How to become a unique guitar player

Today most guitarist are schooled through music schools with a curriculum that is not that unique. In the old days the only thing the aspiring guitar player had was a gramophone and a guitar. Some sat hours upon hours picking up their favorite guitarists in order to learn the tricks that they where performing. Those days are long gone and today people go online to find the "same" information.

The difference is a major one in the favor of the gramophone. The reason being that as well as picking up tricks they where tuning their ear as they spent hours upon hours listening as well as playing. With all the material available online these days, aspiring guitarists don´t need to do that. The problem with this is that much of the materials is ill described by guitarists that don´t have the ear to transcribe music accurately.

The masters of the unique

Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and Jan Akkerman (Focus) all have their unique style of playing the guitar. Some more that others, Zappa was almost totally unique when it came to playing the guitar. His solo guitar stands alone without any help from any guitarist. Hendrix introduced a unique rhythmic style with his jazz chords on top of Rhythm and Blues blended with rock. David Gilmour introduced rock to space and Jan Akkerman had a unique flair for going out of the natural scale producing tension and release at the right moments.

The uniqueness of a guitarist is quite easy to judge, if one knows what to look for. Santana has it, Jimmy Page has it, Zappa had it, but what is it? When you hear a guitarist play you may or may not know who is playing. The one´s you don´t know are the one´s that don´t have it, the one´s that you do know have it. To identify a uniques guitarist is to know him by his playing. If you know who is playing and can identify the sound without doubt that is the mark. A unique guitarist sounds unique!

So how do I become a uniques guitarist?

Many unique people come from rural places. It´s for the simplest reasons i.e. they are isolated from cities and don´t learn or copy all the useless stuff that goes on in cities. City dwellers copy each other for good or bad, including music and guitar playing. Rural folks often don´t have the same reference as the city folk and sometimes no reference at all. Sometimes no reference is the best one, going into the distance exploring anything and everything that comes your way. Nudity teaches a naked woman to spin.

The way to become a unique guitarist is to stop following other guitarists and copying their material. A nice way to learn the guitar is to copy but when it comes to uniqueness copying is out of the question. Try to play something stupid, awkward, absurd, strange, funny, etc. Go with it, explore it, study it and develop it. Go into the desert and learn to play the guitar like no one has before you.