How to overcome stage fright

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It’s a familiar story – you get on stage for a performance, and suddenly, your heart starts racing, your palms start sweating, and you start getting lightheaded – your body goes into panic mode at the thought of performing! 

Many musicians – even really famous, successful ones – deal with stage fright. Adele, Ozzy Osbourne, and Eddie Van Halen have opened up about severe anxiety before performances.

See what Billboard Top 20 artist XIMXIA has to say about stage fright: 

Luckily, there are a lot of ways to combat stage fright. Here are a few tried and true tips:

PRACTICE 

Practice your songs back and forth, so that playing them is second nature. The less you have to think about what you’re playing, the easier it will be. If you have new or improvised songs in your set, put them toward the end, so you can feel more comfortable when it’s time to play them. 

Give yourself grace 

At the same time, if you do make a mistake, don’t get down on yourself about it. Even the pros make mistakes! Keep playing the piece and don’t let a wrong note get in your head. It’s unlikely the audience will notice small mistakes anyway. 

Visualize your performance 

Imagine that you have a perfect gig – what would that look like to you? How would it feel? Conceptualizing a performance will help you make it happen in real life. 

Be prepared (to the best of your ability) 

Make sure your gear is working and ready to go the night before the gig, make sure you have setlists, capos, and any other gear you might need, and get rest and a good meal before your performance. If you’re feeling stressed about gear, it will only make stage fright worse. 

Practice breathing exercises 

Practicing mindful breathing before a performance will help you to ground yourself. You can find helpful tutorials on YouTube or Tiktok. 

Fake it till you make it 

You’ve probably heard that pretending to have a quality actually helps you achieve that quality in real life. If you tell yourself that you’re confident to go on stage, eventually your brain will believe it. 

Connect with a friendly face 

Do you have a friend or family member in the audience? If you do, lock onto them until the jitters subside. If you’re playing in an unfamiliar place, scope out a friendly face in the audience and imagine that they just said your guitar playing is amazing. 

Just keep at it 

Eventually, performing will become second nature, and the pre-show anxiety will subside. Just remind yourself why you love playing music, and don’t give up! 

 

Five of the most iconic guitar solos of all time – and the stories behind them

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An incredible guitar solo can make a good song unforgettable. Guitar solos embody the emotional climax of a song, whether they’re minutes-long technical shredding or a simple line that sticks in listeners’ minds. 

Here are five of the greatest guitar solos of all time, and the stories behind them. 

 

Sweet Child O’Mine – Guns ‘n Roses 

The riff for “Sweet Child of Mine” started off as a joke, as GNR guitarist Slash played what he considered a “circus melody” at his bandmates for laughs. Lead vocalist Axl Rose wrote the lyrics to the song the next day. 

The solo for “Sweet Child” is built around the  Eb minor scale with a few major 7ths thrown in, before getting more aggressive in the second half of the solo as the tension builds. 

Learn how to play “Sweet Child O’Mine”.

 

Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd 

A guitar solo that inspired many heckles, “Free Bird”’s guitar solo clocks in at 143 bars, an extra-long solo. Guitarist Allen Collins recorded both guitar parts. “He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad,” Gary Rossington told Guitar World about the recording. “When we put the solo together, we liked the sound of the two guitars, and I could’ve gone out and played it with him. But the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! He just did it once and did it again and it was done.”

Learn how to play “Free Bird” with this lesson. 

 

Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin 

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page used a “magical guitar” – a telecaster, not his signature Les Paul – to play the solo for “Stairway to Heaven”. He told a magazine in 2021 that he played the same telecaster he used on the band’s first album, which Jeff Beck had given him when he played in The Yardbirds. 

His flowing solo on “Stairway” was ad-libbed in the studio during recording. “It’s not a laboured solo, it’s not something that’s worked out, written down and read, it’s more like a stream of consciousness,” Page said. 

You can study Page’s signature style with this course. 

 

Hotel California – The Eagles 

This “guitar solo” is more of a guitar duet, as Don Felder and Joe Walsh trade licks before doing harmonized licks together. Both guitars are playing arpeggios of every chord, with one guitar playing one note lower down in the chord. 

Walsh said in an interview that he and Felder worked out who would play when during the solo, but the solos were not planned. “They were spontaneous playing off of each other,” Walsh said.  “We were really good at that, and the rest of the song was kind of planned out, we put those descending lines on because that was the first set of overdubs”.

 

Eruption – Van Halen 

One of the most mind-bending solos of all time, “Eruption” was only meant to be a warm up, not a recorded song. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen said he arrived at the recording studio one day and started practicing his guitar, when the band’s producer heard it and asked him to record it. 

“So I took one pass at it and they put it on the record,” Van Halen said.  “I didn’t even play it right. There’s a mistake at the top end of it. To this day, whenever I hear it, I always think, ‘Man, I could’ve played it better.”

Learn Eddie Van Halen’s signature style with this course. 

Songs for performing CPR

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Learning how to perform CPR? You’ve probably heard to pick a song between 100 and 120 bpm for performing chest compressions. In a life-or-death situation like CPR, it’s good to pick a song you’re really familiar with. If you know the song on guitar, it can help commit it to memory. 

Here are some songs recommended for CPR chest compressions by First Response Training International. 

 

Stayin’ Alive – Bee Gees 


Numb – Linkin Park

More Than a Feeling – Boston 

 

Highway to Hell – AC/DC 

 

Dancing Queen – ABBA 

 

Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd 

 

Another Brick in the Wall, pt. 2 – Pink Floyd

 

Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana 

 

Electric guitars vs. acoustic guitars – which is right for you?

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If you’re a beginner guitar player, you’re probably wondering whether an electric or acoustic guitar is right for you. 

Guitarists’ instrument preferences are as unique to them as their playing styles. What’s right for one person might not be the best pick for another. 

Here are some things to consider when you’re choosing your first instrument: 

 

Building hand strength

Acoustic guitars are harder to get sound out of than electric guitars. They have thicker strings which require more pressure to hold down, especially while playing barre chords. They also rely purely on acoustics to produce sound, so it’s not tempting to simply crank the volume up as you could on an electric guitar. However, this makes acoustic guitars a good pick for first time learners, as you will build up strength (and calluses) in your fingers faster than on an electric guitar. They’re also good for learning strumming and picking patterns, since you have to get a feel for the strings’ vibrations when strummed. 

 

Equipment 

An acoustic guitar needs no amplification for regular playing – although you can purchase an electric/acoustic version if you want the ability to easily plug in. If you plan on performing with it live, consider that you’ll need to mic it separately. 

An electric guitar requires an amplifier and a cable at minimum. If you want to play it in spaces that don’t allow loud noise, you can get a set of headphones to go into the amplifier. 

 

Size/weight 

Electric guitars usually have flatter bodies and thinner necks than their acoustic counterparts, making them easier to hold close to your body and move your hand around the fretboard. However, they weigh more than acoustic guitars (since acoustics have hollow bodies). 

The average acoustic guitar weighs about 2.5 to 5 lbs, while the average electric guitar weighs about 8 lbs. 

 

Genre 

Another factor to consider in your first guitar purchase is what genre you’re most interested in playing. Electric guitars are versatile for a range of genres including rock, metal, punk, funk, and more. 

Acoustic guitars are a good pick if you’re primarily interested in being a singer-songwriter and performing solo, as well as if you’re interested in playing country, bluegrass, or folk music. 

 

Sound customization 

 

With pedals, you can get a large range of sounds and tones out of an electric guitar, whereas an acoustic guitar might not have the same range of expression. However, an electric-acoustic guitar can still be used with pedals. 

Fret Zealot course of the month – September 2024

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Each month, we’re putting the spotlight on one of our favorite Fret Zealot courses! 

 

Ultimate Guitar Tone School

 

Instructor: David Wills

How much do you really know about guitar tone? All of the guitar techniques in the world can’t help you produce a good guitar tone – but this course can. David Wills will teach you about tone from the ground up – from understanding how sound waves are produced, to how to optimize your rig for the best possible sound. In this course, Wills provides demonstrations of the pickup selections for all of the main types of electric guitars, so you can get the best sound possible out of your instrument. He even walks you through some of the most iconic tones of all time, pioneered by guitar greats like Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons, and Chuck Berry. 

 

What We Like

This course is a one-stop shop for learning all things tone – from understanding effects pedals to making sure your stage setup has the best sound possible. It’s perfect for the guitarist who is ready to play out, but needs the finishing touch. 

 

Once you’ve complete this course, try it with the following lessons: 

November Rain

 

Walk This Way 

 

Babe – I’m Gonna Leave You

 

Learn these songs for the end of summer

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Labor Day is almost here. Say goodbye to summer with these wistful songs about the last few warm days of the year! You can find tabs for all of these songs in the Fret Zealot app. 

 

“Cruel Summer” – Taylor Swift 

Lyrics: “I snuck in through the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate” 

 

“Stolen” –  Dashboard Confessional 

Lyrics: “We watch the season pull up its own stakes/And catch the last weekend of the last week/Before the gold and the glimmer have been replaced/Another sun soaked season fades away”

 

“Boys of Summer” – Don Henley (also The Ataris) 

Lyrics: “Nobody on the road/Nobody on the beach/I feel it in the air/The summer’s out of reach”

 

“Summer of 69” – Bryan Adams 

Lyrics: “Oh, when I look back now/That summer seemed to last forever” 


“The Last Day of Summer” – The Cure 

Lyrics: “But the last day of summer/Never felt so cold/The last day of summer/Never felt so old”

 

Learn these Adele songs on guitar with Fret Zealot

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British singer-songwriter Adele started playing guitar as a teenager, citing Amy Winehouse as her inspiration for picking up the instrument. 

Many of her songs are fairly simple to play on guitar, making it easy to accompany yourself singing. You can learn these Adele songs with Fret Zealot. 


Rolling in the Deep

This 2011 smash hit was written in a single afternoon by Adele and co-writer Paul Epworth. Adele had just broken up with her boyfriend, and the song was written as a reaction to “being told that my life was going to be boring and lonely and rubbish, and that I was a weak person if I didn’t stay in the relationship”, she told The Independent. 


Chasing Pavements

Adele said that a fight with a former boyfriend inspired “Chasing Pavements”. She told ELLE that she had slapped him during the fight at a club and ran away, only to look back and see that no one was chasing her.


Someone Like YouAdele Someone Like You Guitar Lesson Fret ZealotAdele started writing “Someone Like You” on her acoustic guitar after finding out that her former boyfriend was engaged to someone else just months after their breakup. 


Daydreamer

“Daydreamer” is the first track off of Adele’s first album, 19. She played guitar on the studio version of the track. 


Skyfall

Adele Skyfall Guitar Lesson Fret Zealot

Adele wrote “Skyfall” with co-writer Paul Epworth for the James Bond film of the same name. The pair worked to capture the “James Bond feeling” of previous movies’ theme songs in the original composition. 


Make You Feel My Love

Adele recorded a version of this song for 19, but the Bob Dylan-penned tune has been recorded by hundreds of artists, including Billy Joel, Michael Bolton, Boy George, Joan Osborne, Kelly Clarkson, and Pink. Adele wrote or co-wrote every other song on the album. 


Hello

Adele played drums on this chart-topping song from 25. 

 

Music recording terms you should know

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Are you looking to record your own music? 

There’s a whole terminology of words relating to music recording that you should know before booking studio time, or learning how to record yourself on a Digital Audio Workstation. 

Here are some terms you should know: 



DAW: A Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is an audio production software or platform designed for the recording, editing, mixing, and mastering of digital audio files. Some examples of popular DAWs are: Ableton, Logic Pro, Reason, Cubase, Studio One, Cakewalk. 

Track (noun) – a single stream of recorded sound (usually of one instrument) in a song.

Track (verb) – The process of recording an audio track. 

Arm – Preparing a track to record audio

Solo – Isolating a track so that you can listen to only the audio on the track

Mute – Silencing a track so you can hear how other tracks sound. 

Gain – The amount of amplification for your mic’s signal 

Monitor (verb) – Listening to an audio track as it’s being recorded 

Phantom Power – Voltage that is sent to specific microphones to power the microphone

Mixing – Editing and putting together multiple tracks of audio into one final master track

Mastering – TPolishing and editing a master track with the intent of making it radio ready quality

Levels – How loud audio in a specific track is

EQ – Equalizer. EQs allow you to turn up or down portions of the audio spectrum higher or lower 

Audio effects plugins – Audio effects allow you to alter the sounds of your tracks. You can apply audio effects to just one track or a group of tracks. There are an infinite number plug-ins available, but here are some of the most commonly used ones. 

Equalizer Plugins –  eliminate digital harshness, removes unwanted resonances, balance sounds

Compressor Plugins – used to “squash” your audio signal. Compressors reduce the dynamics of an audio signal so that loud parts get quieter and quiet sounds get louder. 

Reverb Plugins – Reverb is an ambient effect that creates a series of audible reflections (think of the echo effect in an empty auditorium. 

Vocal tuning – can slightly shift the pitch of a voice or instrument so that it’s correct. 

MIDI Sequencing: MIDI or Music Instrument Digital Interfaces look like keyboards, but they send musical signals to your DAW, to be transmuted into whatever sound you’d like from the DAW library. This allows you to compose melodies, harmonies, and musical arrangements with virtual instruments within the DAW’s library. 

Reverb – The audio that lingers around in a space after the source audio has finished. To get a sense of reverb, imagine singing in an empty concert hall vs. a closet. 

Automation – Automation is used to create changes in dynamic in your project, like fading out a song at the end. 

Audio exporting – when your project files are ready to be heard by others, you can export it – as a .WAV file for mastering or as stem files through .mp3s. 

 

If you’re setting up your home studio, check out this course! 

 

Home Guitar Studio Guide 

Guitar techniques that look harder than they are

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If you’re starting out on guitar, watching seasoned guitar players shred away can be a little intimidating. However, some guitar techniques that look and sound cool aren’t that difficult to play.

Here are some guitar skills that look more difficult to master than they actually are. 

 

Power chords 

If you’re memorizing the basic open chords like C, D, and E, something like a G5 might look funny to you. 

Power chords are the building blocks for many punk, grunge, and alternative songs. Power chords are made up of just the root note and the fifth note, sometimes with the octave of the root note included. They’re different from major and minor scales because they’re neither major nor minor, and don’t include any other notes. 

The tough part about mastering power chords is to strum only the strings inside the chord. Once you master that, you’ll be able to play many songs – like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with ease. 

Check out this Power Chord Workout for Guitar course to get started.

 

Fingerpicking 

Fingerpicking gives songs like “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas and “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers their distinct textures. When you fingerpick a song, you use your fingers to pluck the strings rather than strumming with your hand or a pick. It can take a little bit of time to get used to the different movement, but often you’ll be playing simple chord progressions, so it takes less brain power than it seems to. 

Check out our Acoustic Fingerstyle – Level 1 course to get started! 

 

Bending notes 

“Bending” is when you play a guitar note and then push the string horizontally across the fretboard, changing the pitch. Eric Clapton uses this often in his playing, and it can be heard prominently in “Sunshine of My Love” by Cream. 

Bending sounds high-level, but it’s fairly simple to learn. Check out Ultimate Lead Guitar Techniques to learn bending, and other impressive-sounding solo techniques. 

 

Pinch harmonics 

Pinch harmonics, aka pick or pitch harmonics, or “squealies”, creates a high pitched tone by silencing the main frequency of a note, allowing the overtones to come through. ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons uses this technique frequently to make his solos more memorable – you can hear it used in “La Grange”. 

It may take some work to learn how to incorporate pinch harmonics into your work, but to actually learn how to make that sound is not difficult. Check out Metal Essentials Level 1 to learn how to make this technique work. 

Fret Zealot course of the month – August 2024

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Each month, we’re putting the spotlight on one of our favorite Fret Zealot courses! 

 

Ultimate Lead Guitar Techniques

Instructor: Julian Cooper

Do you want to learn your favorite guitar solos for bands like AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, but get tripped up on imitating their specific techniques? This course will take you step-by-step through the techniques you need to know for playing blues, rock and metal. Learn hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides – and how to put them all together to emulate a certain sound. 

This course also delves into using the chromatic scale, arpeggios and sweep picking, and tapping, and includes a play-though to practice what you’ve learned. Ultimate Lead Guitar Techniques will help mold you into an excellent soloist. 

 

What We Like

Julian has a remarkable ability to simplify his incredible guitar skill into the basics that every aspiring guitarist is striving to conquer. He also makes heavy use of examples for each technique, so if you are a “learn-by-doing” kind of person, his courses will resonate with you! He also has a selection of atypical learning courses that focus on learning through examples in certain styles, even meditative, that aren’t your standard traditional basics.

 

Once you’ve complete this course, try it with the following lessons: 

Am I Evil 

 

Be Yourself 


You Give Love A Bad Name