Guitar potpourri for the practicing musician

Doing some bookmark housecleaning while a job is uploading, I happened across this reprint of They Might Be Giants' John Flansburgh's superb advice for gigging musicians; if I had read it when I was 17, I probably wouldn't have given up on playing in bands after learning most of these tips the hard way -- which ground my interest in live performance down to a fine powder that the crying girl looking for the ladies room in literally every club and bar currently in this universe would have been happy to snort if you told her that it would get her so high she'd forget whatshisface. My favorite TMBG protips: Park the van against a wall for the night and then no one can break in to steal stuff while you're asleep; the moist heat in the club is what's weakening your old amp's speakers; and "There's no money above the fifth fret."

The other great thing about that TMBG wiki; an exhaustive tabulature page for the band, if you're too lazy to figure out, say, the chords and solo from "Doctor Worm."

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Here's something you don't see every day; a site where you can literally search for music by chord progression. "Bm, Bsus4, Am, G" didn't bring up the Stones' "One Hit To The Body," so I declare the site a failure that can never ever ever ever be improved.

Speaking of which, I need you to step into my office for a minute.


OK, look -- we need to have a talk about pasty/pudgy dudes recording headless videos of themselves playing along with rock tunes for small eternity, sometimes tacking an actual guitar lesson for the song at the very end, like anyone wants to listen to classic rock played by the faceless, carb-challenged dinosaurs who still work at classic-rock radio stations. This has to stop, OK?

At least this particular set of talking hands doesn't make you listen to five minutes of him playing four chords in his rec room before talking to you about the song. Let's have more of that, Headless Guitarist YouTuber:



Thanks, man -- good talk!

******

Oh, one more semi-headless guitarist clip before we all agree to never speak of this again: Young man burns through the head and two choruses of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps"


So, feel bad that you can't play Giant Steps like this kid? Here's a cool automated tab for a Trane tune that even you will be able to keep up with [eventually]. Plus, you get to pretend that you have a soulful, meditative side that the crying girl in the ladies room just doesn't see through her mascara, tears/snot and self-medicated mental illness. Enjoy.