If you are articulating the notes you want to play accurately, but you are still hearing sloppiness in your playing then this article will greatly help you to improve your guitar technique by eliminating string noise.

To effectively mute guitar strings we do not want to be heard, we need to use two totally different sets of muting techniques: One to stop unwanted noise from LOWER (in pitch) strings; and another to mute the higher (in pitch) strings.

Although there is more than one way to mute guitar strings, some methods offer advantages that others do not and are therefore (in my opinion at least) better.

Muting The Lower Strings

Many guitar players use the palm of their picking hand to mute lower strings. Although this technique is pretty good at keeping most of the lower strings quiet there are two big disadvantages with this technique.

1. Muting with your palm will cause a slight delay in the muting of a string which has just been played a moment before. This delay causes brief moments of string noise. This happens for two main reasons:

• The flesh of your palm is much softer than the side of your thumb and therefore takes more time for your palm to actually stop the string from sounding.
• It is not easy to get your palm in the perfect position to consistently and reliably mute strings that are adjacent to the one you are playing in all playing situations.

2. When you use your palm to mute noise, the natural position of your guitar pick (when not playing) is now away from the strings. This is what I call your “Natural Point Of Rest”.

When your pick is at rest up and away from the strings (in between playing each note), it causes your picking hand to work harder and significantly increases the chance for sloppy playing, string noise and slower picking speed.

A great solution to these problems (and to improve your guitar technique) is to mute with your picking hand thumb for all lower (in pitch) strings like this.

Notice that the “Natural Point Of Rest” when using thumb muting is now ON the strings (as shown in the picture above). This greatly reduces wasted motion and enables you to pick faster with much less effort.

Muting The Higher Strings

Many guitar players are totally unaware of the possibilities for muting string noise from the higher (thinner) strings and this part of their playing is often one of the causes of sloppy playing.

There are actually two main techniques for muting noise from the higher strings that I teach to my students when training them to improve their guitar technique.

The first technique involves using the underside (the fingerprint side) of the fretting hand’s index finger. This part of your finger is used to “lightly touch” the higher strings that you want to mute. The key word in the last sentence is “lightly”. You do not want to press down so hard that these notes begin to sound like regular fretted notes. Simply rest your finger on them thus preventing them from sounding.

In addition, you can also mute these higher strings by using the unused fingers of your picking hand (fingers that are not being used to hold the pick, such as middle, ring and pinkie).

This extra layer of muting ensures that there is no possibility for the strings higher than the one you are playing to ring out and add sloppy string noise into your guitar playing.

When these ideas are combined with the string muting techniques of muting the lower strings, your playing will instantly become much cleaner than before. Now, every time you play, the only guitar strings that will be making sound are the ones you are playing!

If you have been working hard to perfect your guitar technique and two-hand synchronization (as mentioned in How To Improve Your Guitar Technique – Part 1), then you already know that if your articulation/synchronization is developed well but your muting is not, the result will still be sloppy guitar playing. So, when trying to improve your guitar technique keep in mind the five areas discussed in this series of articles:

1. Focused Awareness
2. Articulation – The First Half of Two Hand Synchronization
3. The Release – The Second Half of Two Hand Synchronization
4. Muting The Higher Strings
5. Muting The Lower Strings

To get more guitar playing help check out my 15 Free Guitar Tips.

About the author:Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and teaches electric guitar lessons online.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

In a way, sometimes it is possible to restrict your own creativity by being “too advanced”. When you have many techniques, areas of knowledge and skills to choose from and are forced to make soloing decisions quickly, you may often end up making bad musical choices which distort your creativity. Fortunately, there are solutions to solving this problem.

I want to offer you several suggestions on how to make the most out of any soloing situation you may find yourself in and give you general ideas which you can apply right away.

If you want to see and hear how all of the concepts (that I am about to describe) were put into practice, you can watch a free improvising video of me playing using the concepts I will discuss below. It is available, by the way, to my free newsletter subscribes.

You probably know that it is important to think of “melody first” when starting to solo, but I am going to tell you a bit more about how you can use melodic tools to establish a “basic framework structure” in your solos that will enable you to add faster parts later without taking away from self-expression.

So let’s imagine that you are about to start soloing. What should you do or think about first? Here are my recommendations:

1. Start simple. Don’t be tempted to shred too much in the beginning of your solo! This may seem like an obvious point to some, but I want to make sure we are on the same page. Think of melody first and treat your slower melodic lines as a “skeleton” and think of any faster fills as “fleshing out” the skeleton. It may be tempting to play fast too soon (especially if you are able to play fast), but when you begin any new solo it is much better to think of melody first.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to play fast and shred in my solos, but I always make sure that there is a melody in them first, before thinking about adding faster parts. In the video I mentioned a moment ago, I do play a fast lick leading into the main solo, but the majority of the solo is very melodic and slow on purpose. Even if you choose to play faster licks, they need to “lead into something” and serve a musical purpose.

2. Practice “saying more” with only one note. When I was taking improvisation guitar lessons with my awesome guitar teacher Tom Hess, one of the things he had me practice was playing only one note, using only bends and vibrato as my phrasing tools. This one technique has done an incredible amount not only for my vibrato, but for my overall creativity and expression. In fact, sometimes I even use this technique in actual soloing situations when it is appropriate to create actual phrases with only one note (more on this later, in “Point 4″).

3. To get the most dramatic effect possible from your solos, try to create a harmonic background that has a lot of extended chords (seventh chords, add note chords etc…). For example, in the solo that I improvise in the video, I play over one of my most favorite progressions, iadd9 – VI7 – iv7 – ii half diminished add 11- V7 add 13. Because the chords in this progression are “add note” chords or seventh chords, soloing over them lends itself very nicely to melodic playing.

Record this progression yourself and you can hear what I’m talking about when you try to solo over it (or you can download a free backing track that I use here.)

4. Take advantage of common tones. This is one of my favorite things to do when soloing melodically over chords that have a lot of notes in them (such as the progression used above). For example, the chords listed above offer several possibilities for common tones. Even if you did nothing else except hold one note (that is common to all chords) with heavy vibrato or bending a short distance away from that note while the chords change, you will still get a very cool sound. In the progression above, the note “C” is a chord tone in all but one of the chords, and you can take advantage of this when soloing to create passing tones, suspensions and other effects.

5. Repeat phrasing ideas in different octaves. It is a very cool thing to do that will help you get more expression out of shorter phrases, particularly if you make subtle variations in the phrasing using vibrato and other things.

After you have an identifiable melody in place, using these ideas listed above as well as others, it is relatively easy to add more advanced things from that point such as, targeting melodic notes with a faster scale sequence, using arpeggios etc… The good news is that if you approach soloing in such a way, your “shredding” will become very appropriate and will add to your self-expression rather than take away from it.

In the guitar solo video that I mention throughout this article, I tried to incorporate all of the five main points discussed here to show you how a basic melody can be developed. This outline, of course, is not the only method of creating solos (there are many more), but it is one of my favorites.

I encourage you to give it a try and have fun with it!

About The Author:
Mike Philippov is a professional virtuoso guitarist, music composer and instructor. He is also a co-author of several instructional products, numerous articles and other free instructional resources available on http://mikephilippov.com

© 2009 Mike Philippov All Rights Reserved

Practice to become a professional musician - Continuously work on improving your musical skills, but before you think, “That’s obvious. Tell me something I don’t know,” there are important things to consider. It’s not necessarily about learning more techniques, improving your guitar speed or increasing the size of your chord vocabulary. Think about what a professional musician really needs to know and do musically. Playing your instrument well at home is one thing, but playing well consistently in the studio or on stage is completely different, thus the training and practicing required to play well in those professional environments are also very different.

Yes, you should continue to improve your overall musical skills, but if you want to get started on a music career you will need to specifically practice your ability to play well “consistently” in a variety of higher-pressure situations. Amateurs practice something to “get it right.” Professionals practice to “never get it wrong.”

So the next time you practice your guitar, instead of trying to play something “faster” or to learn something “new,” focus on playing whatever you can already play “consistently well.”

Think about a professional guitar player like Eric Clapton. He’s not a great technical guitar player at all, his knowledge of music theory is probably not vast, but one of the reasons why he became successful in his early days (and continues to be successful today) is because he can play on his own level “consistently well” every night in any environment.

In addition to the “consistency factor” just mentioned, there are other things professionals have practice that most guitar players typically don’t implement in their practicing. For example, having a really good ear is something that professional musicians rely on heavily, yet most guitar players don’t dedicate practice time to develop their aural skills.

Your Recordings - If your music skills are good and your songs are good it might be all for nothing if your recordings suck. You do not necessarily have to invest huge amounts of money to record in a great studio, nor do you have to invest huge amounts of money in a great home studio (although it is nice), but you DO need the playing on your recordings to sound TIGHT (making everything rhythmically PERFECT, appropriate dynamic playing, etc.)!

Do NOT make the mistake of thinking, oh this is only a demo, so tight playing is not that critical when making a simple demo. I assure you, IT IS! Virtually anyone in the music industry today who hears your music will immediately notice if the performance recording is not tight. And if it’s not, they won’t be interested. Why? Because your “demo” is supposed to show others both your songs and your musical abilities. The assumption will be that if your demo is not tight, then your live sound will be amateurish and putting you in the studio will cost a fortune when you have to play something five hundred times to get it right.

So if you want to build a music career, you should practice recording yourself frequently in order to make your studio playing as tight as possible.

Your Live Playing - It’s been said that successful music careers are built on the stage. While not all musicians start their music careers this way, it is true that your live playing is a critical component and can make or break your chances of developing a music career.

Record companies want bands that can sell themselves from the stage. That means when a band plays live, people listening should want to actually buy the band’s music, and all other band-related merchandise. It’s a fact that your fans will buy more during and after a great live show than after a mediocre one even if the songs played are exactly the same. The music industry (or successful bands you might like to join) look very closely at your ability to create a great live show experience for audiences.

Most musicians and amateur bands don’t truly work to improve their live performance skills. Great live playing is much more than simply playing songs while standing (and hoping not to make mistakes), yet for the majority of local musicians and bands this is all they really seem to focus on when playing live.

Where your fans live is really important - If you want to get signed to a major record label, which do you think is better?

1. To have 5,000 fans in your country (or around the world).
2. To have 5,000 fans in your local area only.

The answer is “B”. It is much easier to get 5,000 fans around the country (or the entire world) than it is to get 5,000 fans in your local area. Everyone in the music industry knows this (including record companies). If you sold 5,000 copies worldwide of your new album on your own, that is good accomplishment, but if you sold 5,000 in your local area on your own that would be a major accomplishment in the eyes of record labels.

Why does it matter? Record labels know that if you can sell 5,000 copies in one location on your own, then it makes sense that a record company could probably sell even more copies not only in your area but in many cities/countries.

By having so many fans in one area you demonstrate to the music industry that you have a lot of proven value to offer and their willingness to invest into your music career will go way up!

Although the Internet is a great tool for musicians many artists are focusing on reaching out to the whole world at once and don’t invest enough time and energy into building a valuable local foundation of fans.

Before the internet, bands typically tried to build a strong local fan base around their city. Those that succeeded in this area were most likely to build a successful music career. But since the Internet has opened up so many new possibilities, many unsigned musicians/bands have forgotten the basics which are still very relevant to getting signed to a major record company.

What’s next? - Obviously there are a lot of things you need to do to develop a music career, but this article is designed to get you started now so that you will be in a better position to do the next steps after you have implemented the concepts above. Here’s a quick summary of action steps to take now:

• In addition to improving your overall musical skills, practice to play ‘consistently well’ with the skills you already have.
• Practice recording yourself frequently in order to make your studio playing as tight as possible.
• Work on improving your live performance skills (stage presence, playing in totally different environments, etc.).
• Build your fan base locally as well as internationally (using different strategies for each).

Get fifteen additional free music career tips that will help you build your career.

About the author: Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and mentors musicians to start a career in music

© 2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

There are five main challenges that electric guitar players must overcome in order to learn and master guitar technique. These five guitar technique challenges are divided into three groups:

1. Awareness
2. Sounds you ‘want’ to hear (the notes you are attempting to play cleanly)
3. Sounds you do ‘not’ want to hear (the sloppy sounds you sometimes hear such as unwanted string noise)

Today we will take a look at the first two groups. In Part 2 of this article series we’ll focus on the last group of guitar technique challenges.

Focused Awareness – Many guitar players are not fully aware of every imperfection in their guitar technique. Some of these players do sense that ’something’ may be wrong, but are not sure about exactly what their specific guitar technique problems are. Obviously, you cannot effectively correct a technical problem until and unless you know exactly what it is.

There are two main ways you can approach this:

1. Record yourself playing a something you want to improve on. Listen back (carefully) at 25%-33% speed so that you more easily identify any unclear notes, excess string noise, scratchy noises between the notes, inconsistency in your pick attack, etc.). You may or may not be able to hear everything on your own (many people simply can’t yet) and you may or may not be able to ‘correctly’ identify the cause of each imperfection present in your guitar playing. If you can that’s great, but if you’re not sure then…
2. Work with a guitar teacher to evaluate your playing and use that feedback to begin the process of making any necessary changes to your technique. Not only will a good teacher help you to play clean by telling you ‘what to do’, but also because he will hear problems that you may not really be hearing.

IF you have an excellent ear, you should be able to identify the fine details of your problem, if not, work with your guitar teacher.

Articulation – The First Half of Two Hand Synchronization

The second step is to focus on your articulation. Articulation is the first half of two hand synchronization. To play cleaner you need your hands to fret and pick each note at precisely the same time (simultaneously).

There are three critical things you need to do to improve your articulation:

1. Use a clean guitar tone when practicing (no distortion and NO effects!). Distortion and effects will mask any imperfections in your articulation, so do not practice with them when focusing on “Articulation” (the rules will change when we talk about “The Release” in the next section).
2. Play loud enough so that you can truly hear what is happening as you are playing.
3. When you are practicing something slowly MAKE SURE that you do NOT change ANYTHING about how you approach and articulate each note. Fact is, most guitar players actually play very differently when playing slow compared to when playing fast. If you change anything in the way you are articulating the notes (such as playing with a lighter touch, using a weaker or stronger pick attack, changing your hand position, pick angle etc.) you will NOT fully improve your technique because the sound you make when playing will be different and therefore harder to detect and identify any problems with your articulation.

The Release – The Second Half of Two Hand Synchronization

The third step toward cleaner playing is ‘the release’. For most guitar players ‘the release’ is the hardest problem to detect and correct. That’s generally because once players articulate a note cleanly, they ignore what immediately comes after (small sloppy noise in between the notes or two notes slightly ‘bleeding’ together.

And practicing your guitar with a ‘clean’ tone (no distortion) – as described above when focusing on articulation – almost always masks problems in the release phase of playing a note. This is why many people think their guitar playing sounds pretty clean when practicing without distortion but sense something is wrong when later playing with distortion… but they are not sure what the problem is… or worse, they actually do not hear the problem at all (but other people do). This is why focused awareness is so critical.

I use multiple steps to help my guitar students fully solve this problem (not all of which can be fully demonstrated or expressed in an article), but here are the absolutely necessary steps toward correcting problems with ‘the release’.

1. Practice your guitar WITH distortion (but NO EFFECTS!) now. (Notice, this is the exact opposite advice I gave you to identify and correct ‘articulation’ problems above).
2. Again you need to play your guitar loud enough to hear precisely what is coming out of your amplifier (other noises in the room can mask the subtle things you need to be listening for).
3. Practice slow (but as stated above, do NOT change ANYTHING in the way you articulate OR RELEASE a note compared to when you are playing fast!).
4. Listen for any subtle noise in between notes (you will probably notice a ‘scratchy sound’ just before you play the next note). If you have a hard time hearing anything then record yourself and listen back to the recording at 1/4 or 1/3 speed (I guarantee you will hear this short scratchy sound now!)
5. Now that you know what to listen for, you will probably notice it all the time whenever you listen very carefully… and THEN you are ready to being to correct the problem…

Fact is there can be several reasons why your guitar playing may not be clean during the release of a note, but the most common cause is this: When you release a note your brain is probably telling your finger to ‘lift off’ (make an upward motion away from the string you just played). This can cause all sorts of nasty technique problems (fatigue, slower guitar playing speeds, and sloppy guitar playing… among other things).

The solution is to stop your brain from sending your fingers instructions to ‘lift off; of each note and instead to simply ‘relax’. When your finger relaxes it will naturally, immediately and effortlessly ‘release’ the note you just played. There are two main benefits to this:

1. Because the motion is effortless, you can play faster and for a much longer time (and most importantly) with greater ease.
2. Because your brain does not give the finger the instruction to make a ‘lift off’ motion this actually prevents your finger from moving (or preparing to move) prematurely (which is a major cause of the sloppy ‘scratchy sound’ that may be present in your guitar playing.

It is now very important to realize two things. First you CAN solve these problems and improve your guitar technique. Second, it won’t happen over night, this will take time and some consistent practice (possibly over several weeks or longer). But the benefits of being able to play guitar clean are well worth the patience required.

To get more help with your guitar playing check out my 15 Free Guitar Tips.

In Part 2 of this article series we’ll focus on the last group of guitar technique challenges.
About the author:Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and teaches electric guitar lessons online.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

These four problem areas typically do not occur in isolation. Typically if you have one of the four problems described below, you have the others to some degree also. The good news though is that once you work on fixing at least one of these problems, the others tend to improve as well (it works both ways). As you read on, you will understand why.

If you want me to show you on video how to correctly practice the following ideas in this article, you can watch a (totally free) 20 minute sweep picking video lesson at my website that is available to my free newsletter subscribers. Otherwise, I will do my best to explain these technical points to you using text alone.

Separating the notes

Many players struggle with separating the notes of arpeggios, because they do not release the fingers from the notes that have already played, which results in all of the notes of the arpeggio ringing together. Although this follows the theory of “minimum motion” for the fingers, it breaks the most important rule of clean sweep picking: each note must have definition and clarity! So on one hand, it is tempting to want to minimize the motion of the fretting hand fingers as much as possible, and on the other hand, you also need to make sure that the notes are sounding cleanly.

The solution is to find the balance between releasing the fingers from each note right after you have played it, but doing so without letting the fingers come up “too far” away from the strings. Obviously if your fingers move too far away from the strings, it makes it difficult to bring them back down to play when needed. That being said, you need to lift the finger off the string slightly after it has played (so that it stops ringing), and also mute that same string with your picking hand (more about this later).

Remember that economy of motion is a “relative” concept and not an “absolute” concept. So even though releasing the fingers from the notes they have played is not an “absolute” application economy of motion, it is necessary to do this in order to play the technique cleanly. This advice may seem like perfect common sense when you read about it, but MANY guitarists have a difficult time with finding the right balance between the economy of motion and playing cleanly (in this part of guitar playing technique especially, but also with other techniques).

Rolling

One of the biggest sources of confusion of the rolling technique is that it is often confused with “barring”. When you play barre chords, you fret notes of two or more strings at the same fret with the same finger and you let all the notes ring together. When you perform the rolling technique, you have to actually physically “roll” the finger across strings by bending it backwards. As a result, the notes sound separated.

This technique is best shown on video or in person, but basically you play the first note of the roll with the tip of the finger, and then bend it backwards fretting the remaining notes of the roll with the soft fingerprint. You then reverse the motion when you descend. Your first knuckle of the finger becomes the pivot point that bends or collapses allowing you the flexibility of fretting the notes cleanly. If you are unsure about how to specifically practice this motion, I can show you precisely what the finger rolling motion should look like in the free sweep picking video at my site.

The good news about the rolling technique is that although it is hard in the beginning, it is actually one of the absolute easiest things to do on guitar once you get better at it. But in order to make sure that you do master it in minimum time, make sure to follow the guidelines above.

Pull offs:

Many players neglect isolating and practicing this part of the arpeggio in the shapes that require a pull off on the top string. As a result, the weak pull off distorts the rhythm of the notes and the arpeggio doesn’t sound clean. The picked notes usually sound rushed, and come out much louder than the pull off (which is barely audible). The solution is to practice just the pull off part of the arpeggio with the amp off. You should be able to hear the pull off very clearly even with the amp turned off. If you apply more force to make the pull off loud when you practice with no distortion, then after you turn distortion on, it really becomes a lot easier to play the entire arpeggio smoothly and cleanly.

Try to match the volume of your pull offs as closely as possible to that of your picked notes. This will not be entirely possible, but by constantly striving for it you will make great improvements in your legato playing in general and in this area of sweep picking specifically.

Muting excess string noise

Conventional wisdom suggests to practice sweep picking with a clean guitar tone in order to make it easier to hear imperfections in your technique. This is true on some level, BUT practicing only with a clean tone makes it hard to hear excess string noise that can occur either from letting the notes ring together (problem 1 described above) or from not muting the strings that are not supposed to be playing.

In reality, it is even more important to practice with distortion because only then will you become aware of any excess noise that may be present and correct it. If you have limited time to practice, then definitely you should practice with distortion only. This one practicing tip (which I learned from my guitar teacher, friend and mentor Tom Hess) helped me to greatly improve my own sweep picking in a short amount of time.

When you do become aware of the sloppy extra noise, it becomes much easier to fix it and mute it (using a variety of techniques in your picking and fretting hands).

Think carefully about the points in this article and apply them to your playing. You will see great results when you do!

If you are unclear about any part of what I explained above and want to see me do it on video, visit my website and I will show you the free sweep picking lesson on video that I send to all my newsletter subscribers. You can also contact me by e-mail at mike@mikephilippov.com with any questions.

About Mike Philippov

Mike Philippov is a professional virtuoso guitarist, music composer and instructor. He is also a co-author of several instructional products, numerous articles and other free instructional resources available on http://mikephilippov.com

All these things are very common problems guitar teachers have when teaching beginners.

I’m going to show you five mistakes that most guitar teachers make when teaching beginning guitar students and how you can avoid them.

But before I go into detail about this, I strongly encourage you to test how effective you are in teaching beginning guitar students. I have prepared an assessment where you can easily find out if you are giving your students the best you can. New teachers erroneously assume that teaching guitar to beginning students is easier than teaching more advanced students… fact is, this is totally false.

Teaching beginners effectively is very critical and assumes a great deal of responsibility. Get it right and these people will learn to love to play guitar and do well in the process, get it wrong and they will often leave disillusioned and discouraged to play guitar.

Before reading further, test your effectiveness on how to teach beginning guitar.

Avoid These Common Mistakes

Mistake #1 Using linear guitar teaching methods with beginners.

The vast majority of guitar teachers teach beginning guitar students in a logical linear way. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t work well for beginners. Students progress slowly, or give up, leaving both teachers and students very frustrated. Reading this, you may think: ‘But all books for beginning guitar students are written in this way?’ You are right, they are written in a very logical linear way, and this is a huge part of the problem. The linear teaching approach makes perfect sense if you are teaching a topic that is linear such as mathematics or science, but you are teaching music – an art that requires a different method to teaching and learning. Yet the conventional way beginner books are written (and the conventional way beginning students are taught) is typically very linear. When some teachers realize that it doesn’t work, they start to not use any book at all and instead make their own attempt to teaching beginning students with their own version of the linear teaching approach. This often produces mediocre results… some teachers simply ‘accept’ those mediocre results, while others begin searching (again) for a better method of teaching beginners that will work all (or at least most) of the time. One of those better methods is the “geometric guitar teaching method”. With this approach students learn to apply and integrate a wider range of necessary musical skills from the beginning of their training.

Mistake #2 Teaching total beginning guitar students the wrong things in the first several lessons such as: music theory, finger exercises, how to read music notation. Although each of those areas are very useful for most students to know (especially music theory), it is simply not the right time to introduce those topics at this point. Why? Well, there are several reasons, but the main one is that most total beginners will become bored, quickly lose interest, and may hurt their confidence at this point. Of course there will be some students who can respond well to learning these areas from the very beginning, but many will not.

Some teachers feel they are being an irresponsible teacher if they don’t teach this stuff right away. They insist on teaching total beginners these topics, usually causing the teacher to make mistake #3, listed next. For the vast majority of total beginning guitar students, the primary teaching goal should be to build the students’ confidence by getting them to actually do some guitar playing as soon as possible – this will help you to also avoid mistake #3.

Mistake #3 Not building the critical self-confidence that all students need (especially beginners). New students of the guitar (total beginners) are totally clueless about learning to play guitar, guitar lessons, and most importantly, about ‘themselves’. Beginners don’t know if they will actually be able to ever learn to play guitar. They don’t know if they have any potential. They are wondering if they have any natural talent at all. They’re wondering if they actually need to have natural talent to play guitar. They worry that they might be too old, or too young. They worry that maybe their hands are too big, or too small. They don’t know if they will enjoy practicing or not. They worry they may not have an ‘ear for music’ or if they have any rhythm.

You must help your students to remove these self-doubts as soon as possible… but encouraging words are often not enough. You will need to use guitar teaching methods and materials which will naturally and quickly show your beginning students some very real tangible proof that they really can, will and are learning to play guitar well.

Mistake #4 Teaching beginning students using a similar (but more simple) approach to teaching intermediate and advanced students. As mentioned above, building self-confidence in the student should be the foundation with which to build your lessons upon, but after this is established and nurtured in your beginning guitar students, there are still aspects of your approach to teaching which should be different than it is for more advanced guitar players. For example, advanced students are more likely to understand, appreciate and be willing to practice a tedious exercise countless times in order to achieve something on the guitar – most beginners cannot (or will not) fully understand, appreciate these ideas nor actually be willing to practice in this way for long periods of time. Your teaching methods must match the general mindset of the type of student you are teaching. Focus on teaching ‘people’ more than teaching ‘music’… It’s all about your student.

Mistake #5 Using the trial-and-error approach to learn how to teach guitar. Fact is most guitar teachers try to learn how to teach guitar by treating their students like laboratory rats in an experiment. Of course you can learn some good things from hands-on teaching, but it’s unfair to your students to learn ‘only’ in this way. With all of the resources available for guitar teachers today, there is no excuse for teachers to gain all their teaching experience using the trial and error approach. Seek out proven training programs for guitar teachers, acquire guitar teaching resources, or at least read more articles on how to become a better guitar teacher.

When you avoid the guitar teaching mistakes mentioned above both you and your students will benefit in many ways. You will both experience a greater fulfillment during your lessons. Your students will make much faster, easier and better progress in their guitar playing. You will likely keep your students active in taking lessons from you for a longer period of time. And your reputation as a guitar teacher will only be enhanced in the process.

Since you are still reading this article, it is clear that you have a sincere interest in helping your beginning guitar students (that’s good!). If you have not already done so, test your effectiveness on how to teach beginners guitar.

About the author: Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, professional touring guitarist and recording artist. He coaches other guitar teachers on how to teach guitar.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

Fact is, one of the biggest reasons why so few people become great guitarists is not because they lack talent – their shortcoming lies in not knowing all of the things they need to do or practice in order to reach their goal. People usually have more than enough things to practice (licks, techniques, exercises, scales etc.), but they struggle most with creating an overall plan to get them the result they want.

Taking your guitar playing ability from wherever it is right now to exactly where you always dreamed it could be in the shortest amount of time can be done. Having a well-structured, yet flexible, guitar practice regimen is a key first step to do this.

I know… I know… You’ve heard this before, it seems ‘obvious’, so why talk about it again here?

Well, unfortunately, many guitarists have misconceptions about having an efficient and effective practice schedule. Others have tried it for a while but either didn’t stick with it, or had an ineffective practice plan to start with.

Have you ever believed any of the following myths?

Effective guitar practicing routines are boring; they take all the fun out of playing guitar.

I started putting myself on a practice schedule for guitar, but it was hard to stick to it.

Practice schedules are too rigid and they restrict, or put limitations on, my creativity.

A guitar practice regimen is too structured for me, I want the freedom to allow myself to drift into random things when playing guitar.

Practice routines for guitar just don’t work. I can make more progress without one.

I can’t stand to practice the same things in the same way each day.

Now think about this:

The truth is, ‘bad’ practice routines are awful! However, efficient, effective and flexible ones have the power to totally transform your guitar playing, musicianship and your creativity in a shorter period of time. Imagine how much better your guitar playing life will be like after you fully reached all of your musical goals!

Good practice regimens won’t hurt your creativity. The opposite is true because you are gaining the tools to become more creative. And your schedule can include ‘creative time’ to work on writing new songs, improvising, etc.

It’s not boring to practice that which directly relates to the very things you want to achieve as a guitar player and musician. Yes, practicing the same exercise for thirty minutes is boring, which is why you shouldn’t design a guitar practice schedule in such a way. We want to create a structure that works, not one that will drive you crazy.

You do not need to spend all your guitar practice time with a fixed schedule. If you have ninety minutes to practice, invest forty-five to sixty minutes working from your planned guitar practicing regimen. Use the rest of time to freely do whatever you feel like playing that day.

The best routines are not the same each day. A good guitar practice workout schedule should be effective, efficient and flexible.

A practice schedule is a roadmap to the freedom of being able to play whatever you want! But this doesn’t mean that you don’t have any room to have fun, be creative, and enjoy playing guitar in the process. The only difference is that now you will be enjoying the process more while you get better, and avoid mindlessly playing around on the guitar with no direction or sense of purpose. As a result, it will take you much less time to become the exact kind of excellent guitar player you want to be.

The best way to think about an efficient practice schedule is with an analogy of a map. When you prepare to travel somewhere, you first analyze where you are (Point A), and then prepare the most direct and time efficient route of arriving to your destination (Point B).

Eight Steps to Creating Your Own Guitar Practice Routine

Step 1. Get very clear on what your LONG TERM guitar playing / musical goals are. Beware of distractions – there is a big difference between ’short term goals’ and ‘distractions’. True short-term goals should be consistent with your long-term goals. If they aren’t, then you might be simply distracting yourself from what you really want to achieve as a guitar player and musician. When creating your practice routine, focus mainly on long-term goals.

Step 2. Balance your existing strengths and RELEVANT weaknesses. Seek to turn your strengths into super strengths and ‘only’ work on weaknesses that are truly ‘relevant’ to your goals (see Step 4 below).

Step 3. Be realistic about how much time you can practice each day. As mentioned above, you can and should allow ‘free time’ in your schedule to learn, practice, or do other things with your guitar outside of your written guitar practice regimen.

Step 4. You must be 100% sure you really know all the musical elements which are needed to reach your long term goals, AND you need to be clear about which of these elements are the ‘primary’ and ’secondary’ priorities for you to focus on right now in order to reach your specific goals. To get help, I have created a totally free resource for you to use http://tomhess.net/goalsmanifestation.aspx

Step 5. Contrary to popular belief, creativity CAN be taught, learned and practiced. Always include creativity development into your practice schedule (or work on it at least in your free time).

Step 6. Application is key! Be sure to add time each day to work on applying your skills even if you have not mastered them yet! It’s a big mistake to work only on mastering something before seeking to apply it.

Step 7. Don’t create the same schedule for each day of the week, your schedule should be based on larger period of time (I use an eight-day practice and learning schedule for my students – works much better compared to a routine that repeats itself each day). Maybe two or three of the days are the same, but the other days are a little different (yet still based on the above steps mentioned).

Step 8. Create three to five different eight-day practice regimens. Use each one twice (sixteen days) before working with the next one. Be sure that when you create them that each are based on the first seven steps above.

What’s Next?

1. Get committed!
2. Stay committed! Follow through with your plan and watch your guitar playing get better and easier. If you find it hard to stay committed, focus on the ‘reasons’ behind the goals you have set for yourself, in other words, keep in mind “why” you want to reach those goals. How you will feel after you achieve them and are able to be/do/have what you want as a musician.

Most aspiring musicians receive a lot of advice from friends and family about the best approach to take with building their music career. Among the many things suggested, is the idea of having a backup plan. Many people give advice about “the need to have something to fall back on in case the music career doesn’t work out” or “a Plan B”. Typically, musicians are encouraged to go to school and get a degree in something they can easily find a job in, and do music on the side, in their “free time”.

If/when you reach the point where your music career begins to develop, you are probably advised to work less in your day job and focus more on the music until you can leave the day job and make the music career work for you. This advice sounds good in theory, but in reality fails to work as intended in almost every case. Why? Usually the job that most musicians get to support themselves until their music career kicks off, has nothing to do with music in general, or their music career specifically. As a result, most end up in a very frustrating situation that makes it virtually impossible to achieve any kind of lasting success as a professional musician.

Four Reasons why this kind of “backup plan” is usually doomed to fail

Before I go into detail about some reasons why this kind of “backup plan” is usually not working as intended, I want you to test yourself and the effectiveness of your strategy to become a professional musician. It will really help you to take this test BEFORE reading the rest of the article, so that you are not biased in your answers.

Do you think that your “backup plan” will work and will lead you to a rewarding and stable long- term music career? Take this survey to find out before reading further.

Reason #1: Not having an effective exit strategy

The idea of slowly phasing out your day job while building your music career is good, but in order to work, it needs to be done in the right way. Most musicians have nothing planned or prepared that will allow them to gradually decrease the time spent at their day job and focus more on music. When choosing a “backup plan”, musicians typically find a job that is the most “safe and secure” and the one that pays the most money. However, most people fail to plan the “exit strategy” and think ahead to the time when their music career situation will allow you to focus less of your time on the day job. When they finally reach that point, they realize that they are trapped in their day job and are unable to “gradually” phase it out. They are faced with the choice of either quitting the job entirely, or sticking to it until retirement (more on this shortly).

The best exit plan is to have a job that will allow you to gradually decrease the number of hours you spend on it: from 40 hours per week to 30, from 30 hours to 20, from 20 to 10, until eventually you can quit the job altogether! So you must take care to select an occupation that allows a lot of flexibility in work schedule. That means you need to be careful to select an occupation that allows a lot of flexibility in work schedule. This way, when the time is right, you can make a “gradual” transition into a full time music career. Unfortunately, most traditional occupations (such as being an accountant, computer programmer, office manager etc…) do not allow this flexibility. Remember, your boss at work will not all of a sudden allow you to “work three or four days per week instead of five”, simply because you want to work on your new CD an extra few days per week. It is possible to begin by working in a non-music related job at first, BUT do not select “any” job offer without considering the exit strategy first.

An ideal job for an aspiring professional musician is teaching guitar. Not only can you make very good money doing it, but you are in complete control over how many hours you choose to work. Not everyone may desire to teach full time for the rest of their life (and this is fine). But as long as you are going to be working anyway, why not do something that is already related to what you enjoy, help students reach their goals faster and make money in the process? In addition, teaching is already a “music related” activity that is probably much more fun to do than sitting in an office!

Another possibility is to work as an independent contractor in sales or marketing or doing consulting work for hire. Always check about the flexibility of work schedule before accepting a job offer. Remember that in most industries, the 40-60 hour work week is the norm, with little or no possibility for part time employment. This makes it impossible to make a smooth transition to a full time music career.

Reason #2: There is too much risk involved

Slowly phasing out your day job seems to be a very ‘safe and secure’ approach, but it can actually backfire and “trap” you by its sense of security. If you are making $60,000 per year at your day job, and have managed (through working nights and weekends) to build up your music related income to $25,000 per year, then, all together, you have a total income of $85,000 for the year. Here is where the reality catches up to you. Should you decide to go full time into music, you will invariably need to quit your day job completely at some point. Until you can recover and build your music career to higher and higher levels, you will be making $60,000 less per year than before! This kind of risk is uncomfortable to think about for most people (especially those who get married, have kids and/or have significant expenses), and keeps them trapped at their day jobs their whole lives.

Reason #3: You are often not able to take advantage of opportunities.

What if you put extraordinary effort on nights and weekends into recording a great sounding CD with your band, spend a lot of time promoting it in hopes of getting signed by a record company and go on tour, and then you really get the opportunity to do a 10 week tour in another country in the world. It is VERY probable that you would NOT get paid a lot of money while on a first tour, but as a whole, this kind of tour is exactly the kind of breakthrough you have been searching for. What are you going to do? Are you going to turn down a huge opportunity to advance your music career? Or are you going to agree to take a huge cut in pay by quitting your day job to do the tour? I think you can agree that neither of these options sounds entirely appealing. Wouldn’t it be great to do the tour and not worry about how you are going to feed yourself (and your family) while you are gone?

Reason #4: There is not much quality time and energy to get anything done.

This may seem like a more subtle issue, but it is actually very important. If your most productive hours in the day are spent on the least productive activities, then reaching your goals will take MUCH longer than it needs to. Think about it: if you wake up at 6:00, get to work by 8:00 or 9:00 and spend eight to ten hours there, and another one to two hours commuting back home, by the time you are ready to begin working on your music career, you are already tired! This is also not taking into account the time taken up by other things in life that you have to tend to. It will take a truly extraordinary effort to get anything worthwhile accomplished during the time on nights and weekends, to build multiple streams of music related income that will enable you to quit your non-music related job without putting yourself and your family in financial struggle.

Now that you see why this kind of backup plan isn’t as good as it seems to be, you may ask yourself what you should do instead.

What is the solution?

Well, having no backup plan is definitely NOT the solution. In order to build a successful music career, you need to be prepared and you cannot simply hope that “things will work out”. The underlying problem with the conventional backup plan I described is that it originates from thinking about how not “to lose”. This type of thinking lacks real ambition and it forces you to stick to that which is the most familiar and so called “safe and secure”. As a result, you typically end up with what you wish for: a familiar, average, safe and secure life. However, this attitude rarely leads to significant achievements, breakthroughs and victories in the music industry.

What the most successful musicians do is arrange their backup plan or Plan B around their MUSIC CAREER GOALS (Plan A). This requires real ambition and courage, and it is based on thinking about how “to win”. This also requires you to think how you can integrate Plan B with your present and future life as a professional musician.

There are many possibilities for truly effective “back up” (which are more like “support”) plans. In many cases, they involve designing systems and multiple income streams coming from music business sources that will support them continuously.

It’s important to put a lot of thought into which kinds of “backup plans” and approaches are best suited to your specific goals. To find the right plan for you, there are two important things you need to do:

First, study how the music business works. This is key! Understanding it will greatly help you with designing the most effective strategy for reaching your goals in the fastest period of time. Building a successful, long term career takes a lot of focused effort and dedication. The more you understand about the music business, the easier it will be to design the kind of backup plan that will help you reach your goals instead of restricting and trapping you.

Second, be careful about taking advice from people who may have great intentions, but lack knowledge and experience about how the music industry works. Very often, our friends and family, with the very best intentions at heart, attempt to give us advice on what to do to “make it”. However, if you pay attention, you will notice that this advice has a common theme, which is “here is what you must do in order not to lose”. Very rarely do you get advice about how “to win”! This mentality (as described above) keeps you away from taking steps that will propel your dreams forward.

To make matters worse, although your friends and family may have the best intentions in their heart, most of the time, they simply aren’t qualified to give advice about the music business. It will be similar to you asking your brother who is a plumber (for example) about how to cure a disease, or asking your uncle who is a carpenter (for example) about how to solve a legal problem. It doesn’t matter that these people have your best interest at heart. If they don’t know what they are talking about (in a particular subject), they are not likely to give helpful advice.

If you truly want advice that works and if you want to learn the strategies of how to reach all of your music career goals, you need to find a mentor who you can rely on for effective advice. This means learning from someone who has already done what you want to do, and ideally someone who has trained many others to do the same.

The most effective, predictable and safe strategies to “phasing in” your music career

Now that you know about the problems with the conventional approaches to backup plans, I will show you the characteristics of a good backup plan (Plan B).

1. Flexibility

Your plan must be flexible. This can mean many things. One of them is having the ability to “gradually” decrease the amount of time you spend working on Plan B and increase the time you invest into Plan A! This can also mean the ability to integrate (leverage) the skills acquired (or the results earned) from Plan B into Plan A.

2. Passivity

Your plan should be mostly passive: it will really help if your Plan B mostly consists of passive income streams that you have created by only investing the work once! It should be pretty obvious to see how this will free up a lot of time to dedicate to your Plan A (your music career)!

3. Diversity

The plan should be diversified: do not become so dependent on only one stream of income! Many people argue that a music career is not secure, when nothing could be further from the truth. Which do you think is more likely, that a company lays off an employee in the blink of an eye (cutting off his one and only source of income, the paycheck), or that a music teacher with forty students (who essentially has at least forty “diversified” income streams) will suddenly lose all of his clients overnight?

By making your Plan B options diversified, you also build your own financial security, without depending on anyone else. I don’t know about you, but I feel much safer knowing that I am in control of my own future, rather than putting my faith into someone else’s idea of security.

4. Congruency and Relevance

This means that Plan B needs to make your primary goal (music career) MORE likely to occur! This also means (ideally), that the time you invest into developing skills and experience in Plan B can be easily used to enhance Plan A. For example, if you are known as an excellent guitar teacher, you can easily integrate teaching clinics and workshops with performances of your music, selling your future music CDs, other merchandise etc…etc…

I hope that you can see now how this strategy is vastly different (and superior) to the conventional wisdom of getting a day job, and then doing your best on evenings and weekends to launch a music career from scratch.

As you design your own path to a successful music career, compare the steps you are taking against the criteria above and modify your strategy if necessary. This will help save you from the frustration felt by most of the ‘wannabe’ musicians, who realize (much too late) that their strategy leaves them no way to manifest their dreams.

If you have missed the survey mentioned at the beginning of this article, check it out here.

© 2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

Most guitar teachers struggle with at least some of the areas mentioned above. Many years ago, I was no different. I used to have a difficult time balancing the challenges of trying to help more students, become a more effective guitar teacher, grow my teaching income, and have time left at the end of the day. When I began teaching guitar, I had only a few students and struggled to support myself on teaching income only. My biggest challenges were getting consistent results with different types of students, having reliable systems in place for attracting more students and keeping my existing students from quitting before reaching their musical goals. I also couldn’t see an effective way to increase my income other than increasing the number of hours I taught or raising my lesson rates to very high levels.

Unfortunately, I could not find much help from anyone on how to change my situation. Although there were some very good musicians teaching guitar in my area, very few had anything that I considered to be a thriving guitar teaching business, meaning one that ensures effective, powerful and consistent results for students as well as financial success for the guitar teacher.

It became clear to me that following the conventional approaches to teaching guitar was not going to bring me the results I was after, neither for myself nor for my students. It took a long time of studying successful business people (outside of music), and a lot of trial and error, before I finally began to understand why my earlier attempts to become successful teaching guitar were so ineffective. Eventually I realized what I needed to change in my approach before I would be ready to start a highly successful guitar teaching business.

In this article, I will share with you nine of the biggest mistakes I used to make as a guitar teacher and that I notice many guitar teachers make. By correcting these mistakes, I was able to completely transform my guitar teaching in very powerful ways. This article is focused specifically on how to improve the business side of your guitar teaching, the ‘teaching side’ of your teaching business will be discussed in a future article.

Before reading further, it will be useful for you to assess your current level of readiness to become a highly successful guitar instructor. Take this five minute guitar teaching test before reading further. It will help you discover if you are making one or more of the top nine mistakes guitar teachersusually make.

1. Having limited teaching models.

The vast majority of guitar teachers only engage in one form of teaching: one-on-one lessons. While this approach certainly has its place, it is not the only guitar teaching method that could be or should be used to maximize the benefit to both your students and yourself. Contrary to conventional wisdom, students do not “always” learn most effectively in a one-on-one lesson format. Unfortunately, very few teachers ever venture outside of this traditional method. Many teachers simply aren’t aware of the benefits that other teaching formats have, or they follow what other guitar teachers do. There are many cases where a group class could be a more appropriate model, or at least be a useful addition to private lessons. The wide range of group teaching formats (when designed and taught in the right way)allows your students to interact and learn from one another. This is obviously not possible in private lessons. Also, group classes are usually more focused on one specific topic, allowing students to master it in less time. Finally, including group formats into your teaching can make your teaching business much more lucrative, less time-demanding and add more value to your students (plus it becomes more affordable for them!)

2. Not achieving meaningful results with students.

When it comes down to it, the only thing that really matters is the results that your students get from you. If you are able to consistently turn out good or great guitar players, then your positive reputation will begin to spread and referrals will come to you. So if your business is not growing at the rate you would like it to, one of the questions you should ask is: “How effective am I in getting powerful results with my students?” If your students are not happy with the results they receive, then you need to take a closer look at your teaching methods and ask yourself: How can I teach more effectively? How can I add more value to my students? Do the lesson formats I use produce effective results? Do I inspire my students or do I simply give them “information” about guitar playing? How can I lead my students through a literal life transforming experience as their guitar teacher, trainer, coach and mentor? One great way to improve as a teacher is to find the most successful guitar teacher you can, and take lessons with him or her on how to TEACH. Remember that the more you are able to fulfill and transform people’s musical lives in genuinely empowering ways, the faster your teaching business will grow.

I explain more about the topic of getting powerful and consistent results with students in my free 7 day e-mail mini course about teaching guitar.

3. Working too much “in” your guitar teaching business and not enough “on” it.

It is very common for music teachers (and business owners) to get so caught up in doing the daily work of “teaching” that little action is taken to actively expand and grow the business further. As a result, a business owner doesn’t really own a business; he/she only owns a “job”. Of course your teaching may expand on its own to some extent, but it will grow MUCH faster if you invest some time each week into doing things that will speed up this process. Focusing on promotion, analyzing and improving your teaching effectiveness and business models, creating referral programs, joint ventures and partnerships all create opportunities for you to maximize the value you add to your students and expand your business! Schedule some time each week to plan the direction you want your business to take in the next three, six, and twelve months. By being proactive in this way, you will see many positive results.

4. Not knowing how to distinguish yourself from the competition.

The best way to distinguish yourself from your competitors is to not have any. Read the last sentence several times and think about what it means! How can this apply to your situation as a guitar teacher? There are probably dozens (or hundreds) of guitar teachers in your local area, so it may seem impossible to “not have competitors”….or is it? One effective way to make all competition “irrelevant” is to offer something that no other music teacher in your area does. Having several teaching models in addition to the standard one-on-one lessons is one such possibility, but there are MANY others.

The options range from changing the way you conduct lessons to thinking of innovative ways for overcoming objections of prospective students that will make them want to choose you over the competition every time.

Here is another common competition problem and something you can do about it:

Very often you may only be able to attract students who live close to your teaching studio. When a prospective student lives further away, that distance creates a barrier of inconvenience and the student is more inclined to find a guitar instructor who is closer. Most teachers would simply give up and allow the person to study with someone else. But have you ever thought about what that inconvenience really means? Most of the time, the “distance” isn’t the problem. The problem (the objection) is the “time” that the student feels is wasted each week as they travel to and from your guitar lessons. They may love your lessons but hate wasting an hour to travel to you. Have you ever thought about what that means for you and how understanding this difference can be of great benefit to both you and your prospective students? There are several things you could do to turn this situation into a positive one. The question on your mind should be, “How can every minute they invest into traveling to me be reinvested into something useful for them?” Asking this question will likely inspire you to create some powerful resources to offer to your prospective students that they can study while commuting to and from your lessons! This is one of many examples of how you can differentiate yourself from the competition. The more you set yourself apart, the easier it will be to grow your teaching business.

5. Not understanding how to achieve geometric growth rather than linear growth.

Most music teachers only know how to grow their business linearly. They take one action in one area, and achieve some result. Then they repeat that same action and receive more results. Of course there is nothing wrong about this, but such an approach limits the amount of total growth you can achieve and the number of people you can help. Here is an example.

Most guitar teachers have only one or two ways of acquiring new students. Perhaps the most common method is advertising locally (posting flyers or placing ads in newspapers). So to recruit more new guitar students, most teachers either increase the number of ads they release, or change the ads to make them more effective. Let’s assume that last year you were able to recruit twenty new students. To increase this number, you publish more ads than before. As a result, this year you recruit twenty-five new students. Certainly this is good progress (a growth of five students or 25% per year), but you have only achieved linear growth. What if, in addition to advertisements you also focused on keeping your existing students longer, establishing joint ventures with music stores, and focused on converting a higher percentage of prospects into students? Most music teachers are completely unaware of how these elements can contribute to their guitar teaching business, and miss huge opportunities for MASSIVE growth!

If each of these elements provided you with 25% more students, your growth would now become geometric! The growth in each of these elements would compound on top of the others. Instead of expanding by only 25%, you can now grow by 144%! If your current state of business is at level 1, and you expand it by 25% (multiply by a factor 1.25) from 4 different business elements, your total growth is about 144%! (1 x 1.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 = 2.44 or 144% increase!!!). This means that your student count can go from 20 to 48 instead of 20 to 25 in one year!

6. Not being able to think of unconventional ways of attracting more prospective students.

Even if all you do is post flyers in your area and take out ads in newspapers, what have you done to maximize the results you get from these efforts? If you simply try to copy what everyone around you is doing to attract students, you will get the same results as everyone else. But if you want to grow your business and help more people than the average guitar teacher, then you will need to use approaches that are better than average. Taking some marketing classes will help you to greatly increase the response rate to standard ads. But in addition to the obvious, it is often the most unconventional methods that bring the best results. Have you thought about partnering up with a music store around your area to refer students/customers to each other? This idea can result in much more business for both parties, and it costs nothing to set up! I have a guitar student right now (who is a professional guitar teacher) who does this in his area and almost all of his fifty-seven students came from this single idea!

7. Not having effective systems in place for converting prospects into becoming students.

Students will be so much more likely to take lessons from you when you can prove to them beyond any doubt that their life will be enhanced by having you as a teacher. One of the best ways to do this is to show the results you have achieved by helping other people. No matter what you promise “in words”, there must be clear proof to back up your claims. When it comes to conversion, there is little else as effective as solid proof of your success with other students. Some guitar teachers make the mistake of acting like salespeople, trying to “sell” the lessons to students. What you need to do instead is to make the prospect see on their own that you are the most logical and most viable solution to their musical problems. Nobody likes to be “sold” to, so you should let your massive evidence of success with students speak for itself. You must also find out as much as you can about your prospective student’s specific goals, musical challenges, and current playing level. After you know this, it will be easier to prove to the person that you can give them the help that they need. Most importantly, you MUST back up every claim you make. If a prospective new student asks to study with you, but you are not comfortable teaching in his/her style, skill level, or musical ambitions, then do NOT teach that student. The fastest way to destroy a business is to fail to deliver what you promise!

8. Not knowing how to keep students for a long time (years!)

Your students will continue studying with you as long as you continue to find unique ways to add value and enrich their musical lives. When you do this, it is possible to keep students for five, six, eight, ten or more years! One effective way to ensure that students remain with you longer is to have something to offer that will allow them to continuously advance as musicians. This becomes easy to do if in addition to private lessons you teach several group classes that go in depth on very specific topics. This will allow your students to learn more from you in a new setting while also learning from your other advancing guitar students. Think about the students you have now. You know them well (or at least you should). Ask yourself, in what ways might you be able to provide additional benefits and value to each person you work with? To be clear, I am not implying that you should create an environment of “dependency”. Certainly our goal as guitar teachers is to make our students grow so that they may become totally independent and not “need” us forever, but that does not mean you should not constantly look to add huge amounts of value to them for years to come! They should WANT to remain your student for a long time because of the benefit you provide them (not because you are holding them back). Although this might seem like simple common sense, the truth is the VAST majority of music teachers in general, and guitar teachers in particular, don’t do a very good job in this area, and that is why so many teachers and students struggle unnecessarily.

9. Not knowing how to motivate existing students to refer new students to you.

Growing your student base through referrals is a very powerful method of expanding your guitar teaching business. However, in order to encourage referrals, you need to have incentives strong enough to make your existing students to WANT to refer their friends to you. One of the strongest incentives is to consistently turn your students into great players and help them reach their musical goals. In most cases, the more satisfied your students are, the more referrals you will get.

Another possibility is to offer bonus lessons or bonus instructional items that your students can ONLY obtain when they refer their friends to you. There are many more possibilities, but these are just two to get you started thinking. Don’t simply rely on word of mouth to work for you! An effective, organized and systematic referral system will bring you exponentially more students!

It should now be more obvious why guitar teachers struggle with teaching more effectively and earning more money in the process. I hope that by reading this article you have seen that this situation does not have to be this way! Although the list above is not all inclusive, if you take action on each of the nine points discussed here, you will surely see your level of success and effectiveness as a guitar teacher begin to grow more rapidly. If you haven’t taken the test mentioned earlier in this article, I encourage you to do so now to find out how prepared you are to establish a highly successful guitar teaching business. Test yourself here.

Also, I highly recommend checking out the free 7 day e-mail mini course about how to become a truly exceptional guitar teacher.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All Rights Reserved

Can you relate to that? I sure can! I just described myself fifteen years ago.

There are specific reasons why guitar players go through such frustration and disappointment. Here are eleven key mistakes players make and repeat over and over again that you should definitely avoid.

1. Teaching Yourself.

Many people attempt to teach themselves. Yes, it’s true that some well known players were ‘somewhat’ self taught, but I do not suggest following that strategy even if your favorite player was self taught. If you are 100% sure that you can build powerfully effective learning and training systems on your own, that’s great. However, if you are like most of us, doing it alone is the hardest, most time-consuming, stressful, and frustrating way to learn anything. This is a mistake that you should avoid. Some guitar players think it will impress others if they say, “I am a self taught player”. That statement might impress a few inexperienced people, but being self taught is not a ‘badge of honor’. Would you rather impress others with your playing or with an unimportant statement about your playing? I’m not criticizing self taught guitar players, I’m only saying that there is no advantage to being self taught… and no, it is not true that being ’self taught’ makes us more ‘original’. In fact, the opposite is usually true.

2. Taking Lessons from Ineffective Guitar Teachers.

Unfortunately, most electric guitar teachers receive ZERO training on how to teach guitar. What is worse is that the vast majority of teachers do little or nothing to improve their guitar teaching skills. Want some proof? Use google’s keyword tool . Type in this keyword phrase: ‘improve guitar teaching skills’, ‘guitar teaching skills’, or ‘guitar teaching training’ and you will find that less than 10 searches per month are done for these topics at google! Of course there are some highly effective teachers around, but there are a whole lot more ineffective teachers. Here is a free resource on how to tell the difference between the good teachers and the mediocre ones, Free Guide: How To Choose A Guitar Teacher.

3. Seeking New Guitar Information (tricks, tips, tab) Without A Proven Strategy To Reach Your Specific Musical Goals.

We need information, advice, help and music to play, but without a proven strategic learning and training process that is specific to you, your skill level, your musical style and what you want to be able to do as a guitar player, information won’t get you where you want to go. It is better to first seek help in developing a customized strategy for you to become a better guitar player. After that strategy is in place then it is time to deal with learning the right information.

4. Not Knowing Specifically What You Want To Be Able To Play.

Most guitar players are not specific enough when they think about (or tell others about) what they want to be able to do with their guitar. To say, “I want to play whatever I wish to play” is too vague. How can you (or your guitar teacher) develop a specific and effective guitar training strategy unless the goals you have are specific? It’s like saying you want to be a great athlete, how can you effectively train with such a vague goal? Sure there are things you can do to become faster, stronger, more flexible or whatever, but it’s much easier if you first get specific such as, I want to train to be a gymnast, or a long distance runner, or a body builder. Yes you can still improve without a strategy, but it will take a lot longer and be much more frustrating. You can always change your goal later if you discover you want to do something else instead.

5. Not Enough Focus on Things That Matter Most To Making You a Better Guitar Player.

Have you fallen into the trap of practicing guitar without focusing on the specific things that can quickly begin to improve your guitar playing? Many people really do not understand and apply this concept in enough detail…. for example, I have a student named Mark who used to take lessons from another teacher. Mark was studying sweep picking arpeggios with his previous teacher, and was making some progress. However Mark did not understand what ‘specific’ things he needed to focus on first before attempting to master the sweep picking arpeggios he was practicing. This was holding him back and making him feel very frustrated. Mark’s previous teacher only knew how to ‘teach’ arpeggios and general sweep picking concepts. He did not really know how to “train” Mark with the specific things to focus on and how to overcome the challenges Mark was having. If you would like to see a small sample of this, check out this short sweep picking video guitar lesson.

6. Too Much Focus on Things That Are Not Core to Your Goals.

In addition to not focusing on specific things, many guitar players focus on the ‘wrong things’. Some enthusiastic guitar players become temporarily obsessed with things which are distractions from other things that could be helping their playing much more. Here is an example: I used to get so frustrated and angry when I could not play something perfectly, I’d lock myself in my practice room and say, “I’m not coming out of this room until I master this damn lick if it takes me the next nineteen hours! No breaks! No food! No human contact! I’m gonna nail this!” And I did master it. On the surface, it might seem like I was on the right track and practicing in a good way…. But in reality, I was spending my time only to stop being angry and frustrated. I was not investing my practice time wisely by focusing on the things that mattered most to making a better guitar player. In other words, my perseverance was commendable, but my strategy to master important long-term goals was weak. I allowed myself to be distracted. I don’t make this same mistake anymore, and I urge you to also avoid it! Focus on the things that really matter for your guitar playing right now. If you are not sure how to do this, seek out a proven guitar teacher today.

7. Focusing On the Right Things, But in the Wrong Order.

This is a common mistake that even many advanced guitar players make which causes a lot of wasted time and frustration. Imagine you want to improve your ability to create your own cool guitar solos. Let’s assume that you are advanced enough to truly understand all the primary and secondary elements of composing guitar solos (or you have a guitar teacher to help you). Each of the many elements needs to be learned and/or practiced in order to easily create awesome solos that you like. Where should you begin? What should you focus on first, second, third? Which of these things should you practice simultaneously? There is always a specific order in which musical skills should be learned and mastered in order to EXPLODE your musical skills. Unfortunately, that order is totally different for every person, style of music, musical goal, skill set and knowledge, so giving an example here would be pointless. My advice, find the best teacher you can and study with him/her in order to be able to do what you want to do with your guitar much faster and easier.

8. Not Isolating Problem Areas.

Few guitar players are aware of the small things that hold them back in big ways. Because these little imperfections seem insignificant to us, we often ignore them. The truth is, small hinges open big doors. In the video mentioned above I explained how allowing your pick to lose its momentum when you are ‘not picking’ a note on the guitar makes your playing slow and sloppy…. which will make you feel very frustrated. This is why I was sure to make a special point to help you avoid that mistake. Check out the small sample sweep picking video guitar lesson for more details.

9. Learning and Practicing Guitar In A Step By Step Linear Process.

Does following a linear step by step approach to learning, practicing and mastering guitar seem like common sense good to you? Yes it does… And that is why guitar players who follow such a path are NOT great guitar players. I’m going to let you in an insider’s secret… The truth is, following a linear approach to learning, practicing, and mastering is the NUMBER ONE REASON WHY “GOOD GUITAR PLAYERS” STRUGGLE TO BECOME “GREAT GUITAR PLAYERS”… I originally thought I would write an article on this one point alone, but I think you will learn this concept better from another short video I recorded while I was doing a recent guitar instructional clinic tour a few months ago. Check out this free sample from my “How to Master The Guitar” clinic.

10. Practicing Guitar in the Same Way Your Favorite Guitar Players Practice.

Have you ever read about how your favorite guitar players practice and then tried to repeat the same practice routine? Yes, I’ve made this mistake too! It seems natural to use a similar guitar practice schedule that our favorite players are using. This is a mistake, because your current guitar skill level and knowledge of music is probably very different from your favorite player. His/her challenges and needs are likely not the same as yours.

Professional guitar players practice for different reasons than most amateur players do. For example, before recording a new album I will practice very differently compared to the period before going on tour. Once I’m actually on tour my practice routine changes drastically again. The rest of the year my practicing schedule changes yet again. This happens because in each case my challenges and goals are totally different. When my guitar students ask me, “Tom, how do you practice guitar?” I’m careful not to let my students assume that they should practice the same way that I do. Your practice schedule and strategy needs to be built around YOU and you only! If you need help building your own practice schedule, email me directly.

11. Learning From Too Many Different Sources of Information.

There will always be many learning opportunities and various paths to take, but it is critical that you do not get distracted into following a piece of advice from one person, then another piece of advice from another person and then follow more resources from somewhere else and so on and so on… while different people may have some good ideas to offer, the fact is, distraction is a big reason why many guitar players who are actively learning, don’t really move forward quickly… these people are always busy following totally different resources, teachers, philosophies, instructional videos, free online guitar lessons, but all of this leads them to take one step forward, then two steps to the right, then one step forward, then three steps to the left, then one step backward, then two to the right, then one step forward and then another step to the left…

An illustration of this is shown below. The first path is obviously the most direct way to arrive to your goals. The second path is the inefficient approach filled with many distractions that come from various pieces of advice from many sources:

Once you have an effective strategy to become the guitar player you want to be, ALWAYS stay focused on it (unless your goals radically change)!! The very best way to do this is to have ONE primary guitar teacher who helps you to become the musician you really want to be.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take advice from other people too, but you should have one ‘primary’ source of information, training and coaching, and see the other advice as an additional resource, but do not become distracted by it.

Download this free guide How To Choose A Guitar Teacher to find a guitar teacher with proven teaching strategies, proven training strategies and proven results so that you become the awesome guitar player you want to be and play the guitar the way you’ve always wanted to play.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All Rights Reserved

If I gave you my complete list of music industry connections (key people I have established important relationships with), do you think it would help you develop a successful music career? … NO! Why? Because a mere ‘contact’ is not worth anything. Contacts need to become meaningful connections. Meaningful connections are developed by building good relationships… More on this later…

However, even if you have good relationships with the right people, this won’t help you until and unless you work on having the right things in place which enables your contacts to feel confident enough to work with you. You can see more about this specific topic in a free video on how to become a professional musician.

So, who are the people you should be contacting? … And when you get through to someone, what do you say to him/her? How can you make these important people pay attention to you if you don’t yet have a ‘name’ in the music business?

Let’s explore the first question, “Who are the people you should be contacting?” To answer this, you need to ask a series of other questions such as:

• Who are some music industry people who have great influence and power?
• Who are the music industry people who have the greatest number of key relationships with other music industry professionals and companies?
• Among the most important music industry people, who are the easiest to locate in your local area?
• Who are the most accessible music industry people?
• Who are the music industry people who you can help to solve THEIR problems and/or help them to reach their goals?

Is there a single “type” of music industry person or (company) who fits ALL the above criteria? The answer is ‘Yes’. And if you do not have music industry connections, this ‘type of contact’ may be your best place to begin… So, who is this type of person or company? Record company executives? A&R people? Producers? Publishers? Managers? Entertainment Lawyers? Famous bands? No. The answer is “Concert Promoters”.

Serious concert promoters have massive power and influence in the music industry. They are the real entrepreneurs of the music business. They deal with thousands of very important music industry people every year, such as well known bands, record labels, artist management, tour managers, entertainment lawyers, production companies, merchandising departments, the venues, booking agents, radio stations, the press, etc., etc.

If you live near an urban area, you won’t have any trouble finding promoters who live and work locally (use Google). Unlike most other important music industry contacts, promoters are generally accessible and will be willing to talk to anyone who has ‘something real’ to offer them. That’s where you come in.

Generally speaking, concert promoters take on more risk than any other person or entity in the entire music industry. All promoters lose large sums of money every year, because some concerts lose money. The successful promoters make (and keep) more money than they lose throughout the year.

What every promoter wants is a bigger and stronger team of people to help ensure that the concerts/tours they promote make more money! Obviously, it’s expensive to employ a large team of experienced people. However, you can join their team, at least on a part-time basis, if you are willing to volunteer, intern, or earn a small salary. You may not yet know anything about promoting tours, but some promotion companies would be eager to train you if it isn’t expensive for them to do so.

Think about it from their perspective: If you were a big time promoter taking on huge risks, wouldn’t you want another person to work for you, for free or for a very low salary? Of course the answer is ‘yes’, even if that person could only work part-time.

Many musicians who want a music career are told to do an internship for a record label. The conventional wisdom is that when you do this, you will learn a lot about the music business. The reality is, most of these interns never get into a position where they can truly learn much at all as an intern. However working for a promoter, your ability to learn how the industry really works (at least on the touring and promotional side) goes way up! In addition, the number of contacts you can make are 200 times more than what you would likely make working at a record label. And compared to record labels, there is a lot less competition, currently anyway, for internships or jobs with a promoter.

As excited as you may now feel, knowing that you CAN actually do this, there is a catch and it’s a big one. In order to have any real chance of pursuing this opportunity and using these contacts to help launch your music career, you must work on having the right things in place which enables your music industry contacts to feel confident enough to work with you. The truth is, nothing in this article will help you until and unless you do take this step. You can see more about this specific topic in a free video on how to become a professional musician.

©2008 Tom Hess Music Corporation. All Rights Reserved

The remit for the score was very broad – basically, write what I thought was appropriate. My first idea was to write an upbeat Punk song but I quickly discarded this idea in favour of something Spanish to tie the new story to the original story of Don Quixote, which is set in medieval Spain. I already had a Spanish style chord progression I had been toying with for some time and now I had finally found a use for it.

The first problem I encountered was the fact that the film was not yet finished and I had only a vague idea of what to expect. I decided that the best way to tackle this problem was to write a piece of music with several different parts which would allow me to place them in different scenes. These parts would need to convey different moods, be easily lengthened or shortened and be able to fit together in any order.

I took my original idea to the other musicians I was working with at the time and over the next week or two wrote a song with six distinct sections -

1. Verse consisting of Spanish Guitar and vocals
2. Chorus consisting of Spanish Guitar and vocals
3. Instrumental section with Spanish Guitar
4. Space-y midsection with string and synth sounds
5. Heavy verse with overdriven electric guitar
6. Fast finale

I got the idea for Section Four (i.e. playing the verse with an overdriven electric guitar rather an acoustic guitar) from the Doors ‘Spanish Caravan’ which uses a similar technique. (By the way, you can receive an MP3 of ‘Turning’ – soundtrack to the film ‘Windmills’ – by writing to info@shadowplay-collective.com)

Eventually I received a rough cut of the film and began to restructure the song to fit with what was happening in each scene. Fortunately the musical ideas I started with fitted well and I really only had to lengthen and shorten the different parts to fit the scenes. I sent my ideas off to the producer who said he liked them so I began tightening up the music to fit with the action – a dramatic pause here and a building of tension there. I was pleased with the results so far and sent the second draft back to the producer. Again he said he liked it, but asked if I could drop out Section Three completely, as it interfered with the dialogue. I was slightly annoyed about this as I had spent quite sometime creating many subtle variations for this section. However, I bowed to his greater experience and took the section out.

I thought that the score was finished but the Writer/Director began to make suggestions. He didn’t think the ending was powerful enough. He wanted it more like the soundtrack to the movie ‘Speed’. Wanting to do the best job I could, I dutifully acquired the sound track and attempted to emulate some of the drama by adding some kettle drum rolls. “Better but not quite there,” he said. I added a tambourine playing sixteenth notes to give a sense of speed and acceleration. “Getting there, but could do with more drama” he commented. After several more attempts, in which I added orchestra stabs and a distorted guitar, we finally agreed that there was enough tension and the score was finally complete!

A week or two later I received the final cut complete with music. I was very pleased with the end result. But what was this? The section I had been asked to take out had been put back in but only as a repeated sample of music! All the work I had done creating subtle changes and nuances wiped out and replaced with the same piece of music looped over and over. I was not happy but I let it go. I had done my bit to the best of my ability and for a first attempt at writing a film score I felt I had not done badly at all.

The film enjoyed a short release mainly playing at art house cinemas with myself and the singer playing an acoustic version of the song on the opening night. It has also been shown several times on the local television network.

Writing this film score was not the easiest thing I have ever done in my music career. I was lucky that the remit I was given to work with was so wide I could do just about anything I liked. However, trying to please both the producer and the writer/director and to reproduce their ideas in a musical form was sometimes very difficult and frustrating.

So what have I learned from this experience and what advice would I give to would-be musicians/score writers?

• Take a chance, as I did when I approached the TV Company, and get your music out there because nobody is going to discover you in your bedroom
• Say ‘yes’ first then work out how you will do it later
• Follow up every opportunity as you never know where it will lead. It was only by taking part in the multi-media event that I later got the opportunity to write the film score
• Be open to criticism – don’t just disregard it out of hand as sometimes other people’s opinions can be really helpful even if it’s not meant to be. The writer/director and I did not always agree but we both had the same goal in mind – a great film

And after all this would I put myself through this all again? You bet.

To receive an MP3 of ‘Turning’ (soundtrack to the film ‘Windmills’) please write to info@shadowplay-collective.com

About the author

Ian Hand is a founder member of the Shadowplay Collective and has been writing and performing for music twenty years. He is currently a student of Tom Hess.

© 2008 Shadowplay Collective

The role of A&R has three main responsibilities:

• Finding talent
• Overseeing the recording process
• Assisting with marketing and promotion

A & R can sign new or established talent to the company’s roster. They then continue to work closely with the artist, acting as their liaison to the label’s business affairs department and as an advisor who will help nurture a certain sound and image Their duties include listening to demos, aligning artists with the right producer, and offering creative input.

For the unsigned musician, A&R can be the gatekeepers of the industry. It is not their job to keep you out, so much as it is to find marketable music for their company. A&R reps are the musicians’ point of contact at the label during contract negotiations. They also play an important role in development of the artist – how the band will be marketing, sometimes choosing songs for the musicians to record if they don’t write their own material and building a basic promotional foundation for the album and the band.

According to Allison Klein of How Stuff Works, A&R is seen as the glamorous part of working in a record company:

This is because A&R is in charge of discovering new talent. A&R people work very hands-on with the artists that they “sign.” (When a record label “signs” an artist, it simply means that the artist makes an exclusive contract with that record label.) They do everything from assisting with song selection to choosing the people that will produce the album to deciding where the album will be recorded.

See more on record labels at How Stuff Works: How Record Labels Work

As you can imagine, going to clubs, scouting new talent, chatting it up with recording studios, superstar producers, and the such, makes this one of the most sought after jobs in the recording industry.

Sales and marketing personnel also keep tabs on radio airplay and follow through by making sure that whenever something does get airplay that it’s sufficiently stocked in the marketplace. The sales department often coordinates these efforts with the promotion and publicity departments. In a major label the sales department may have up to 100 employees.

What does the marketing department do? The marketing department creates an overall marketing plan for every album that the record company releases. It helps coordinate the plans of the promotion, sales and publicity departments.

Marketing also includes organizing street teams, maintaining social network presence as well as traditional broadcasting such as TV and radio. The marketing department is also in charge of the art department.

This department’s main purpose is to make sure that an artist is being played on the radio. It must get an artist’s new songs on the radio in order to ensure the future success of the record company. This department makes sure that all the other departments are communicating about the best way to sell the artist to the public.

The promotion department may also try to get videos played on MTV or VH1 if that is not being handled by the video division.

Many successful bands have their own independent publicists.

The publicity department may also be referred to as PR, or press relations. Publicists rely heavily on their contacts in media and may focus on just one area, such as newspapers, websites, TV or radio.

It is the publicist’s job to liase between labels and/or musicians and the media to try and get album reviews, profiles of the band and reviews of live shows.

Sometimes a record label will hire an outside PR firm to create a publicity campaign that runs for a certain length of time. This is generally the time when musicians do interviews to promote a new album. The publicity department will be responsible for gathering press clippings for the label.

The publicity may have a video division that is responsible for gathering video footage of their bands. See more on the Video Division.

Generally the video division reports to the Art Department, which in turn reports to the head of the marketing department.

The video division may also be called upon to create promo videos of bands.

A major label will also have a publicity department. Inside publicity there are people whose job it is to locate all video recorded of their bands. Specifically they are looking for news and media coverage to be archived and used for publicity.

Video Directors:

Directing music videos is a path that sometimes leads to becoming a movie director. A famous example of this is Spike Jonze who began directing commercials and music videos. He has gone on to direct movies such as Adaptation and Jackass: The Movie.

Recording contracts are something that may be overlooked at the indie level, though this is not advisable. When dealing with a major label, however, there is no getting around the legal aspects of doing business together. You need the advice of a good attorney before entering into a contract.

For contract negotiations, an attorney generally charges a set fee rather than a percentage as a manager or agent would.

Traditionally, distribution is how music gets into stores. Distributors have deals with the major record labels and take a cut of each album sold. However, with the rise of digital distribution and a growing interest in indie music, the way that people get their music is changing. 

Here’s a quick look at three avenues of distribution:

Major Labels – The Big Four

Thanks to mergers and acquisitions the landscape of the major label music scene can change dramatically overnight. But basically, the major labels consist of  ”The Big Four”:

• EMI
• Sony BMG Music Entertainment
• Universal Music Group
• Warner Music Group

Why are they called the big four? In the United States the major labels are respresented by The Recording Industry Association of America (or RIAA). The RIAA claims to create and distribute about 90% of the music sold in the United States. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the big four account for more than 80% of the U.S. music market.

What’s so great about the U.S. music market? The United States is the world’s largest music market with about 35% of the world market value. Japan is second and the United Kingdom a distant third.

You can read more about the major labels and market value on Wikipedia: Music Industry

Indie Distribution

An independent record label (or indie record label) is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels.

Heather McDonald has written an excellent definition for indie label’s at About.com:

An indie label is a record label that is independently funded and not connected to one of the Big Four major labels. Indie labels range from home based hobby labels to highly profitable, large businesses. In the 1990s, the line between indie labels and major labels began to blur somewhat, and now some large indie labels are actually distributed by the Big Four major labels.

Indie labels often face an uphill battle trying to get their music heard, as they typically have far fewer financial resources to promote their music than major labels do. Despite the struggle, many labels have survived, and thrived, for years, and many other indie labels may not have lasted forever but had a tremendous impact on music both creatively and in terms of business.

You can learn more about indie music and distribution on Heather’s Music Careers site.

Check out our Top 10 Hits of CD Distribution

Digital Distribution

Digital music distribution involves selling or sharing music in MP3 format. If you are a musician with MP3s of your music, you have two simple options. You can find an MP3 distribution site and have them distribute your music. The advantage of this is that a large site may get millions of visitors every month, increasing your potential audience. Your other option is to create your own website and make your music available there. This method will give you more control and you won’t have to share a cut of your proceeds with a distribution site. However, your music could be hard to find and you will be responsible for promoting your site and getting the word out yourself.

Nowadays, just about anyone with their own music can have it appear in Amazon’s digital downloads or in the iTunes store.  A couple of other big players in online digital distribution are CD Baby and MySpace.

The art department provides an exciting work environment for non-musician creative types.

Art Department Jobs:

Graphic designers may find work at record labels working as cover art designers. The work of a cover art designer is to create album artwork and design the liner notes. A designer’s input depends on what the musicians and/or label wants.

A designer should be familiar with graphic design software. Creative ability is also a must. It also helps to be a music fan as you may be called upon to design a cover that expresses the feel of the album. 

Coming up with ideas can sometimes be a problem. When fresh out of ideas a great way to find inspiration is to look at the work of other designers. One of the most famous and recognizable cover designers is Storm Thorgerson, who has created iconic album covers for bands like Pink Floyd. A lot of his artwork can be viewed at Storm Thorgerson’s website.

Other places to look include include Rolling Stone Magazine’s Readers’ Rock List: Best Album Covers of 2008. As this is a readers choice thing, it may say more about popularity than quality. In any case, the music business is one that panders to popularity.

A good way to stay up to date on designs, trends and developments in cover art is by reading the Music Album Cover Art Blog.