Blues Guitar God Joe Bonamassa Shares 5 Top Tips for Guitarists
Guitarist Joe Bonamassa recently got to share a few words of wisdom for all the guitar players out there, giving us his Top 5 tips for six-string axe men. From guitar tuning, gain, amps and equipment, as well as on a variety of playing styles, Joe summed up by noting that “you never stop learning new things about the guitar. It’s a journey.”
1. Learn How to Tune Your Guitar
“I know this sounds kind of academic, but there’s some tricks to tuning your guitar properly. When tune your guitar, play a bunch of chords you know to make sure they sound right. A lot of times the meter will say the guitar is in tune, but to my ear certain chords might sound a bit off.
“You want to know how to tune your guitar – that’s first off – but also, you should how to temper your technique so that chords, notes and your personal intonation are all perfectly in tune with the guitar.
“When you start playing chords, you need to consider things like how hard you press on the strings and where your fingers are placed off the fret. It’s a matter of systematically going through your bag of techniques, recording yourself and then listening back.”
2. Try Plugging Straight Into the Amp
“When you do that, when you remove all the barriers between your guitar and the amp, you’ll force yourself to make something happen. Find the sounds that are in the Les Paul or the Telecaster or whatever it is you’re playing. Once you do that, then you can augment your sound with pedals. Oftentimes guys start out with 50 pedals or plugins or whatever, and they never really discover the sound that their hands, a guitar and an amp can make.
“I had that same disease for a long time, and I think it stunted my development as a player. At home, I would always plug right into the amp, but I would justify the onstage thing and say, ‘I need a tremolo and a flanger and a Leslie pedal,’ and on and on. Finally, I just said, ‘I don’t need any of this stuff. It’ll sound fine.’ I plugged into a Tweed Twin with just a wah-wah, and I said, ‘Hey, this is way more fun.’ It’s such a liberating experience to see what sounds you can get with your volume, your tone and your technique.”
3. Work on Styles That You Don’t Play for a Living
“If you play blues for a living, work on country. If you play jazz for a living, work on blues. If you play country for a living, work on blues and jazz. And so on – if you play heavy metal, work on jazz and country.
“Ultimately, what you don’t want to be is a one-dimensional player. There are plenty of guys out there who can play their music and their music alone, but if you invite them to play something else, they won’t know where to start. They don’t have any other kind of musical vocabulary.”
4. Turn Down Your Gain
“If you like the gain set at five, try it at four. I’ve discovered that people like to see you struggle a little bit. If you’re too comfortable on stage, chances are you’re not sweating enough for the music.
“If you have the gain turned up all the time, you’re going to sound like a vacuum cleaner. My tech, Mike Hickey, started working for us four years ago, and told me recently, ‘Joe, the amount of gain you have now is about a third of what it was when I started with you. There’s almost no sustain.’ It’s true – I probably get more sustain out of my acoustics than with my electrics.”
5. Bring Gear That’s Appropriate for the Session
“If you’re lucky enough to play guitar for a living and you’re called to do a session that might not be your style of music, bring the gear that’s appropriate for that session, not what’s appropriate for your ego.”