Street Musician's Top 100 Guitar Blogs

One of the best ways of improving your playing as a guitarist, is to mix with other guitarists. It doesn't matter how much you practice, how good you get or how amazing you think you are, you can always learn something new from even the most basic of players. The reason being that every player has his or her own unique outlook on life and will have learned completely different songs, chords, licks and techniques than yourself.

Guitarists often stick to their own particular styles of playing which will generally be based on those of the bands and artists they enjoy listening to. This is a great way to improve your skills by copying the music styles and techniques of your favourites, but can lead to a player becoming locked into certain ways of playing and lead to a stagnation in your technique. I'm not suggesting that you should go out and try to master every style out there, but it is really good practice to go out of your way every once in a while and try something different for a change. This will lead to you developing your own unique way of playing, and give you much more inspiration and motivation in your music.

To give you an example. For many years I was into playing thrash metal with my electric guitar, copying the styles of my favourite bands, which at the time were the likes of Metallica, Slayer, Sepultura etc. so I became a really fast thrash guitarist mastering various techniques like down picking, thrashing, high speed soloing, power sliding and using power chords etc... This was great and I considered myself as a reasonably competent guitarist. The problem was, I spent so much of my time downpicking, thrashing and hammering out power chords with serious distortion, that I never really bothered with the other important weapons in a guitarists itinery, such as learning chord variations from different styles like the blues, jazz and funk, using different fingerpicking techniques such as flamenco, and soloing chilled out blues licks to basic blues progressions. I used to think ' I'm not into the blues anyway, so what's the point '

But still, I used to be intreagued when friends of mine who were much less competent than me, would pull out a funky blues riff or twang a couple of jazzy chords and fill the air with something other than a speed riff from the pits of hell.

I started experimenting with other styles and messing with the blues every now and then and apart from realising what great fun it was just to jam around with these other styles, I found them a welcome break from my usual routines and realised just how much more there is to the guitar, and just how much difference a few new ideas and techniques can make to the way you percieve and play the instrument.

My tastes have moved on now, and although I still love playing these types of music, I have moved into playing music of a more popular rock/blues type nature as I have had to diversify as many artists do to cater to their pub audiences. I also spend a lot of my time playing the acoustic guitar, whereas before, I could never work out the point of playing the acoustic, as I used to think they were cumbersome and 'what's the point when you can't get a decent distortion out of them, or hammer the wammybar in a divebomb' etc.etc... I have met many guitarists who think this way,as I used to, and those who think only in one direction, be it playing in one style, or choosing only one type of guitar to play, are missing out on so much knowledge and fun, that they could be learning, achieving and experiencing just by broadening their horizons a little.

Guitar blogs are generally personal web sites created by individual guitarists who each have their own unique view on life and the guitar. These guys spend their time creating, finding, searching, writting and uploading useful information about every aspect of guitars you could ever imagine. The amount of helpful, useful and interesting stuff that you can get from reading some of these blogs is immense and should not be missed. Many of these blogs are hosted by musicians who have been playing and gigging all their lives or who teach professionally. Their sites feature lessons, videos, band, equipment and guitar reviews, techniques, funny stuff, free courses and generally anything and everything deemed interesting for guitarists of all levels.

Hanging out with experienced guitar players, is not always possible for your average guitarist, but checking out these blogs is, and will prove to be a great resource for any musician trying to improve their knowledge and playing abilities.

How do I find these blogs ?

The best blogs on the net are all listed in the Street Musician Top 100 guitar blogs, and they are ranked according to their Google PR, Technorati and Alexa rankings. Each of these blogs has something different to offer and from the Top 100 main page you can check them all out without having to search them out individually. There is also a recent posts page on the site, which is linked directly to each sites recently posted content, keeping you up to date with all the blogs at once. A great little feature.

If you're serious about your guitar playing, or you just want to know what's going on in the world of guitars, the Top 100 Guitar Blogs is the best resource on the net to find what you're looking for. Click here to check them out.

Remember, check them all out, and not just the ones at the top. Take your time and check out one or two evey day and you will soon realise what a weird and wonderful bunch of people we guitarists are.

Good luck, and keep strumming.