Stop The Room

There's a quiet trap that catches almost every returning guitarist — and the frustrating part is that it feels like progress while it's happening. Here's how it goes. You learn a pentatonic shape. It sounds good. You use it everywhere. You get comfortable. Then one day you realize you've been playing the same box pattern over every chord change for two years and calling it improvising. The notes fit, but nothing is actually being said. The real blues players never thought that way. B.B. King...

Last week I flew to Puerto Rico on a missions trip with my church. And listen — if we made a movie out of everything that happened, nobody would believe it. But that's a story for another day. Here's the one I want to tell you. It was night two. My BJJ professor (who also happens to be one of our pastors) walked up and asked if I'd lead worship. No warning. No warm-up. Just — hey, you want to do this? I said "sure. I just need the chords." That's it. No panic. No sweating through my shirt....

Wayne and I just blew the back out of that band stand. He had just got back from Utah. Multi-instrumentalist. The real deal. I’ve only actually played with him twice. But we started talking after the closing out at a local open mic, and I had to ask him something. “How did you get your ears so big?” Now before you think I lost my mind — that’s a compliment. In music, big ears means you hear what everyone else misses. You catch the hidden stuff buried in the song. Then you play to that. It’s...

Scientists who study motor memory have been sitting on information......information that would make every returning guitarist feel genuinely foolish for believing the story they've been telling themselves.,And the story goes something like this: you stopped playing, so you basically started over.That is not how brains work. Not even close. Here is what actually happens. Procedural motor skills, the kind that live in your fingers when you play guitar, are stored in a completely different part...

Frank showed up with a guitar case and zero shame. He walked on stage like he owned the place. The crowd had no idea what was coming. I was hosting an open mic near Pittsburgh. It was a big Community Day. Bounce houses, fire trucks, food vendors, and even a magician. The Atlanta Rhythm Section was due to play on the other stage. There was a vibe in the air. Pine Community Day 2026Left to Right: Benny Davis (Drums), Zack Perkins (Acoustic), Myself) We had great sound, a killer drummer, and an...

My niece did not want to be there. She made that crystal clear the second we walked in. "Ugh, this is going to be so cringe," she whispered to her mom. Eleven years old and already a music critic. Brutal. My wife and I set up like normal. Nothing fancy. Just another open mic night. I could feel my niece's boredom from across the room. She had her arms crossed. Classic. Then we played a song I'd been posting on my YouTube Shorts lately. Her head snapped up like a golden retriever hearing a...

Train, Don't Practice tinylesson The Boulder and Mano's Triangle↓ “Good things take time…but great things happen all at once.” That quote comes from the movie Rat Race. A ridiculous comedy where a bunch of normal people compete to find a bag full of money. And as silly as that movie is…the quote stands true. You see, good things do take time. You must work at them. Build them. But then suddenly as if by some sudden force of nature, those good things turn into great things. And it happens...

Train, Don't Practice tinylesson The Fluency, In Synergy:The whole is as important as the individual parts↓ Yesterday I said I was going to show a methodology I use to open up creatively. It’s the practice of Zone Isolation. More specifically, isolating your playing within one of the 5 zones. Before we jump in, let’s recap what we have uncovered up until now: Layer 1: Roots the FretGrid is an underlying pattern. It provides an organized outlay across the entire fretboard. The FretGrid is...

Train, Don't Practice tinylesson How to Map all 12 tones AND build your confidence↓ It was back in 2013 when I was playing at four to five different open mics a week… I quickly realized what I had mentioned in yesterdays email. The FretGrid is laid out infinitely across the fretboard. [FG] is exactly the same across all 12 tones. Look at the image below: [FG] is transitive across the entire fretboard. The pattern stays the same… It’s your starting point that changes. HINT: Learn it once, and...

Train, Don't Practice tinylesson The Big Picture↓ Fluency across the fretboard is not about what people think it’s about. It’s not about playing at mind-numbing speeds, exotic scales, or flashy arpeggios. So why do most people think they need to be the next Yngwie Malmsteen, to feel they have mastered the fretboard? Here’s why: Most people think, tactically. They’re looking for a magic bullet… some flashy scale to make their playing sound intelligent… …but magic bullet solutions don’t exist....