Off-the-Cuff Advice from 13Music-Biz Pros

I’ve seen plenty of interviews and rig rundowns. Most of them tend to overlap in terms of information—no matter who the artist is.

I don’t care if I’m interviewing a resurrected Jimi Hendrix. The last thing I care about is how he thinks his pick attack, while using a specific string gauge, affects his clean tone through the second of four speaker cabinets on stage.

I’d rather see music icons have actual conversations that produce real messages.

I've learned that these people—the professional guitarsts and guitar makers you're likely to spot at the Winter NAMM Show—really appreciate the escape from the questions they’ve become programmed to answer in various interviews. In fact, they tend to open up, come back down to earth and reveal info we didn’t even ask for.

Earlier, I asked a handful of guitar legends: “In three words or less, how do I play guitar?” Their answers supplied us with several interesting philosophies, none more potent than John Petrucci’s reply of “Don’t f*ck up."

The running question in today’s video takes a page out of master interviewer Tim Ferriss’ book, stirring up thoughts of rock stars like Michael Angelo Batio, Jeff Loomis, Brent Hinds and more as they weigh in with their off-the-cuff answers. Enjoy!

Tyler Larson is the founder of the guitar-centric brand Music is Win. His insightful, uncomplicated guitar lessons and gear demonstrations along with entertaining, satirical content about life as a musician receive tens of millions of video views per month across social media. Tyler is also the creator of the extremely popular online guitar learning platform, Guitar Super System. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Tyler has been teaching guitar for over a decade and operates a production studio in Nashville, TN.