Things Guitarists Do That Annoy Everyone Else

Contrary to popular belief, guitarists are not perfect. As much of a shock as that may be, you may find yourself doing any number of these things and inadvertently annoying those that you work with. No musician of any discipline is entirely innocent here, so feel free to populate your own list of annoying things that saxophonists do if you like!

Let us break down a few things that I am definitely guilty of, and how I have personally tried to overcome those issues. 

Caring Too Much About Gear/Tone

Far too many guitar players are obsessed with their gear on both ends of the spectrum. On one hand you have the people that buy as cheap as possible because “- it’s just as good!”, and then you have those that buy as expensive as possible because, in their minds, expensive equals better tone and better playing (we all know how false that is!). A good friend of mine is a highly accomplished guitar player with some very expensive gear… and some cheap as well. He knows what he likes, and has various pieces of equipment across different price points that each serve a purpose. I like to think I have the same kind of approach to my equipment too! This makes setting or preparing for a show quick and easy.

Once you are comfortable with what guitar gear works best for you, and you have intimate knowledge of your equipment as well as how to achieve new tones with what you have at your disposal, you will have more time to focus on the playing. The more confident you are in your tone from the outset, the more you can apply your energy into learning and nailing the material.

Bedroom to Live Guitar Tone

An issue faced by many guitar players is not being able to translate their sound from a bedroom environment to a live one, and then adjusting depending on the space that you are playing in and the ensemble joining you. 

Metal guitar players specifically tend to have a very bass focused sound, with an abundance of gain that sounds thick and heavy, but becomes lost and undefined when playing with a band – that is where there is an overlap with the point from above. In this situation, you would probably turn the bass control down and use less gain, but that might not be the most appropriate solution. The other band members are sure to get annoyed because they will either not be able to hear you, or they you will be overbearing on everyone else.

If you are using a guitar amp and do not have monitoring that accurately represents the overall sound you require, chances are the sound of the guitar is going straight past your legs (gone are the days of two 4x12 cabinets on top of each other!). Less experienced people would simply turn up the volume until they can hear it enough, without thinking about those who are actually stood in front of the amplifier properly. This will annoy band members, audience and definitely the sound engineer!

One solution is to use an angled cabinet, buy a combo amp stand to rest your combo amplifier at an angle that projects your sound upwards, allowing you to hear it better. I once even resorted to putting my old Marshall JVM210c cabinet on two chairs so that I could hear it better. You may also wish to invest in an in-ear monitoring system if you tend to go direct with a modelling product – unfortunately, I still put myself at the mercy of the monitoring and PA systems at venues when I use my Kemper. 

Boosting your signal for a solo can be done in many different ways, like using your guitar volume control, changing channels on the amplifier and many more. I have seen countless people decide to boost for a solo by adding more gain, or loads or volume into the front of an amp – sometimes this has the opposite effect on what was originally intended. Pushing the front of the amp with certain effects can compress and saturate the sound, but not make it any louder. I like using a clean boost in the effects loop on an amp the bring the volume up by around 6dB, this way the volume increase but the tone does not change.

Not Learning Songs Properly

It has become clearer to me over the years that certain guitar solos are iconic to the point that you simply must recreate them as they were originally presented. Other solos might allow a bit of freedom, or something simply improvised – the moral of the story I that you should know when to put your own stamp on something. It is not uncommon for a guitar player to see themselves as the star of the show and want to put their stamp on everything whilst completely missing the point of the performance that they are putting on – this is very self-centered and you can see how this might frustrate others. If you have had an adequate amount of time to learn something, and you simply play it in your own way instead, then perhaps a band/artist will notice this and assume that you just can’t learn the music properly.

Common songs for this point are:

• ‘Sweet Chile O’ Mine’ – Guns N Roses,

• ‘Eruption’ – Van Halen,

• ‘Tornado of Souls’ – Megadeth,

• ‘Stairway to Heaven’ – Led Zeppelin.

With those songs especially, there is no wiggle room in the solo, you have to get them 100% right. The only person that can make any adjustments is the person who wrote the solo themselves, but you would not expect Slash to create a new solo for ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ – it is just too iconic! The same applies for riffs, fills and even chord voicings. Again, this is going to annoying the average punter, die hard fans, your band and whoever has the misfortune to pay you!

Final Thoughts

If possible, try and learn from the points I raised here. If you are not guilty of them now, then you either have been before, or will be in the future. I realize that these are points that would annoy other musicians that are not guitarists. However, what do guitarists do that annoy other guitarists… the list is endless. Here are a few:

• Not tuning your guitar properly – your chords should sound good all over the neck!

• Not trimming string ends – why have so many ends dangling everywhere?

• Being overkill with your equipment – do you need a 100w head, 4x12 cabinets and two large pedalboards and a wireless system in order to play covers in your local bar? No.

• Making the assumption that you only play one particular style because of your gear or the way you look – I can play blues on my 7 string Ibanez if I want to!

• Preconceptions of skill or experience based on age – just because you are fifty, does not mean that you know more that someone who is 18! 

Can you think of any annoying things that guitar players do? Teachers often deal with students of all ages and skill levels that have many annoying and harmful guitar habits, but that is different if they are a student – they are taking steps to fix their shortcomings. Maybe ask your teacher if they have ever worked with other musicians and have noticed annoying habits that are shared by them?