The Top 10 books Every Guitar Student Should Read

Playing guitar is a journey into self-awareness and self-mastery. A guitar-player, who looks at music passionately, sees his instrument as more than a tool that produces sound. Yet, it is the musician who is the instrument; the guitar IS just the tool. Your guitar is an extension of you, but it is you who is making the music, not the guitar.

Moreover: just like people who are passionate about yoga, or martial arts, or the art of tea making or flower arranging for that matter; music is the musician's path to enlightenment. Like Zen Buddhists say: "Through one thing, know ten thousand things". If you chose guitar as your path, then guitar will teach you everything there is possibly to learn about everything else: life, the Universe, yourself, the world, etc.  For one: through the study of guitar and music you will learn the value of patience, persistence and focus. You will also learn a lot about yourself: what your weakness are, where they come from, how to solve them, how to pace yourself, how to be in the moment, how to create rhythm, flow and harmony, or how to become a better listener, and so much more.
In addition: the better you get at guitar, the more fun it becomes. The below books will help speed up your progress, open up your mind, and get you even more inspired. They will get you into the zone! The lessons taught in those books will further ignite your passion, inspiration, creativity, personal growth and interest in music.

These are the top ten books every guitar student should have on their shelves and regularly reread. These books are a must read if you want to find and develop your inner artist, overcome your self-imposed limitations and overcome obstacles. The lessons you will learn will help you unlock your full potential, help you learn more effortlessly and will lead you to find even greater joy in music.
You can buy these top-10 must-reads here http://www.zotzinguitarlessons.com/store/
Time to Get Into The Zone!

1.    The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

The Artist's Way offers many tools and insight to awakening your creative being. Julia Cameron offers many great examples of how to nourish your creativity with tools such as morning pages and the artist date. Morning pages are geared to help clear your head and allow ideas to flow. The artist date is a tool to help you explore the world around you with a creative eye. These exercises get you to express yourself more freely and grow creatively.


2.        Zen Guitar by Philip Toshio Sudo

Zen Guitar explains the spirit and principles of Japanese dojo and how those principles relate to music. Zen Guitar is about the spiritual side of musicianship and this book helps you to explore the passion and spirituality behind music. If you are interested in learning more about the spirituality of music and in becoming more aware of your musical journey, then this book is a great way to dig deeper into your core and understand why you enjoy music. You will read this book over and over again.

3.    Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner

Effortless Mastery is a fantastic book that proves every musician can achieve greatness with his mind and instrument. Effortless Mastery is a success story of jazz musician Kenny Werner and provides great key points on how to establish greater confidence in yourself and embrace your musicianship. This is a great read for any musician trying to become the best he can be.



4.    The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green

The Inner Game of Music is a book written by double bassist Barry Green. This is a great read for any music student because it describes in simple ways how to avoid the pitfalls that can ruin or obstruct the "game" of your musical development. Barry Green explains how to avoid the voices of doubt, judgment and confusion in order to love the music you play. The book teaches why it is always the people who have the most fun learning a new skill, who end up becoming masters at that skill much more effortlessly.



5.    Stage Performance by Livingston Taylor

Stage Performance is a book written by Livingston Taylor, professor of music at Berklee College of Music. This book is an extremely helpful account of how to perform on stage. Taylor covers topics like the right way to begin and end your stage performance as well as how to overcome stage fright. Written with humor and real-life solutions, Stage Performance is a great book any performing musician should read!



6.    The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten

The Music Lesson is a fantastic account of Wooten's ideas on the spirituality of musicianship as well as the spiritual journey that can be taken by playing music. Victor Wooten describes his many ideas and ways of thinking in this book as well as many other spiritual music lessons. Music is fully capable of having a spiritual affect on anyone. Read The Music Lesson to find out why.



7.    Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

"Outliers" is Malcolm Gladwell's account of a specific type of person deemed an "outlier." Gladwell compares successful people such as Mozart and Bill Gates and builds a case of how many successful people become successful on a tide of advantages that were the result of dedication, hard work, planning and putting in the hours, as opposed to pure talent and genius. This is great read for any musician because it puts "talent" in the right perspective, After reading this book you will realize that indeed "genius" is something that is created, not something that is a gift or inborn. You have all the genius and talent you need.


8.    The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

Daniel Coyle wrote the Talent Code to prove successful, talented people are not "born," they are grown. The Talent Code is a fantastic read for any musician because it offers many of Coyle's methods of coaching, motivation and training. With useful tips of how to become great at anything, this book can easily be applied to playing guitar and teach you how to be great at what you do. This MUST read will help you realize that "YES, you do have all the talent it takes" to become as good at guitar as you would like to be.



9.    The Power of the Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy

The Power of the Subconscious Mind offers great exercises and insights on how to overcome mental barriers. The mind is extremely capable of holding you back in your growth as a musician. Dr. Murphy offers several exercises and true success stories for anyone looking to overcome limitations. Though not a music or musicians book, the principles from the fields of psychology and spirituality that this book covers, will help you become a greater musician, help you get rid of performance anxiety, and achieve better results with lesser effort.



10.    The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The Power of Now describes living in the now to be the truest and purest way to happiness and enlightenment. This is a great book for musicians because it describes how to be more passionate about what you are doing in the moment rather than being anxious about the past or future. The more you are aware and in the moment, the more focused you will be and the more you will get out of your life, out of your musicianship, and out of your practice time. Focus on the now and on the joy of the journey: you will get wherever you are going to in due time.


These fun, profound reads will have a tremendous impact on your musical joy, journey and growth. Buy these top 10 essential books here http://www.zotzinguitarlessons.com/store/

7 Tips to Help You Learn Tons of Songs In a Time Crunch

You have this great opportunity to play a show and earn some good money, or to get into this high-level band, but you need to learn their whole set of songs you never heard before, for a show they have in 4 days. Things like this happen regularly in this fickle industry. Here are 7 tips that will help you prepare for those kinds of situations.

Set Yourself A Deadline You Can’t Escape.

Might seem a silly topic considering that the show you have to play 4 days after being hired is already a serious deadline in and of itself. Yet, you can battle and target that deadline, setting mini deadlines to accomplish as stepping stones towards the main deadline: the show. Tell the band who hired you to have a rehearsal tomorrow or within 2 days the latest of you getting the songs. It is amazing how much you can accomplish when you set yourself constant deadlines. You will find yourself working much harder and being much more focused when you set a short deadline you cannot escape. Tell them that you want to rehearse with them tomorrow and that you will get most of the songs down by tomorrow’s rehearsal. Stay up all night if you have to: play the songs non-stop till you cannot forget them anymore.

Push your limits and push your memory.

Don’t Waste Time “Getting Organized”.  

You don’t really have time to waste and you surely don’t have time to start making practice schedules or create an organizational fuss. The task is simple: you have 14-15 songs to learn and a show in 4 days. Speak up: the band might already have tabs or chord charts written out. Ask them to save time and hassle figuring it all your by yourself.

If they don’t have music or chords written out: get to work. You don’t get fussy about which song to start with: you pick the first one on the CD they gave you and you figure out the chords asap. When you’re done, you immediately get to the next song and figure the chords out to that one. Keep going till you have all the chord charts prepared to all songs. If they play cover tunes, find the tabs online to save yourself time transcribing. Don’t start learning and practicing songs till you have all the chords and guitar parts to all the songs on paper. While you’re in the transcribing flow: you will find yourself finish this part of the job much more quickly if you don’t get distracted into playing, then transcribing again, then playing again, then back to transcribing, etc.  Don’t interrupt what you are doing and don’t multi task. Remember: you don’t have time to waste. Finish one part of the job completely before you move on to the next step. All successful people apply this important rule. When you are done compiling all the charts: go back to the first song and memorize it all. Only move on to the next song when you have the song you were practicing close to completely memorized.

Get Amazing Slowdowner

This is amazing practice software. It allows you to change the tempo and the pitch of songs independently from one another. If the song is a bit too fast to your technical abilities, slowing the song down will make it easier to play. You can then gradually speed up the song over numerous repetitions as you keep getting better. The main time saving feature to address here is the “start point” feature. You can set a starting point so the song always starts from the same spot in the song upon simply hitting your space bar. Even better: you can also set the ending point of the fragment you want to repeat over and over again. Now the fragment loops and you don’t even have to hit your space bar anymore to start the music. When the musical passage hits the end marker, the music automatically jumps back to the starting point and keeps repeating between your 2 cue points. This is unlike for example iTunes or any music playback software, where you have to physically grab your mouse to pull the song position slider back, then wait till that section of the song comes up where you need practice; and then do all that over and over again. This saves a lot of time with Amazing Slowdowner.

More Info on Amazing Slow Downer Here
Order Amazing Slow Downer: Buy It Here

Don’t procrastinate.

Listen to the songs whenever you have a minute.

Listen to them in your car. If the songs were emailed to you as mp3’s, burn them on a CD or put them on your iPod so you can listen to them everywhere all the time. While listening: try to memorize the song forms and structures. Is there an intro? How long are the verses? Can you tell the chord progression by ear? Having the structures of the songs memorized, is already half the battle. The good news is: you don’t need your guitar for that and you can practice this anywhere. You just need to keep listening to the songs over and over again.

Every single second you have should be dedicated on getting those songs down. Those songs, for those 4 days, are your whole world. Nothing else exists.

Repeat… Repeat… Repeat!

Repetition is the mother of all skills. The only way you are going to get those songs down in no time at all: is trough focused, continuous repetition. Don’t take breaks: keep repeating till the material is hammered in. Here’s a good tip: the moment you feel you are starting to get the song memorized that you have been working on, move on to the next one. During that time, the previous song will have time to sink in, and some of it will get forgotten again. Then after 15-20 minutes, move back to playing the one you felt you almost had down 20 minutes ago. That way you feed the information to your brain, let your brain assimilate the info and forget some of it, then feed it to your brain again, and so on. It is like having multiple rehearsals a day of the same song. This is the very best way to get things memorized.

Keep Positive Thoughts.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed and to think that you cannot do it. Change your thinking: you can do whatever you set your mind to. There is no greater waste of time and energy than thinking negatively. As a matter of fact: you don’t even have time to think. Keep working, keep learning, drink lots of water and eat a small meal every 3-4 hours to keep your energy up. This is totally doable. As a matter of fact: you could learn 15 songs in a matter of only hours of time. In preparation for these kinds of situations, you should practice your ear relentlessly. The better your ear: the lesser time it takes to learn songs. Thinking positively also opens up your mind to find solutions. If for example you somehow don’t manage to get all the songs down by your rehearsal deadline: bring your chord charts in case you forget parts of certain songs so you can read them. If you will not be able to get all the guitar solos down note for note: simplify them, or ask if it would be ok to improvise your own solos, which would save you a lot of study time if there are a lot of guitar solos. Panicking leads to tunnel vision, which results in a narrow perspective, which makes it harder to see solutions and possibilities. Be positive!

Play Behind The Beat.

When you have that rehearsal, it helps to play behind the beat. Not only does this make you sound more relaxed, it also gives you that fraction of a millisecond extra time to hear what the next chord is that the band is playing. Especially if you have a really good ear, playing a bit behind the beat buys you that fraction of extra time to hear which chord the band is moving to next. This too saves you a great deal of memorization time. You still want to have the song memorized, but it takes away, pressure, worries and stress, to know that this trick will aid your memory on the spot while performing the songs with the band.