- Find one or two good guitars and stick with them. Don’t always look for better ones. The ones you have are most of the times alright. Mark Knopfler will sound great on an 500$ guitar, not only on the 50,000 $ axe you always dreamed of. Put your energy in playing.
- Focus on playing. I often got side tracked in figuring out which kind of pick I should play. Or what sort of strings I should use. If you can’t decide, play without a pick. Use the strings everyone is using. The moment someone from the audience will stand up and say: “your music is wonderful because I can hear you play xyz-strings…” I will start caring about those particular strings…
- No effects while practicing. Effects are great in a show and to give your songs the extra little bit of edge. But if you put all your effort and skill into dealing with the effects your playing will suffer.
- Practice on an acoustic guitar. An acoustic guitar is merciless to sloppy playing.

I know from the work I’ve put into playing guitar over the past 15 years that to be a good guitar player you must play consistently each and every day. On top of that you really need to study scales, harmony, ear training and songwriting.

Thanks for the interview!