Outsmart Your Guitar

Outsmart Your Guitar A forum for all things guitar, featuring lessons and columns on improving your guitar skills. Ask questions, share discoveries, post videos to get feedback.

Let's create a community of players!

08/24/2026

Hey everybody. I just wanted share a comment I received over on my YouTube channel. It isn't often I get these, but I so value them because it helps me understand people really are benefiting from the lessons I post:

"Truly some of the clearest and most useful on YouTube. You have provided a hugely valuable resource. Thank you."

This is why I do this, so people will benefit and grow from the lessons I offer freely on YouTube. And for many more in depth lessons you can check out my Patreon page, too:

https://www.patreon.com/outsmart_your_guitar

Thank you to all of you for your support and encouragements!

08/21/2026

It is important to understand the difference between study, practice and rehearsal when you are playing your guitar (or any instrument for that matter).

Study: this is where you sit down and choose a specific topic to focus upon and actually STUDY how to play it, the technique, the way it should sound, everything. This is something you do individually at home with or without a teacher's guidance.

Arpeggios, for example. Not hard, but they can be challenging, particularly in making them sound musical where they actually work in a song and/or solo section. You need to break them down and understand how they're put together and pick a few chords to arpeggiate to help you learn the whole idea.

Practice: this is where you now find places in the music you play to apply the things you've been studying. You can do this alone or with your band. And it has to be clearly understood that during practice sessions, everyone is going to be experimenting in some way, trying new things, looking for the right approach for their part.

Again, with arpeggios as the example, pick a rhythm part to a song you know. Now listen and play through it and figure out where an arpeggiated sequence in the progression might work and give it a try.

For soloing, pick a solo you've been playing and go through it and see where an arpeggio might help change things up a bit - yet remain musical in the process. This requires you to know the chords of the progression you're playing over so you can use a given chord of the progression to make the arpeggio and see when and where arpeggios will work.

Rehearsal: This is where you are working out arrangements with your band (or if a solo artist, you are creating and playing through an arrangement) in preparation for a performance before an audience.

Rehearsal is NOT a time for new ideas (with rare exception - you cannot disallow serendipity, it happens). It is a time to solidify songs, decide on how your part is going to be played - what exactly you will play for a given song. Whether as a solo artist or part of a band, the rehearsal is a "walk through" or "dry run" of a performance.

Yes, you can stop a song part way through and question or ask to go over something to make sure whatever is happening works. This is an important part of rehearsal (and practice, too), to be sure what is going on is what the band intendes.

Overall, when you understand the difference between these aspects of your musical life, you can be more sure of things as you move forward, striving to learn, incorporate, and then perform the things you want to be part of your musical expression.

For those of you needing direction and guidance, I have a few openings for students. I teach remotely via Wire (former Skype people) and would love to have you come on board to learn the things you want to make part of your guitar skillset.

Drop me a line and let's talk and get things rolling!

Peace.

05/20/2026

I love music. I love the guitar. There is always something new to discover.

I was with a student this last week and he is still fairly new to the guitar, been playing around a year now. I took a lesson to set aside all the "learning" and began to show him how to use things he already knows to explore the fret board and the ideas that can come to mind through experimenting.

Basically, we took first position chords and began moving them everywhere, looking for positions on the fret board that sounded good, even with a little dissonance. He was having so much fun by the end of the lesson, now getting a little direction on one aspect of taking something simple and using it in a way not previously considered.

There are a lot of things you can do on the guitar that are not "obvious". Working with a guitar teacher who knows these things "hidden in plain sight" helps you to expand what is possible, how some of the music they love actually got created.

The journey on guitar is real. If you want to get beyond your current place, I have a few openings available. I teach remotely via Wire (ex Skype guys), which is free to download.

Let's talk about what you need to get beyond the "wall"!

04/23/2026

Learning to navigate the fret board in any given scale can be a challenge. Learning and understanding each position of a scale, its order in the sequence of positions up the neck from the "root" or first position is the beginning of ending confusion and getting lost.

If you struggle with this, I can help you see everything clearly in a way that makes sense and will quickly unlock your ability to move up and down the fret board and make melodies - or learn melodies from songs - easier to play and/or learn!

I have a few openings available. Contact me and let's talk about getting you moving forward!

04/04/2026

Chord skills matter. How are yours? The standard major, minor, dominant, sus and maybe a few variants are the starting point, not the end.

While you may not like Jazz or want to play Jazz, learning the chords used in Jazz standards songs like Autumn Leaves, Let's Fall In Love, All Of Me and similar tunes - which were all considered pop tunes when they were originally released, not Jazz - will help expand your chord vocabulary.

This is particularly helpful to you because it helps tunes your ear to hear things better so that when you are learning songs you want to play by ear, you will be more able to truly KNOW what chords are being played because your ear is now tuned to hearing the subtle things happening in the rhythms being played.

If you want to improve your chord playing skills, I can help make that happen. It's a lot of fun and challenging, too. I have a few openings and would love to have you come on board and expand your skills! Let's talk!

03/30/2026

When you are practicing your guitar, are you focused, directed and dedicated to understanding the specific thing(s) you are working on? If not, you need to learn what goes into a productive session.

First, are you practicing or studying? They are not the same thing.

Study is what you do when you are learning a technique, approach or even a song. It is the process of taking in NEW information and learning it well.

Practicing is what you do when you are going over things you already know, whether technique, stylistic things or a song.

Knowing this difference and being mindful of just which one you are employing is the first step in removing the unproductive aspect of your time on the guitar.

I can help you learn these things and so much more. Message me about what you need, want and desire in your playing needs. I have a few openings for students. Reasonable rates. Let's talk!

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