I love playing guitar. I try to play as much as I can. But given my day job and various responsibilities, it’s tough to find the time to stay in physical shape. When I do get a chance to play, I find myself doing scales for dexterity and muscle building, with time for little else. It’s easy to fall into a rut: If scales are all you practice, then it’s likely your improvisational solos will sound like scales.

Any quality unsigned act will have people clamoring to work with them. That being said, an artist should hold on to the controls of their own destiny as long as they can. The time to allow someone in to represent an act usually occurs when the tasks of handling their own business begin to conflict with creation of the art. There is usually a point at which keeping up with the business of creating the art becomes distracting to the art itself.

Hey, all fellow guitar nerds/guitar geeks, my name is Jake Dreyer and here is my first column for GuitarWorld.com. First off, just a little background about myself. I am a 19-year-old guitarist from Panama City Beach, Florida, who did the most cliché thing a young inspiring guitarist can do: I moved out west to Los Angeles to attend Musicians Institute.