There’s a thing people do on Bluesky a lot where they post “one like = one thought on [thing],” and then, well, for every like that skeet gets (yes, I am ride-or-die that they are called skeets), they post a thought about the thing. I did one of those over the weekend; specifically, I said “Ok, 1 like = 1 thought on guitars and guitar-playing.”

The post got 92 likes, and I thought the resulting 92 skeets wound up being a kind of useful and fun pile of guitar information. So I thought I’d compile them all into one post here!

1. Lead is like 80% tone. Get your tone right and your lead parts could be three notes that just make people say “wow, that’s a cool sound.”

2. Tone is slippery. The tone that sounds perfect when you’re playing by yourself is not the true ideal tone. To truly dial it in, you need bass and drums happening so you hear how it sounds in context.

3. Playing lead is made to seem harder than it is because most guitar instruction now starts from the assumption that the instrument’s primary purpose is to produce chords, not melodies; and playing lead is just creating melodies.

4. Also most instruction now is built around systems (CAGED, pentatonic boxes, diagonal pentatonic), and those are all fine as paths to learning but none of them are the final, complete truth some zealots present them as.

5. In a full band situation, especially as you get progressively bigger than a power trio, the most important musical choice you can make is to not have everyone playing all the time.

6. The guitar isn’t the instrument, it’s just part of it. The instrument is the guitar -> pedals -> amp system. All three components matter.

7. Personal preference here, but I like pedals that do one thing and have simple control parameters; this cuts down on choice paralysis even if you have a bunch stacked.

8. If you’re going to be playing live and you do a lot of pedal switching, you absolutely need to consider the ergonomics of hitting switches while playing when you’re building your pedalboard.

9. You should learn enough theory to at least know major and minor scales, and understand the Nashville Number System (which will also mean that you understand keys).

10. Getting really comfortable with knowing where every note on the fretboard is a pain in the ass at first, but it will pay off MASSIVELY over time.

11. It’s actually far more valuable to be a great rhythm player than a great lead player. It’s fun to be good at both, but if you feel like you have to pick (for now, at least), go hard on rhythm.

12. This isn’t an absolute thing, but in general chord voicings that don’t require all 6 strings are great because they provide a less muddy sound.

13. Gear matters, but only to a point: once you get to a spot where the gear you own doesn’t require you to actively work around its shortcomings, returns start to diminish pretty hard with upgrades.

14. No need to go nuts over it, but it’s a good idea to have your guitars get a professional setup every few years.

15. As in the world of bikes, often when you buy a guitar or an amp from a shop, you are also sort of buying a relationship with that shop.

16. You can have pretty lax standards for how often to change your strings, but you do have to have some standards.

17. That said, none of the looping or knotting tricks with restringing get you anything. Few loops around the peg, string coming off underneath the loops, you’re good.

18. It’s not always possible, but if you can get to a setup where you can carry your amp, pedalboard, gear bag, and two guitars all at the same time (so, in one load-in trip) you are absolutely winning.

19. Don’t discount the weird, unconventional stuff you figure out when you’re early in the process and just farting around. That stuff can wind up being really cool and valuable later on.

20. If you want to play the blues, that’s great, and you should. But you are by no means required to play the blues!

21. Best way to get better: play with other people. If that’s not available: playing along with recorded music instead of over generated backing tracks. With the recording, at least at one point there was a real drummer there for you to interact with.

22. If you break a string more than once a year, it’s probably worth it to consciously try to town down how hard you’re moving your right hand.

23. When playing a show, bring an extra guitar and extra cables. Extra amp and pedalboard power source are both ideal to have, but a lot harder. At the very least, have a backup tuner in case the one on your pedalboard fails.

24. Because yes, you should have a tuner on your pedalboard.

25. Beyond having a tuner, I don’t want to be prescriptive about what should be on your pedalboard. Your board is a solution for the specifics needs you face. I do think it’s good to be easy-come-easy-go with it, trying new ones and discarding them if they don’t serve.

26. The best practice regimen is the one that gets you actually playing your guitar the most. Doing something you enjoy every day is better than some OPTIMIZED PRACTICE PROGRAM that’s such a drag that you avoid it.

27. Stickers on guitar cases (or patches/paint on gig bags) are handy just for making it immediately visually obvious which of the 12 cases backstage are yours.

28. If possible, it’s a good idea to vary up your band’s physical practice space sometimes, because you don’t want to be locked into one specific situation when you play. You can’t make much eye contact with the drummer at shows! Stage lighting is very different!

29. When you fuck up at a show–and you will, at every show–shrug it off. AT MOST, allow yourself a wry “aww fuck” grin and just keep on going. The crowd probably didn’t notice. If they *did* notice, you making a big deal out of it makes it much worse.

30. If you somehow are not fucking up a little at every show, you’re probably playing it too safe. Let it hang out over the edge. There’s no prize for being perfect but people respect wild shit.

31. As far as that goes: at shows, play for the audience in general, not for (real or imagined) judgmental other guitarists out there critiquing your technical perfection

32. One thing you can do with your pedalboard is use it to control dynamics (although a lot of that also comes from right hand technique). Boost, overdrive, fuzz, and wah pedals (and I’m sure there are lots of others) are all good tools for suddenly being like HEY HERE IS A LOT MORE GUITAR.

33. Accept the fact that how good you are at guitar is a fluid thing. The longer you play, there’s a basic skills floor that will go up, but you’ll still bounce around up and down above that. Some days you’ll just be able to pull shit out of the fretboard that surprises you. Some days nothing works.

34. Pursuant to that, also accept that unless you’re wired in a very special way, your max skill level at a show is usually a little lower than your max skill level at practice. That’s OK, and you should still try wild shit, but just expect that dynamic to present itself.

35. Aaaaaaaaand pursuant to 29 above, it’s actually a good practice, after the first time you fuck up in a given show, to just sort of mentally shrug and think “OK, no need to worry about pitching a no-hitter now.” That can keep you looser for the rest of the show.

36. Like I said earlier, I don’t believe in any particular system for learning guitar/learning to solo; there are a lot of valid paths to the same place. BUT: it really is a good idea to learn triads, you will absolutely raise that skills floor significantly if you learn some triads.

37. Don’t worry about how quickly you’re progressing. Just try to have fun with where you are. If you do that enough, you will progress.

38. There was a time when it made sense to avoid modeling amps because the technology was immature, but that time is gone. There are specific reasons to go with full-analog amps over modelers, but there aren’t any serious categorical ones.

39. Youtube and other online video outlets are full of useful technique tips, BUT you should treat each content creator as a used car salesman who is trying to fuck you over, at least until you’ve heard enough of them to know they’re on the level. Many aren’t.

40. Most online (esp. video) gear talk is noise you should ignore. There are exceptions, but for the most part it’s bullshit generated to fill the content creator’s equivalent of the newshole. Any “OMG GIBSON HAS GONE TOO FAR!!!” video is almost certainly worthless.

41. This might be me talking as a denizen of the past, but: I, personally, would never buy a guitar that I hadn’t actually played first.

42. Remember that while scales can be applied to every key, most keys also have special options offered up by the geometry of the guitar; E, A, D, G, and B all let you drone an open string while you play on another string. Every open string will be in key for G and C. And on and on.

43. The guitar world is full of folklore, and that’s fine (I’m sure a bunch of what I’ve posted is essentially folklore). Try to keep it in stride when someone else has a gear opinion that’s not in line with your understanding. if it works for them, and they don’t try to convert you, leave ’em be.

44. If you’re buying a guitar, do it to have fun and to be excited to play more; and to solve a problem you’re encountering. Don’t do it as an investment to be maximized. That way lies only misery.

45. You will put on a better show–you will enjoy it more, your audience will enjoy it more–if you move around and look like you’re having fun.

46. There are no rules for songwriting. There are some guidelines and some forms you can follow, but nothing is guaranteed and nothing is required. For every ironclad rule someone claims, you can find a song that breaks that rule and still kicks ass.

47. It can be a good growth experience to every so often set some arbitrary rule for yourself for a while. Playing without a pick for the next 2 weeks; no chords at practice tonight, only notes. All solos have to be in the 5th pentatonic box. The limitations will make you learn new stuff.

48. Each of your guitars will have individual quirks; learn what that means if you switch from one to the other. The SG has one more fret than the telecaster, does that fuck up a solo? The Les Paul kicks out way more signal than the strat; remember to turn the amp up accordingly.

49. In a band situation, learn to have civil, adult, and mutual-good-faith-assumed conversations about everyone’s individual volume.

50. In a multi-guitar band situation, be conscious of trying to keep the guitars in different registers most of the time so that you have distinct parts instead of a lot of mud in one tight frequency range.

51. Although you will always have to think, the more you can play without thinking, the better. Ear- and muscle memory are your friends.

52. Overdrive can be used for solos or tone-shaping on rhythm. Fuzz is only good for solos, and even then most fuzz pedals really work best with a subset of the entire fretboard.

(OK, let me rephrase that slightly; fuzz is no good for chords and spotty for double stops. but you could be playing single fuzz lines that aren’t really solos)

53. Actually many pedals will work best with smaller subsets of the fretboard. Learning what notes play nice with what pedals is a laborious but useful thing.

54. There’s so much to know about this instrument that you’ll never know it all. And that’s fine, nobody does. That does also mean that there’s always a new angle to consider. What could you differently with timing? With your right hand technique? What would happen if you switched to a different amp?

55. In real and important ways, the electric and acoustic guitar are different instruments. There’s a lot of overlap, of course, but the differences in sustain and projection (and string flexibility) mean that you need very different mindsets. This is obvious but rarely talked about.

56. If you’re playing lead at a show, try to consciously be doing different things for lead on different songs, so it doesn’t sound like you’re trotting out the same stuff and boring the audience. Hit different pedals to throw different tones at ’em. Do pentatonic for one, some triad thing for another.

57. Most people don’t experiment with their tone knob as much as they could. You can get some cool sounds if you roll it off. Fuzz applied to low tone can sound rad as hell (although you have to turn up a little to pull it out of the mix).

58. Practice getting your gear off the stage as fast as possible when you’re done with your set. Unless you’re the last for the night, the next band is DYING to get their stuff on and set up. Their playing time is on the line.

59. Improvisation is great and worth cultivating, but there’s no shame in having a set, repeated solo for a song. In fact, it can be good to do this if people know your songs.

60. Oh, since it’s just taken as given that everyone knows this: on most tube amps, master volume=actual volume, channel volume=distortion level.

61. Amp wattage is a shitass substitute metric for volume. My 15-watt tube amp is SUBSTANTIALLY louder than my 40-watt modeler.

62. My experience in Minneapolis on 2026 is that just about every venue mikes amps these days, so you don’t need a big one and actually might be better off with a smaller one that you can push up into its sweet spot.

63. At least in originals-favoring venues in the Twin Cities, the magic words bookers want to hear is “I can bring a slate of three good bands for the evening.”

64. You do not need big hands or high dexterity to be good at the electric guitar!

65. Maybe this is specific to me, but fucking around with a guitar is great for my mental health. Aside from providing focus and goals, every moment the nonverbal music part of my brain is in control is a moment the verbal part isn’t preparing a Why Keith Sucks brief.

66. Following that last one, I think there’s mental benefit at every age and every skill level. Think about starting! Or turning back towards it!

67. Another thing to look into if you want to make your lead playing more distinct and interesting: double stops.

68. It’s not cheating to play riffs that take advantage of open strings!

69. Personal preference here: I’m always surprised at how many strat/jazzmaster/jaguar players take the trem arm off, depriving themselves of a fun, cool tool.

70. On an electric playing out into open air through an amp, especially with any distortion, a good chunk of sustain is actually well-controlled feedback.

71. Conversely, as useful as little headphone amps like the Fender Mustang Micro are, you need to remember when using them that your sustain will be a lot worse because you can’t get that well-controlled feedback.

72. It will help your playing in subtle but real ways if you’re musically omnivorous. Branch out! Listen to a ton of other forms and pay attention to what’s happening musically. Indie rock bands whose only inputs are other indie rock bands usually get boring fast.

73. I think there’s a lot to be said for learning on your own (if nothing else, it’s a path to a distinct style), but lessons with a good teacher can sure speed the process along.

74. Any situation that asks you to pay money to play a show is ripping you off!

75. In a lot of rock/punk situations, power chords might actually be better for you than barre chords; that whole “fewer strings being played” thing mentioned above, plus they’re major/minor agnostic!

76. If your family/friends get to the point where they just go to guitar stuff as the standby gift area for you: it’s never a bad thing to have cool-looking, comfortable straps for each guitar.

77. I like paper setlists on the ground, and parts/lyrics memorized as opposed to on an ipad on a stand. Makes it easier to be fully present onstage and move around. And with lyrics, you can always mushmouth some syllables if you blank out. They can’t hear.

78. It’s good to buy quality pedals–there definitely is cheap, awful shit out there–but it’s also easy to way overspend on circuits that are common and identically available in way cheaper boxes than the $400 boutique version.

79. One of the best feelings in music: when you can just sort of mentally let go of your internal timing a little and float on top of the drummer behind you.

80. This is more personal superstition where I know I’m probably wrong, but: I’m very wary of alternate tunings; I’ve spent a long time working on don’t-have-to-think muscle memory based on standard tuning, and I don’t want any confusion there!

81. Small but real advantage of Fender (and other) amps over Vox: the former are much better suited to handle drinks set on top of them, since their tops are closed. Only a lunatic would set a beer on a top-vented Vox.

82. If you want to sound like the 1980s, the words you’re looking for are “Roland Jazz Chorus 120.”

83. 12-strings are fun and cool (and electric ones have never been more available and affordable), but they can be a pain in the ass for maintenance and if you follow my advice on getting into triads, a lot of that stuff doesn’t work well on 12-strings.

84. They’re not perfect, and they’re not right for all situations (hello, angled strat cable jacks), but most of the time, right-angle cable heads rule.

85. For me, at least (and a lot of this is probably because I got used to SGs first), once I learned that SGs were designed in response to player feedback about early Les Pauls, I can’t help but be intensely aware of the differences if I’m playing a Les Paul. So heavy! Unbevelled! Weird balance!

86. Kind of the same deal for me on the Fender side, although there I do think the Telecaster has fewer quirks that bug me than the LP, and instead of the immediate design successor (the Strat), I prefer the iteration after, the Jazzmaster. Ideal Fender guitar, in my humble.

87. That said, if you disagree with me about which guitar models are better, that’s fine. None of this is objective, it’s all preference, and preference is malleable. Some day I might even change my mind on PRSes!

88. The current Fender CEO seems like a massive jabroni who has no understanding of why the things his company makes are good AND YET I do think the past year’s “Fender is dead to me forever” stuff online has been a little overblown.

89. For all that I was shit-talking some of their features earlier, Les Pauls sound fantastic and goldtop LPs are maybe the coolest-looking electric guitars ever made.

90. We are in a true golden age of high-quality, affordable electric guitars. Even with a shit economy, it’s never been this easy to get a good starter guitar for pretty cheap.

91. The Telecaster Deluxe is Fender saying “what if we made a Gibson guitar?”

92. Lots of guitar shops—both great and awful—exist because someone wanted to have a cool clubhouse to hang out in.