2. Metronome is God

The hippest harmonic shit played out of time is worthless.

The most basic stuff played with unshakable time and groove is undeniable.

The hippest stuff played with unshakable time and groove is transcendent.

Nobody gives a shit about your technique, your sound, your guitar, your look, your 6-pack abs or your awesome voice if you can’t do any of this shit over a groove and lock into it, and this is something that most guitar players are horribly lacking ability in.

And by “time” I don’t mean sort of aimlessly, kind of, like, you know, whenever you’re not paying attention to something else while practicing paying attention to time, the metronome just on in the corner of the room while you pump out your licks like you’re on a job interview for Guitar and Keyboard City.

No.

I mean practicing the ability to be inside of the music, to be an integral part of what is happening around you, to be able to play even the simplest thing with a lazer-like, knife-sharp groove that needs to no other band members to make people want to get up and move.

You should have the metronome on, eyes closed, standing up and getting inside of that pulse like you could eat it, chew it, punch it, sweat it. Feel it like it’s right there, like it’s tangible.

To do this requires that you never practice without a metronome.

For roughly 15 years I have never picked up a guitar without a metronome on (for verification of this, ask my mother and fiancée how much they hate the sound and how it plagues their lives and haunts their dreams) and now, to me, the sound of the metronome is the sound of practicing.

I love that sound. It sounds like home, like progress, like movement.

It’s the sound of a friend.

That’s where you want to be, because once you’re there, you’ll have a time feel that will crush all others around you.

And once you have this, a simple equation arrises:

Drummers and bass players get way more gigs that guitar players You have a time feel that drummers and bass players love When people ask their drummer or bass player “Know any ripping guitarists” they go “fuck yeah” and call you See the end of #5

1. Confidence

There is nothing more important than believing in what you do and have to say musically over all else.

Regardless of options, critics, insecurity and doubt, you have to believe that your shit is the shit and that the world is lucky to hear your swaggering, elephantine mastery, of which you have allowed them to witness.

This belief will push you to progress and to perform with a command that others will lack and will inform you ability to constantly develop and take risks with the experimentation necessary for artistic freedom because you will have belief and with belief you need nothing else.

So, with that said, fuck everything I just wrote.

Erase it all from your memory.

Be yourself. Fuck anyone else.

Nobody knows more about how you can be you than you do.

Find it.

Show the world.