A Simple Way to Make Your Guitar Music Shine

How can we make our playing as expressive as possible? How can we say all the feelings we want to say through our guitar?

The simple way is actually to use many small ways.

It’s in the details that will take your music from being good to mind-melting.

We express through using the right smattering of techniques available to us on guitar, but at the same time, being careful not to overdo it.

As always, play for the song. Don’t use a technique just for the sake of randomly throwing it in there.

Song: Diamonds

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In, “Diamonds”, you’ll hear careful and sparing application of raked notes, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, bends with vibrato, full-chord vibrato, palm-muting, purposeful use of volume dynamics to go from “clean” to “crunch”, tremolo picking, octaves, trills and other picking techniques such as playing closer to the bridge of the guitar.

None of this was planned. It just came out this way. Maybe in another song, you might only want to use normal notes with an occasional slide or bend, and that’s it.

There are no big secrets in the above list of techniques, but the difference is in the details of how you use them in your music.

Randomly and unconsciously? Or with precision and purpose?

Superficially and lacking originality? Or with bottomless depth and intense feeling?

Keep experimenting. Keep flowing in your music. Explore even deeper than you ever have before.