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Educate yourself! No matter what level you are at today, you can be and should be learning more. If you are currently studying with a teacher or enrolled in a music program at a high school, college or university, you are on the right track. If you aren’t doing this (or if you feel that your current teacher is not helping you enough in reaching your goals) I strongly recommend looking for a new teacher.

I prefer to be wise like the Buddha, and take the Middle Path. This is the one I have chosen, and I will describe it for you.

NEVER GIVE UP! Never say can’t. Never say I can’t. Never say someday. Never say if… If your IQ is higher than room temperature, if you have all of your fingers and if you really want to succeed, you can.

You should be able to play all the techniques of the guitar. Van Halen did tapping but not with all his fingers as others have done. He didn’t play finger style much either, but we still regard him as an important guitarist, the same thing can be said for Vai and many others. Classical guitar master John William’s probably doesn’t play well with a guitar pick (I am assuming this to be true, I have no proof of it), but he is considered one of the greatest classical guitarists alive today.

Skills like improvisation, songwriting and playing with a guitar pick or not going to be high on his list of skills to acquire. This is because classical guitarists generally don’t do those things - and don’t need to to be great at what they do. These players are great players in their own ways and they have spent many years developing their skills. Learning everything about guitar playing would have taken away precious practice time from the things they needed to focus on to reach their goals.

Chopin’s natural ability was his ability to improvise. He was the master, but he worked very hard to become the virtuoso pianist that he would later become. Chopin also was the master at small forms, but struggled with large scale forms.

To be GREAT means I have to be BETTER than everybody else. We already touched on this one above, but it is worth mentioning again here. What matters is reaching YOUR goals, not someone else’s goals. Who cares if you are or are not better than someone else? This is not the olympics. Music is the art of expression (or for some people, the science of entertainment).

Now I know I have to work on something very fundamental. I have to work on the behavior of my third finger, and change the way it reacts to it’s neighbor being used, the second finger. If I can get down to the matter with that degree of specificity, that degree of clarity and focus, I am in a position to cause major Vertical Growth. If I can change the way that finger is behaving in that situation, I will see many playing problems I am having in other pieces of music begin to “melt”, and eventually disappear.

The guitar is perhaps one of the most recognized musical instrument apart from the piano. What many people dont realize is that this symbol of rock and roll has been around for over 4,000 years, in some form or another.

Origins The first real guitar-like item to be discovered was the tanbur. One of these was actually found in Egypt, near Queen Hatshepsuts tomb. The tanbur was built of polished cedar and had a soundboard made of leather. Though featuring just three strings, it resembles a crude guitar. The tanbur can be seen in the Archeological Museum in Cairo and is about 3,500 years old.

Shortly after the tanbur was popular in Egypt, the lute was developed in Europe. This instrument was made up of a rounded body with a very short neck. Many historians say that this developed into a completely different line of musical instruments and has nothing to do with the guitar, while others claim it does.

What we do know is that there are a number of inventions throughout history around the world that utilized the basic idea of a soundbox body, long fretted neck and varying numbers of strings, including the sitar, setar, and the chitar, a four stringed musical device that was renamed ‘chitarra’ or ‘guitarra’ when it reached Spain.

Early Guitars The original versions were rather stumpy in appearance, with just 8 frets above the soundbox and most had only four strings. These were popular during the 16th century, but by the following century, the instruments had evolved to have six strings and 12 frets along the neck.

During the 1800s, the guitar was in essentially the same form we see it today, only smaller in size. The form of the body was fairly curved. In the 1850s, a Spanish instrument builder named Antonio Torres took the initiative to create a larger body, changed the proportions, and invented the top bracing pattern that gives todays guitars more volume, in a fan shape. However, just a few years later, a German by the name of Christian Frederich Martin designed a version with an X brace. When steel strings began to appear in 1900, the older, fan shaped brace was unable to stand up to the tension provided by the steel strings. Martins design took hold, as it was far stronger and held the guitar together very well, withstanding the far louder steel strings. This version has changed very little in the intervening decades, the design was finally settled.

Altering a Classic Once the basic form was established, people began to come up with their own versions. Orville Gibson developed an arched top guitar with sound holes, Lloyd Loar altered that design further to create the jazz guitar with f-holes, cello tail and a floating bridge.

Then, in the 1920s, the electric guitar was built, without the need for a soundbox since it had electrical pickups. This form didnt become popular for another couple of decades, but then a number of variations were made on this, as well.

The guitar has a long and varied history. Still, it has fascinated people for centuries and we probably havent seen the end of the variations on the basic form.