If your only reason for practicing guitar is to one day become a great guitar player ironically you may actually be decreasing your chances of success. After many years of teaching guitar, associating with guitarists, reading about and living among guitarists and wannabe guitarists you begin to see patterns. Maybe its just a coincidence but…

As an intermediate guitarist it is likely you are wanting to know how to get to the next level. At this stage progress can often seem slow but the fact is if you are working on your skills they will improve. It’s kind of like evolution. You don’t notice it day by day but look…

Continued from the last blog I will attempt to answer the above question. Just to recap in the first blog we spoke about the research that showed conscientious people tend to live longer. To read the first blog please visit the G4 GUITAR website and scroll down to the blog. This is a tricky question because their…

In a longevity study it was concluded that conscientiousness was perhaps the strongest predictor of a long healthy life. The 80 year study carried out in the US (which you can read about in the book ‘The Longevity Project‘) explains this finding in terms of life paths. Those who take a mindful life path are…

Whenever a new student enrolls for lessons my first question is; “How long do you intend to play guitar for?” Many look at me with a half smile as if I am asking a trick question and hesitantly reply with “Forever I guess”. The reason I ask this question is not so much for my…

Musicians have long been thought of as night owls. We imagine jazz musicians playing in New York style basements and rock musicians playing pubs till the early hours.  Almost all live work will be in a night time venue. A musician looking for a career in music with no late nights is probably a teacher….

I was recently checking out the popular songs on iTune and noticed that most songs were void of any obvious guitar. Almost all of the tracks were based on beats with bass, synths, piano and vocals. A few tracks had acoustic guitars being strummed in the back ground or a funky rhythm guitar like Maroon…

The guitar enjoyed a boom for a long time but in recent years guitar as we know has slipped a little but due to new circumstances is set to rise again. The guitar enjoyed uninterrupted growth in popularity until 2001 because there was no real competition. Its one big advantage was convenience but then something…

In 1962 a Decca records spokesperson made the following comment after being presented a Beatles demo;  “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”   It just goes to show that the experts do get it wrong sometimes. Guitar in the years to follow would become the center of the pop…