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…

We have all seen the ads claiming that you can master the guitar in a few months or even weeks. These types of ads play on a part of our personality that secretly wants there to be a magic system of learning. This is the part of you that you really want to ignore because…

I recently read an article about Steve Jobs and how when he rejoined Apple his first priority was to axe as many of their products as possible and focus on only a few. Initially there were about 300 different products which he managed to cull back to around 10. Jobs certainly did not invent this…

Functional MRI scans are now revealing a lot about how the brain actually works. Researchers today are curious to learn about a whole range of brain functions and how they relate to real life. One such area of research is the brain of successful people. Apparently successful people across a broad range of areas show…