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Although I realize that the title of this page can seem boastful, or arrogant, by all definitions of the word, I am considered an expert guitarist. (See my background paper for details) God knows I’ve spent most of my life working at it! Also, please understand that this title does not in any way indicate any sort of “arrival” at some high plateau where practice and learning cease to exist! No matter what level you are it, in anything, there is always more to learn and practice, it is really never ending!

So just how does one become an expert guitarist?! Well, I have come up with a helpful acronym which outlines three extremely important steps, or requirements to achieving expertise on guitar. Yes, this is my opinion, but this is how I did it, many others that I know who are there, and also is validated scientifically by neuroscience, the study of music and the brain!

The word to remember is “LAP”. Like when a runner works out for an upcoming race, to practice he/she will runs laps! OK, let’s get into it;

Listening to music, all kinds of music, is one of the most important things you can do to help develop into an expert player! This is especially beneficial, if it is done during the early, developmental years on your instrument.

I remember countless hours and hours spent listening to albums, both at home, and in my car. For me, I got heavily into jazz very early, and would listen to hundreds of jazz recordings from old to new such as; Wes Montgomery/Clifford Brown/John Coltrane/Erroll Garner/Stephan Grapelli and many more! (For those into jazz, notice that I was into all kinds of instruments also; Trumpet, violin, piano as well as guitar) Of course, I also loved rock too and absorbed many hours of The Beatles/Steely Dan/Yes/Queen and others.

When I speak of “listening”, I really mean LISTENING! Try to absorb the emotions, the rhythm, the chord changes, the phrasing, and the overall mood!

I will get into this aspect more in the next part, but here I want to stay focused on listening and absorbing the music you listen to, weather it is through CD’s, MP3’s, the radio, or live concerts.

If you read any interviews with any of your favorite players, you will find this common thread to hold true with them also. Everyone who becomes an expert player was first inspired by other expert players through recorded music, and/or by live concerts!

If you love a certain guitar player’s style, listen to him/her very often! Let the phrasing and style become ingrained into your mind, and it will come out into your fingers, even without directly practicing over the music. (Although that can be very helpful too).

I really don’t think it is even possible to move forward as an accomplished guitarist without spending a considerable time listening to music, especially during the early stages. The hours I spent listening (and I still do) to great players is not only very enjoyable, but I consider it important practice time that I desperately need!

Besides listening to music, it is also very important to actually associate with other players who are more advanced than you are! This is also part of listening, but now it is more on a personal level, and you listen and absorb from others that you associate with and are friends with, and you learn from them, largely by just being around them.

This aspect has really been my main secret to leaping forward in levels on the guitar! I have been very fortunate to have known, and been close friends with several incredible guitarists! For instance, in my early years of playing, I became friends with Jerry Hahn. He is one of the very best guitarists of all time! He is extremely gifted and is well known all over the world especially in the jazz community. We even lived together and shared a large house during our bachelor days back in the early 1980’s. I never took one formal lesson from this master, and even did very little actual playing with him. But I saw him play many times, and listened to his recordings even more over and over. Much of my playing today incorporates a lot of his style/phrasing/technique within my own.

I also must give mention to my old college buddy Kent Lindsay, who actually started me off on guitar and flooded me with tons of useful chords/scales/theory which I devoured during that first year!

I believe that certain aspects of music can be absorbed through a sort of osmosis. For instance, I used to listen to a very good guitarist for years, both in concert, and from his albums. Although I was very acquainted with his style of playing, I had never played guitar with him, and we never really knew each other from more than a name basis. Well, many years later, I finally got to get to know him personally and became friends. Shortly afterward we got our guitars out to actually play something together for the very first time. His wife was singing and playing also, and we both we playing some unrehearsed backing solo licks around her phrasing. Within the first few minutes, at one point, we both played the exact same lick/scale phrase, at the same time, in the same way! It sounded like one guitar in perfect unison! We both looked at each other, she stopped singing, and between laughter and amazement, we quickly stopped the jam session as it was becoming a little too weird!

What had happened was that I had absorbed his style of playing so much over the years, that when I played, I began to sound similar to him. Of course, that is really a good thing as no one will ever morph exactly into someone else, but will glean some things from them, some elsewhere, and mesh a lot of themselves to emerge into another unique style in itself.

When I was the group “Song of Songs”, (1982-86) the other guitarist in the group was much more an expert singer/songwriter than I was at the time. Likewise, I was much more of a guitarist and knew far more chords, scales, and guitar theory. Through our many hours of time together, he leaped forward musically and learned volumes about chords and progressions. Likewise, I did the same leap into songwriting and developing into a singer. But I did little to formerly instruct him on much of anything on guitar. He also told me little about how to write songs or become a vocalist. We both seemed to absorb each other’s area of expertise by some sort of osmosis!

The main point is to find other players and learn from them! Even if it means just to associate around them as friends, without playing, you can still absorb a lot from others who are already experts in many ways. Of course, the best way is to associate with other experts, and also spend time asking them questions, and even jamming with them, if they agree to it.

In real estate they have a popular phrase stating what is important in buying homes, “Location, Location, Location”! Well, in playing guitar and learning to excel to an expert level, I also have one similar, Practice, Practice, Practice!

Listening to music and associating with other players are both very important, but if you do that without practicing, you will never get anywhere! You can’t bypass this step! Everyone excels by practicing, and everyone at every level, it doesn’t matter if you are a beginner, or already an accomplished seasoned expert, YOU NEED TO PRACTICE!

Once again, this is especially important within the early years of playing guitar. When I first started playing, I became nearly obsessed with pushing my skill forward by practicing many hours every day. Some days would find me playing chords/scales/songs for up to 8-10 hours, and that would happen very frequently! On the average, looking back, I probably would practice at least 3-4 hours per day, but it is hard to say exactly now as, at the time, I was never looking at the clock!

I remember that about a dozen years after I had started playing, I was into an intense routine of regular practice and playing daily, so much so that it was just part of my life like eating and sleeping. At that time I had the opportunity to travel to Israel for three weeks with some friends, which I did and enjoyed it immensely! However a problem arose while I was in Israel, I couldn’t bring my guitar as I had a lot of luggage and it would be too much to carry around. So the problem was that I could have gone “cold turkey” and been without even touching a guitar for three weeks! (I had not gone even one day without playing for over ten years before) I had no choice, and embarked on my journey, thinking I could handle it. Long story short – I couldn’t handle it!

I made it to my last ten days when I was in Jerusalem, barely, and ended up finding a music store where I ran in and played one of their guitars for hours while the staff looked at me strangely! (To this day I feel bad that I never bought anything there!)

Some of my hero’s in the jazz world are notorious for practicing! John Coltrane and Clifford Brown are two that come to mind who would seem to be quite insane by non-musicians in seeing their practice regime! But just listen to any of their recorded work, and the link becomes very clear and apparent! Practice = accomplishment!

It is on this subject that I would like to conclude with further support from science;

That is the title of a very interesting new book that I just finished written by Daniel J. Levitin. He is a former rock musician/producer who is now a neuroscientist who studies the brain, and the effects of music on the brain.

Chapter Seven in his book is entitled: “What Makes a Musician?” He actually studied the brain, and case studies on what it takes for a musician to become an expert in his/her field. Here is his conclusion:

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything! In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or twenty hours a week of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice session than others.

But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

My reaction to this was one word – WOW! It made sense to me, and validated the countless times I lectured countless students about the need to spend time practicing! Plus it re-enforced what I had already been doing, and continue to do in disciplined practice for myself.

Mr. Levitin also addresses one argument that is bound to arise when informed of this data, “What about Mozart?” He was a child wonder who composed his first symphony at age eight! He explains that even composing a symphony, while quite impressive at such a young age, still does not necessarily equate him with an expert at that time. Mozart became an expert soon afterwards, and his first work may seem great because of who composed it looking back in hindsight. But if that were the only thing he ever composed, we may have never even heard of his name! (Plus, it is possible that he actually was an expert at age eight! His father was considered the greatest music teacher of that period and could have started Mozart practicing as early as age two, if so, by age eight, Mozart would have had his ten thousand hours and been a child expert!)

To be fair, Levitin also addresses other issues that might influence expertise in a person’s life such as the size of fingers and hands, and each person’s own circumstances growing up in childhood, but yet still remains strong in his conclusion of ten thousand hours = expertise!

My point is, if this is true, it just further validates the fact that becoming an expert guitar player requires practice without doubt! If this is combined with listening to many different types of music and players, along with associating with as many other expert players as you can, your chances of becoming an expert player are very, very good!

There you have my take on how to become an expert guitar player. Of course, you can also apply this to almost anything in life that you choose to learn. Many people dabble a little in a field of interest; others go further but stop due to lack of interest, or other circumstances. That is all well and good, unless you have a passion and desire to keep pushing and learning with the sky being the limit. This is some of what it takes to pursue your interest into excellence, and become an expert, which may explain why there are many guitarists, but a lot less expert players.