Ever wondered how to strike that perfect chord between playing a song note-for-note and weaving in the threads of your own musical identity? That's the question we unpack as I share my personal experiences and tips on balancing authenticity with innovation on the guitar. We traverse the landscape of music learning, discussing the golden days of ear-learning before the internet era, and how those practices shaped musicians into the artists they are today. Reflecting on the likes of Steve Vai, Tommy Emmanuel, and Michael Britt, we dissect the notion that perfection lies in replication, and instead, celebrate the quirks and individual flair that make guitar playing deeply personal.
Embark with me as we zoom in on the distinctive styles of legendary guitarists, using Megadeth's Kiko Loureiro's fresh take on Marty Friedman's solos as a case study in artful adaptation. With no guests but a treasure trove of insights, this episode is an ode to the guitarist's journey of self-discovery—find out how improvisation, theory, and fretboard knowledge converge to help you sculpt a sound that's unapologetically yours. Whether it's respecting the original or reshaping a classic like "Cliffs of Dover" to suit your style, this conversation is a reminder that the strings of the guitar are as much about the music they play as the story they tell. Tune in, tune up, and let's celebrate the unique musical voice that's waiting to be heard through your six strings.
Ever wondered how to strike that perfect chord between playing a song note-for-note and weaving in the threads of your own musical identity? That's the question we unpack as I share my personal experiences and tips on balancing authenticity with innovation on the guitar. We traverse the landscape of music learning, discussing the golden days of ear-learning before the internet era, and how those practices shaped musicians into the artists they are today. Reflecting on the likes of Steve Vai, Tommy Emmanuel, and Michael Britt, we dissect the notion that perfection lies in replication, and instead, celebrate the quirks and individual flair that make guitar playing deeply personal.
Embark with me as we zoom in on the distinctive styles of legendary guitarists, using Megadeth's Kiko Loureiro's fresh take on Marty Friedman's solos as a case study in artful adaptation. With no guests but a treasure trove of insights, this episode is an ode to the guitarist's journey of self-discovery—find out how improvisation, theory, and fretboard knowledge converge to help you sculpt a sound that's unapologetically yours. Whether it's respecting the original or reshaping a classic like "Cliffs of Dover" to suit your style, this conversation is a reminder that the strings of the guitar are as much about the music they play as the story they tell. Tune in, tune up, and let's celebrate the unique musical voice that's waiting to be heard through your six strings.
Hey, steve here, thank you so much for joining me for this discussion. What we're going to be talking about today is learning songs note for note, versus learning them in a way that works better for you for a number of different reasons. Okay, so let's just start off talking about that. If you grew up, like me, back in the day, when there was no internet and YouTube and you know one billion teachers at your disposal, you learn how to play by ear, or you were lucky enough to maybe have somebody near you that could teach you, but then you were learning from their way of thinking right, which is, which is there's nothing wrong with, but that is the truth. I mean, if you wanted to learn how to play a song from your neighbor or your uncle, or whatever it might be, or a guitar teacher that you had in your neighborhood, you were learning it the way that they learned how to play it, which would have either been by ear again, or from somebody doing the same thing. This is how this worked, and so I think what was good about that was people that learned how to play by ear learned to listen to music maybe a little bit differently, visualize their fretboard a little bit differently and make a musical connection, not just a visual connection, but a musical connection of hearing sounds and then trying to describe those sounds on their guitar. You know, not just visualization, but really listening to something and then trying to decipher what it is and place it on your fretboard. And I don't know, you know, how much people do that anymore now that we have YouTube and everything like that. And it doesn't matter. It's not good or bad. I'm just saying this is the reality of things. And so when I'll tell you my experience and then I'll give you a couple of different examples of things but when I learn songs, my job isn't to restructure the song and change the chords into something it's not or whatever it might be. My job is to try and do the song as much justice as I can.
Steve:
But at some point there are limitations that are going to come in right, the obvious limitations. I may not be able to play a part the exact same way that somebody that wrote the song played that part, simply because my experiences are completely different, or my technique is different, or the visualization of my fretboard is different, or all these different kinds of things. Now, there's nothing wrong with going OK. So what I want to do is I want to learn how to see it or play it or whatever, the same way that this person did. For that experience that's perfectly great, and it really is. But but now let's add in some other parameters. Let's say you have to learn this song, and it's a complex song, and you have to learn it by, you know, next weekend and today is Friday, so you have one week to learn it. You might not be able to adapt those skills or adopt those skills in seven days to be able to play it that way, and even if you could, it may not resonate in your memory in a proper way to where you're going to be able to execute that on stage in front of 100 or 1000 or 5000 people or whatever it might be, whatever situation you find yourself in, and you might try forever and still not be able to do it exactly that way. No matter what it is you want to do and here's the kicker A lot of times the artists themselves don't play it that way.
Steve:
It happened in the studio and then that was it, and you might have heard me talk about this before, but I think it's really important that we understand this, because it's not just a matter of, oh, you're not good enough to do whatever. We could take an artist like Steve Vai and then take an artist like Tommy Emanuel and take you know whoever I mean, it could be anybody, michael Britt, for instance, if you know who Michael is. We could take all three of these artists and they're all incredibly talented artists and I love them all, and they don't play anything like each other and every day they wake up they don't go. Oh, I wish I could play like that. Maybe they could say that. But they're not going to go. Okay, I'm going to get rid of everything that I am to become. Tommy Emanuel wakes up and says I'm going to be Steve Vai, or Steve Vai wakes up and says I'm going to be Michael Britt, or Michael Britt wakes up and says I'm going to be Tommy Emanuel or whatever. Because they can't. They're different people. They do what they do incredibly well and then they do other things. You know, if you've been to, for instance, a G3 show that Steve Vai's on and they do a jam to Little Wing or a jam to whatever song that they're jamming for that tour. It's not like they're trying to play it the way Jimi Hendrix played it. They're doing it their own way.
Steve:
Now, is that good or bad? Well, that's entirely up to you to decide. For me it's irrelevant. It's not good or bad, it's just that's welcome to music. So that gets us into the category of jam songs. Well, some songs are jammy. Well, maybe Jimi Hendrix would disagree with that if he could. Maybe Little Wing isn't jammy, maybe it's more structured than we're giving it credit for, but we just approach it from a jammy perspective versus some other song, and so it's very important to understand that those parameters or those limitations are the reality of what we're dealing with when we approach songs. It's not necessarily, certainly isn't.
Steve:
For me, it's not that you're lazy, it's that you are an established player, playing the way that you play, with the history and the experiences and the practice mechanisms that you have acquired, and that's who you've become. Now. You can always change that. Again, I'm not saying that you can't become, you know, add on or elevate from where you are. Of course you can. But you have to ask yourself is this one song, this one experience, the thing that's going to change everything about who you are? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Okay.
Steve:
So let me give you some examples, for instance. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to read this article from Marty Friedman. Marty Friedman from Megadeth, marty Friedman from Cacophony. You know all kinds of different things. If you know who, marty Friedman is One of my favorite guitar players on the planet absolutely so. Here's what he says. He says after I left Megadeth I didn't really follow a few of the guys that had that they had after me. I'm sure they were fantastic because that's just the kind of band it is. But if I think of other Megadeth guitarists, I think of how Chris Poland, who was an earlier guitar player, how Chris Poland was in the band before I was in it.
Steve:
I hated copying his stuff. I couldn't do it. This is Marty Friedman right, incredible guitar player. Just talking about exactly what I'm talking about. I hated copying his stuff. I couldn't do it. It was just too alien. Like any you know super musician, they've got their own stamp on it and there's no way for one person to step in that other person's shoes. I'm gonna read that again They've got their own stamp on it and there's no way for one person to step into that other person's shoes. It's impossible. I love his playing. I hated trying to copy that. Just a super, super guitar player and a really great guy too. We toured together once. That's the whole thing. Okay Is that you have your own thing and hopefully you'll keep elevating that thing and cultivating that style or whatever it is that you're trying to do. But you are not Marty Friedman, you are not Chris Poland, you are not Tommy Emanuel, you are not Steve Vai.
Steve:
So when we look at a band, for instance like I always use Ozzie as an example so if we go back to Randy Rhodes and we look at a trademark guitar solo like Crazy Train or you pick whichever one you want, and then you start looking at live or hearing, you don't see a lot, but you'll hear different live recordings of Randy, and Randy did not always play the solos the way they were on the album. Maybe it was a thing and then over time it merged and became something else, okay. And then you hear JK Lee, or you hear Zach Wilde, or you hear whoever approaching some of the things that Randy would have done, or some of the things that Tony Iommi would have done, or some of the things that JK Lee would have done before Zach Wilde, right, whatever, they're not exactly the same, because this exact same thing is happening. They might be utilizing certain key elements of that solo in their solo, but then from there they're putting their own spin on things. Why, well, I don't know. You'd have to ask them. A they don't wanna play it exactly the same. B they can't play it exactly the same. C there's a time limit. D. I mean, there's all kinds of different reasons why something like that would happen, but it's a reality.
Steve:
I just think it's so important that at some point, you start trying to develop your own voice and your own style on your guitar, whatever that means, versus just sitting in your studio or in your room or whatever, practicing one guitar solo for a year and a half, trying to perfect that one guitar solo. And if you are again, that's great, if that makes you happy, that's great. But if you think about all the other things you could have been doing in that amount of time as well, you know, developing your improvisation skills, developing your theory skills, developing your fretboard skills, developing your musical skills, your concept of phrasing, your jamming with other musicians, there's a, your songwriting. There's a million things that could be happening at that same time. Okay, so it's just something to think about. So let me let me give you a couple of examples. I'm looking at a list here.
Steve:
So YYZ, alex Lifeson, alex Lifeson. I love Alex Lifeson's guitar playing. I love his songwriting. Alex Lifeson is an awkward guitar player in that he does his own thing, his own way, like it is not just I'm in a scale and I'm gonna do a scale thing. He's like all over the place doing shapey stuff and weird sounding things and all that sort of thing, and Alex Lifeson will be the first one to tell you he has no idea what he played on the album, and then he'll have to go back and listen to it and try and kind of figure it out, or he'll just go I'll just start all over Dream Theater.
Steve:
You know they'll have these long jam sessions in some of their songs and it might be a song that they haven't played for a long time and now they have different members in the band Maybe Jordan is now in the band and Mike Bangeani is now in the band or whatever and they're working on some material from a long time ago that they haven't played and they certainly haven't played together as a band. So what happens oftentimes is that jammy section changes. Now why did they change it? Maybe they couldn't remember how exactly it went back in the day when they originally recorded that, or maybe they changed it. So it's more comfortable for the new members to execute, to play together, to merge as a band, whatever it might be.
Steve:
But these are artists that it's their own music, right? Just like Marty Friedman was talking about. So you know, we could approach a solo and go, hey, I want to play it, note for note and again, as I just said, there's nothing wrong with that. But I also believe there's nothing wrong with putting your own spin on it. So it makes sense not only in your physicality but the way you're viewing the fretboard. So let's think about that for a second.
Steve:
Let me give you another one Clips of Dover by Eric Johnson, an amazing artist with an amazing song, and I've played this song on stage a number of times and I love playing it. I do not phrase and visualize the fretboard the same way Eric Johnson does. I wish I could. There's amazing. I love Eric Johnson's playing, I absolutely love it. You know, guys like him and Andy Timmons and just players like that are so, so amazing, so melodic, so musical. But there are elements of the phrasing that he does. That just isn't me.
Steve:
Now it doesn't mean that I couldn't develop it, but I have to weigh that against everything else I have going on and I don't carry around a lot of guilt walking around going, yeah, I'm going to play that part and Clips of Dover a little different than you know Eric Johnson does, and I feel terrible about it. I don't feel terrible about it. I've got my whole life that I've got to deal with and this song is one microcosm of the billions of things that I have going on in my life. So it's okay. So my choices are either I will not play this song because I cannot play it, and choose to not try to play it exactly the same way that Eric Johnson does, or I can go okay, I'm gonna do it the way that it works for me and that way we can still do it, have some fun with it and it works into my world and we're good to go. That's that works for me.
Steve:
And it's not only the, the, the licks and things like that that I change. It's also sometimes the phrasing no, not the phrasing the positions of which he's playing. So, for instance, when I first learned how to play Cliffs of Dover. I did it without any tablature and and it was a struggle because there's a lot of stuff going on in there, so the way I learned how to visualize it was very different. So if, for instance, if I took that main riff, that whole thing, so this, if you can see it on video, if you can't, it's fine, but if you can see it on video, I'm not playing it.
Steve:
How he plays it? I don't even know how he plays it, but I know he doesn't play it here. Now, as I'm doing that, I'm thinking about, you know, paul muting and all these Like that's. That's the technical aspect that I would start thinking about more, which I'm not worried about right now. But you get the idea. So I'm playing it, I'm playing the notes, right, but the position is completely different.
Steve:
Now, does that make it wrong? Well, you might say yes, you might say no. This goes back to that same Tony Iommi story where Tony would play. You know he played up here. But when you watch every other guitar player that Ozzy plays with, almost never do they play it up here. They're always gonna play it here. So if they're playing it in a different spot, does that make them wrong? Well, again, for me, it's not right or wrong, it's what do you want to do. It's not even a question of right or wrong, it's a question of what makes sense to you and how do you want to play it. Because you're the one now playing with Ozzy in front of all these people and you've got to do what you got to do the way you do it. You're not Tony Iommi and even if you play it up there, all these people in the audience .03%
Steve:
care. For this reason we're talking about right now. You know you'll once in a while get and I'm not trying to be offensive, but you'll once in a while get these YouTube snobbs. That will go well. You know that's not right because whatever. And then I often wonder well, have you ever played in an actual band before? Like, because in the real world things are different than they are just sitting by yourself jamming to whatever and I'm not again, I'm not dock knocking that. I'm not saying that that's good or bad. What I'm saying is you do you and Figure out what works best for you. I think that's really
Steve:
important. Another example would be, again going back to Little Wing. We look at Little Wing by Jimmy Hendrix. We look at Little Wing by Steve Ray Vaughn, both, in my opinion, amazing versions of that song. I love Jimmy Hendrix, I've always loved Jimmy Hendrix, and I love Steve Ray Vaughn. Now Steve Ray Vaughn
Steve:
will. This is a perfect example of paying homage to the idea of Little Wing, but is he trying to replicate it, note for note? So is he wrong then, in just the same example I just gave you for this person, that's Saying that it's wrong that you're doing this versus this. So that means that Jimmy Hendrix is, or Steve Ray Vaughn is, wrong. He's wrong for playing Little Wing that way. Or is it okay for him because he's quote unquote famous, so it's okay for him, but it's not okay for you To change it, you see. So just think about that a little
Steve:
bit. I think it's really important that this conversation is a real and valid thing for you and the people that you play with. You know, sometimes we do this because there is a limitation, just like Marty Friedman was saying. Marty Friedman is An amazing guitar player, but that doesn't mean he can play like Chris Poland. That means he can play like Marty Friedman and I guarantee you, if Chris Poland tried to be Marty Friedman, he's not gonna be able to do it either, right? So we all have to find our
Steve:
place. I remember hearing Kiko from Megadeth, who's the newest guitar player who's been with him for quite a long time. But Kiko will try and do the best he can with some of those, those solos. But he's not Marty Friedman either. You know what I mean. He's he's paying homage as Best he can in whatever capacity he chooses, but they're not, note for note. They're not exact, you know they're. They're still gonna be, and rightfully so. Kiko's got to be in there too, because he's the one playing out, you
Steve:
know. So, anyway, think about that a little bit. Hopefully that helps you a little bit. And remember, if you're looking for any you know guitar Lesson information, always go over and check out guitar zoomcom. I thank you so much for Listening. If you're watching this somewhere, I thank you for that, and you know sign up, you know follow my social stuff and anything that it helps. I just really really appreciate your time and and and if you watch my stuff and you enjoy what I'm doing, I thank you for that too. So take care, stay positive and I'll talk to you soon.
