Chords for Things Guitarists Should Never Do

Oh no, your string is sharp.
What do you do?
I tune down.
Never tune down.
What?
You know how
they say you need to tune up?
That's because you should always be tuning up.
If your string is
sharp, you bring it down further than you need to, _ _ then you always bring it up to pitch.
_ [N] If you tune
directly down without coming back up at least a little bit, it's much less stable and you're
going to deal with tuning issues.
One of the most dangerous things that you can do as a guitarist
is something that gets recommended far too often.
Never ever break off the grounding pin on your
amp's power cord.
Why would anybody do this you ask?
Well, I've had sound guys, salesmen,
amp repair techs, people who should know better all tell me if you're dealing with hum or unwanted
noise in your signal chain, just break off your amp's ground pin.
Definitely don't do this.
See
what this does is if your amp malfunctions and it needs to displace a large amount of power,
it sends out electricity down here somewhere safe.
But if this thing is broken off,
then it sends that electricity through your cable, through your guitar, through you, and yeah,
that's very, very much a bad thing.
If you're dealing with hum, you want to eliminate the
problem at the source or buy a product that eliminates the ground loop in a safe way.
Don't take it out on your poor power cables.
Your tone should be to die for, not something that you
die for.
Never be that guy.
Hey guys, I brought my acoustic.
I can't wait to show everybody the
I'm in a Prague song I just wrote.
I get it.
Everybody wants to bring their guitar to a
gathering and wow the party with their music, but it's all too easy to become that guy.
Here are
some tips to avoid that.
First of all, read the room.
If people are asking you to play,
that is a great sign.
If no [F] one is, don't just sonically force yourself on people.
You got to
have a good handful of crowd pleasers you can pull out.
And then I guess maybe if you need to,
sprinkle some of your Prague in there or whatever, but I'm talking your wagon wheels,
your sweet home Alabamas.
I hate to say it, your wonder walls.
Get other people involved.
Make it
a communal thing.
Pass your guitar to someone else.
Get [Bb] someone to sing along with you.
Play
songs that everyone can sing along to you.
Remember, this is not your [Gb] concert.
This is
Trevor's house party.
Playing guitar together can be great, but be aware of your surroundings
and please don't be that guy.
Now say you're at a party and you get handed an acoustic guitarist
drum.
What do you play?
[G] I don't know.
G, [Em] E minor, [D] C, D.
Well, you [A] could, but that's [Gb] what the last
five guys played.
What if you changed up those chords so they [Em] sound like this.
_ _ _ _ _ _ [D] _
And here's the
thing.
It's [N] simple to play that kind of stuff and it sounds great.
I cover those chords and more in
my new course, Elevated Open Chords.
In this course, we look at a number of easy to implement
concepts that will get you playing some beautiful chords that most guitar players have no idea even
exist.
Electric or acoustic, I use this stuff all the time to spice up basic chord progressions.
For a little bit longer, we've got special launch pricing.
You can get this course 50% off if you
use promo code launch50 at checkout.
I've got links for that in the description, or you can
find more information at samurai-guitar-theory.com. So you want to get rid of the worst guitar that
you've ever owned.
One of the last things that you want to do [Gb] in this situation is straight up
sell it to the guitar store.
Of course, not every store has the same policy, but every store does
need to make a profit off of buying the guitar from you.
When I used to work at a guitar store,
if somebody came in just straight up looking to sell an instrument, we would give them 60%
of what we would sell it for.
You'd be far better off trying to sell online and be willing to take
30% less than what you listed for.
The last option should be selling to someone who then is going to
sell it again.
One of the great things [C] about the day [Em] and age we live in is that you can get some
great [Bb] sounds running your guitar into your computer and then listening back through headphones.
But I strongly recommend against always playing and practicing like this.
I don't know what it is,
but there's something about loud physical sounds that we react differently to.
And when you're
playing a gig [Abm] or jamming with a band, you're going to be making loud guitar [C] noises.
You're
not used to this.
It can be [Em] intimidating.
Trepidation sneaks into your [C] playing, which
is never good.
And next thing you know, you're [N] getting stuff thrown at you at your first gig.
Every now and then you're going to want to get some actual speakers moving, crank it up,
and let loose.
[A] _ When [C] playing guitar, never tense up.
Easy as that, right?
Well, it would be if
tightening your muscles wasn't a natural reaction to a stressful situation [E] like playing a difficult
piece of music.
When playing [C] something fast or difficult, you want to be as smooth and relaxed
as when you're playing something easy, which is hard because [N] it goes against our natural instincts.
The best thing you can do is just try to be aware of when you're doing this.
And when you catch
yourself, take a breath, loosen up.
Never do soundcheck without earplugs, even if you're not
planning on wearing them for the gig.
Now, of course, you should wear them for a gig.
Your
ears are important.
It's easy to damage them.
And if you do, it's permanent.
But I know that you're
just not going to convince some musicians to wear hearing protection.
So I would implore you,
if nothing else, wear them during the soundcheck.
Here's why.
In my experience, soundcheck is the
most likely place where you're going to come across a dangerous, surprising, obnoxiously
loud sound.
You're tweaking your pedals and the drummer smashes a cymbal right beside your ear,
probably going to happen during soundcheck.
Some horrible feedback coming from the PA,
probably going to happen during soundcheck.
The other guitar player turning on his amp without
realizing how loud it is and smacking a chord, probably going to [E] happen during soundcheck.
These are especially dangerous, especially when you're not expecting them.
So yeah,
you should wear your earplugs for the entire gig.
But if you're not going to, at least wear them
during soundcheck.
Never use compressed air to [N] clean your guitar.
The air can come out really
cold, which can crack your finish and can also just lodge dust significantly deeper.
Instead,
a good microfiber cloth is the way to go.
Never go on tour without Apple AirTags or
some sort of Android equivalent.
At some point [C] on tour, you're going to be [G] away from your precious
instruments.
I've heard so many painful [Abm] stories of bands getting their [Em] trailers broken into [N] and
their instruments stolen.
These little guys are tracking devices that give you a means to find
a lost piece of gear.
And I personally tuck mine somewhere less obvious as thieves are becoming
aware of this kind of thing.
These solid connectors are quite bad for your pedals and you shouldn't
use them.
I've got two pedals connected by one of these and look what happens when I press one of
them.
The other one lifts up slightly.
When these are both secured to a pedal board, if I press on
one of these, that pressure is going to happen right here and eventually this jack is going to
break.
A short cable with some elasticity in it solves the problem.
Never run your tube amp if
it's not plugged into a speaker.
These things generate a lot of energy and if there's nowhere
for that power to go, it can be quite damaging and a rather expensive fix.
Never be a jealous
hater.
Jealousy is a natural thing that many of us deal with.
At some point, you're going to see
someone who has success that you want, a piece of gear you want, skills you want, but taking that
jealousy and trying to bring somebody else down to your level with it is never a good look.
Whenever
this creeps up within me, I tell myself that you can't always control what you feel, but you can
control what you do with it.
Instead of letting it leak into the world in a negative way, I'll take
this ugly feeling and turn it into something positive like motivation or inspiration and doing
so has such a better outcome for all parties involved.
Here's a dramatic recreation of
something you should never do.
Brr, sure is cold outside.
Maybe I shouldn't have left my guitar in
the trunk all day. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ So you don't want your guitar to go abruptly from one climate to another.
This
can cause your finish to crack, issues with the wood, that kind of thing.
But the nice thing is
your case kind of acts as a stabilizer.
It'll retain the temperature and humidity of wherever
your guitar was for quite a while.
So if your guitar was out in the cold all day, don't open
the case right away.
Let it sit for an extended period of time to climatize.
Now on the subject
of keeping your guitars, especially your acoustics, in a happy climate, never leave the humidity of
your guitar up to mother nature unless maybe you live in the tropics.
Where I live, we have very
dry winters, very humid summers.
So in my studio, I've got a dehumidifier and a humidifier to try to
keep things somewhat even.
It's not perfect though, and I like to be especially cautious with my
acoustics.
So in each of their cases, I use one of these Daddario Humidi Packs.
Couldn't be more
straightforward.
[Em] One pouch goes by the headstock, and then the doubler goes in the sound hole, and
this maintains a perfect balance.
I've got links for these in [Am] the description.
The most common
physical ailment I'll deal with as a guitar player is fingernail pain.
You bend [F] a string,
which can cause your finger and the nail [Em] to kind of separate.
It's extremely painful.
[N] It makes
playing guitar miserable.
But here's what you have to do to never deal with this.
First of all, I'll
file instead of clip the fingernails on the fingers I use for bending.
I don't know why, but this seems
to be a decent preventative measure.
However, every now and then, the old finger fingernail
separation does still happen.
Why this hurts so much when you're playing is because your finger is
kind of always pulling at that tiny little wound.
So what I do is I use Krazy Glue to glue my finger
back to the nail, and it seems to solve this problem entirely.
This one comes from a whole
lot of personal experience, but as a guitar player, you should never tell yourself,
I will be happy if _ only_
and for me, this presents itself in a number of different ways.
[E] I'll be happy if only I can play like this, or if [Bb] only I can buy that guitar, if only I can have
career in music, if only I can hit a certain number of YouTube subscribers.
And wouldn't it be so nice
if it worked like that?
But for better or worse, humans are [N] really good at adapting to their
scenarios.
Hit one milestone, you buy one thing, that becomes normal, and you want something else.
And as I found myself going through this cycle over and over again, the biggest thing that I
try to remind myself is to find as much joy as possible in that long journey to the milestone
instead of fixating on the celebration.
And if there's one thing I'd like you to take away from
this video, besides don't electrocute yourself because you broke off the ground pin, it would be
this.
Ladies and gentlemen, there [Gb] you have it, things you should never do on guitar.
Remember,
you can get my new course, Elevated Open Chords, 50% off if you use promo code [C] LAUNCH50 at checkout.
[Gbm] You can find more information [Dbm] for that [Abm] using the link in the [Ab] description or head over to
samurai [Eb]-guitar-theory.com. We got Sammy G merch over at [E] shopsamurai-guitarist.com. Check out the
[A] pixelated guitar playing [Db] samurai, as well [Gb] as a number of [Gbm] other designs and a bunch of different
styles, [Abm] sizes, and colors.
[D] Thank you all for watching.
Until next time, look after yourselves,
look after each [Dm] other, look after the planet.
I'm [Ab] Samurai Guitarist, and I'll see you again [Bm] soon.