realistic to want to make 6 figures or more per year in your guitar teaching business. Read more about how to make a good living as a guitar teacher in this article.
  • How To Make It In Music By Eliminating Your “Risk” - A discussion about what it takes to achieve success as a pro musician.
  • How To Gain The Power To Create Intense Musical Emotion - Have you ever wondered how your favorite musicians make such great music? The answer is this: They fully understand how musical emotion works, and how to use this to create intense emotions in YOU while you listen to them. Understanding musical expression is key to becoming a great guitar player and musician. When you control emotion in music, you will gain the power to greatly affect the listener’s experience...
  • How To Take Your Music Career To The Next Level With A Mentor - If you would like to start a career in music and quickly reach success as a professional musician, it is crucial to find a mentor who has already achieved great things in the music business. Learn how to find your own mentor by reading this article.
  • The Seven Rule Method For Finding The Right Band Members - Read this article to learn how to find serious and dedicated band members.
  • Use The Power Of Your Favorite Singer's Voice To Turbo Charge Your Lead Guitar Playing - Guitar Soloing Solutions: Learn how to write great guitar solos by using the melodies of your favorite singer.
  • How To Make Your Own Rock And Metal Guitar Riffs - Mastering the ability to play creative rhythm guitar riffs does not happen overnight. However, there are many things you can work on right now to make good progress in this area of your guitar playing. Read this article to learn how to make guitar riffs and improve your rhythm guitar skills.
  • How To Make Your Music Career Highly Profitable And Stable - You don’t need to be a big time rock star to make good money in the music business. However, in order to become financially free in your music career, you will need to take a very different approach than the one that is taken by most musicians. You will need to approach your music career as both a “musical artist” AND as an entrepreneur.
  • How To Turn 7 String Guitar Into A Powerful Tool For Musical Creativity - This article will show you how to play 7 string guitar more creatively.
  • How To Record Your Guitar Playing - In this article you will learn how to record guitar parts in the studio.
  • How To Improve Your Lead Guitar Playing - Find out how great guitar players come up with their awesome guitar solos.  This article will help you to learn the secrets to improving your lead guitar playing.
  • How To Improve Your Guitar Playing With And Without A Metronome - Do you think that using a metronome is important for improving your guitar playing? On this issue, guitar players tend to fall into two camps: some use the metronome all the time and others don't use it at all.  The truth is that neither approach is correct. This article will show you how you should use the metronome in your guitar practicing in order to make faster progress as a musician.
  • How To Develop Creativity In Your Guitar Playing - Part 1 - Read this article to learn how to become a more expressive and creative guitar player and musician. 
  • Why Guitar Teachers Find It Difficult To Get Guitar Students - Learn why most guitar teachers struggle to get guitar students and find out the most effective ways of filling up your guitar teaching schedule. 
  • How To Play Guitar Fast - Avoiding Critical Mistakes In Learning To Increase Your Guitar Speed - Learn several highly effective ways of improving your guitar speed and becoming a better guitar player. 
  • How To Clean Up Your Lead Guitar Technique - Find The Solution To Fixing Sloppy Lead Guitar Playing - In this article, you will learn how to play lead guitar cleanly by muting unwanted guitar string noise.  These are very important secrets of highly advanced electric lead guitar playing. 
  • Improve Your Lead Guitar Playing: Lesson And Video - Learn how to become a better lead guitar player and improve your lead guitar solos. 
  • How To Make The Right Contacts In The Music Industry - In this article you will learn the best ways of attracting the attention of the most powerful music industry contacts that can help you to further your professional music career as a songwriter or performer. 
  • Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Trying To Become Professional Musicians - Learn about the top 10 mistakes musicians make when trying to build a music career. 
  • The Pursuit Of A Record Deal - Do you want to turn your passion for music and songwriting into a career? Would you like to know exactly what record companies, producers, and management companies are looking for when seeking out new artists? This article will tell you.
  • How To Improve Your Guitar Technique - Part 1 - This article will help you to improve your guitar playing so that you can become a much more expressive musician and songwriter.
  • Songwriting - Part 5 - In this article you will learn about using principles of orchestration to your advantage when writing music. 
  • Songwriting - Part 4 - In this article, I will show you how to use the often overlooked element of dynamics in your songwriting that will make you a more expressive musician. 
  • How To Make A Great Guitar Solo - This article will show you how to instantly improve your guitar solos.  You will learn new creative ideas that will greatly advance your lead guitar playing.
  • Songwriting - Part 1 - Learn how and why it is important to have more than one method for writing music. If your main approach to songwriting involves improvising on the guitar, you are severely limiting your creativity. This article outlines several additional songwriting strategies that will make you a more expressive composer.
  • Songwriting - Part 2 - In Part 2 of this article series you will learn more innovative ways of using melody and chords to enhance your songwriting. 
  • Songwriting - Part 3 - In this part of the Songwriting article series, you will learn more advanced ways of applying rhythm to the process of songwriting.
  • Where To Find Highly Effective Guitar Practice Exercises - Follow this guitar practice advice to find the most effective guitar exercises for improving your guitar playing.
  • How To Play Awesome Metal Rhythm Guitar - Do you wish you knew how to play killer rhythm guitar technique? To do this, you need to stop trying to find “cool” new riffs. Instead, you need to understand how to make every single guitar riff you play sound awesome, anytime you feel like it. You need to focus on HOW you play the notes the notes themselves.

A short bio:
Tom Hess is a professional touring guitarist and recording artist.  He teaches guitar players around the world via online guitar lessons, Visit http://www.tomhess.net to get free guitar playing tips, assessments, surveys, mini courses and to reach Tom with questions about reaching your musical goals.

Back to top

Help For Newcomers
Help for Newcomers
Interactivities
Interactivities
Helpful Resources
Helpful Resources
Regular Columnists
Columnists
Music Reviews
Spotlights
Spotlights
Services
Services Offered
About the  Muse's Muse
About Muse's Muse
Subscribe to The Muse's News, free monthly newsletter for songwriters
with exclusive articles, copyright & publishing advice, music, website & book reviews, contest & market information, a chance to win prizes & more!

Join today!



Created & Maintained
by Jodi Krangle


Design:


© 1995 - 2016, The Muse's Muse Songwriting Resource. All rights reserved.

Read The Muse's Muse Privacy Statement