Performing and Playing Guitar Live

In Part Two of this guide to touring, we take you from launching your tour to making your van your home to bringing everyone home safely and successfully.

Chris Gallant (lead singer and guitarist of The Sidewalks) brings you an introduction to the realities of touring. Grab your gear and get ready to hit the road!

Playing outdoors is fun, but it also requires you to pay more attention to your guitar strings! Professor String gives us tips on keeping your guitar happy when you play outside.

Getting people out to see your band, even when those people are family, friends or fans, can be a challenge. Tom Hess looks at ways to bring more people to your band’s live performances.

There many things you need to know and do in order to become successful in the music industry. But even if you learn and do all of those things, you still might prevent yourself from achieving success in the music business by making key mistakes along the way. Tom Hess guides you around the many pitfalls along the road to success in the music industry.

Creating memorable live performances can help you get more gigs and can bring more people to those gigs. Here are some great tips from Tom Hess on how to rehearse for all the aspects of performing live.

Many guitarists consider practice and performance to be distinct activities. Gerald Klickstein, author of the new book The Musician’s Way, shows how they can be combined into an inclusive creative process.

Here’s a very useful article from Mark detailing how easy it is to keep all your gear under control, especially if you play gigs. Wish I’d read this thirty years ago!

These are our answers to some of the most popular questions we’ve been asked about playing live.

Playing with others doesn’t limit you to working with guitar players. There are musicians of all sorts out there and you never know who you might meet. GN staffer Dan Lasley details his experiences playing (as well as arranging the logistics) with a full horn section.

If you’re looking for an appreciative audience or looking for a way to give back to the community or even just looking for a way to fine-tune your performance, chances are you can do all this very close to home. Here Chad Andrews tells of his experiences and advice concerning this easy way to make a lot of people happy!

Sharing music is what Guitar Noise is all about and what better way to do so than to help give a little encouragement to someone? Here is a cool story and some advice from Laura Lasley, writer for Guitar Noise’s The Other Side.

Sharing music is what Guitar Noise is all about and what better way to do so than to help give a little encouragement to someone? Here are a few stories and tips from Guitar Noise readers from around the world.

Imagine never having played a bass guitar and then having to do a live show within two months! I’m hoping this gives many of you the courage to go out and play in front of an audience, no matter how large or small, in the near future.

There are all sorts of reasons to not join in on the fun of playing with others. Hopefully, though, you’ll find that you can work your way through most of them! Here are some thoughts from our resident doctor, mom and guitarist that might help you overcome some of the anxieties that may cause you to miss out on some great times.

In the first of our series of discussions on this fascinating topic, Graham provides his thoughts on the ideas of positive and negative competitiveness. This is a thoughtful piece that I think will give everyone a few new insights into an old problem.

Matt Purkey has written some great advice concerning getting gigs and continuing to do so. A must-read for those of you who are contemplating taking those first steps to playing out in front of people.

John Tucker returns with some very sound advice about putting your band together and getting things off the ground. There’s nothing like playing with other people, so take the time to make sure you get the right people for you.

Let’s look at how you go about putting together talent showcases and bigger jams. It can get pretty crazy if you don’t take care of the proper preparation.

Melissa Etheridge’s has completed her first solo tour since she stopped playing in bars as a relative unknown. Here is a review of her inspiring performance.