What’s your advice for up and comers looking for endorsements?

My advice would be to find a company that really supports you and also make sure that you really genuinely love the product that your endorsing, that way both parties are happy. I absolutely love .strandberg* guitars so when I tell people how amazing they are I really mean it.

Is there a skill or style you’ve yet to develop/work on that you’d really like to?

There are so many different skills and styles on the guitar that I’m yet to and want to develop, I think thats part of the beauty of being a guitar player, you can never learn enough if that makes sense? It keeps it really exciting and fun that way. Id really love to get better at finger picking, it blows my mind seeing guys who can play a lead melody whilst doing a descending bass line at the same time! Also I’d really like to get more into jazz fusion stuff, like Guthrie Govan’s style, I just don’t know where to start with that kind of thing!

Give one piece of advice to someone trying to develop speed on the guitar

I think the best piece of advice that I could give is to figure out what techniques work for you in terms of speed, whether its alternate picking, legato or sweep picking and work on that until you’re really comfortable with it. After that you can work on the other techniques and bring them up to speed. for example I’m a legato guy by nature, so I worked on that a lot to start with before I tried anything like sweeps etc.

Give one piece of advice to someone trying to develop better phrasing on the guitar

Listen to Guthie Govan!! haha! For me listening to players like Guthrie really helped my phrasing, hearing the way he could play the same note 1,000 different ways totally blew my mind and that really shows how you can find your own sound, everyone sounds different with guitar. It’s all in your hands, take away pedals, amps and all of that stuff and you’ll hear the pure tone and sound that comes out of you as a player. I hope that answers that question.

Give one piece of advice to someone trying to develop better melodic approach on the guitar

I think a good piece of advice for developing a melodic approach to the guitar in terms of playing a solo is listen to the music, take away/don’t think about technique for a second and listen to what melody is in your head, try to convey that through your playing as best as you can and you’ll be surprised with what comes to you.

What’s your opinion on theory, and do you use any?

I think theory is great to a point, I’m not huge on theory in the sense that I couldn’t sit and sight read a guitar piece and play it that way but I think its important to know your guitar neck. I highly recommend learning the CAGED system, know where the notes are, the scales and modes etc, at the same time without sounding cheesy, play from the heart and play what your ear wants to hear. I’m of the opinion that if it sounds right, then it is. I use theory for finding where I should and shouldn’t play on a guitar if I’m playing along to a backing track or writing a song but thats about as far as my theory knowledge goes.

You only have three minutes a day to practise. What would you focus on?

Damn, thats a tough one. I guess it depends on the day, I try my best to learn something new on guitar everyday. if it was today for example id be practising bending, I’ve been trying to get my bends as accurate as possible and also trying to bend with only certain fingers like my pinky!
Describe your playing style (shredder, melodic etc etc) I’d probably say I’m classed as a ‘shredder’, although I do play lots of different styles like blues because I’m a huge SRV fan, which is the total opposite of shred, blues is more about holding a note and making it as convincing as you can as opposed to playing loads of notes. I guess I leave it up to other people to decide what my style is haha!

Name your favourite ‘house hold name’ guitarist and explain why

Eddie Van Halen. He’s the reason I play guitar, the moment my dad introduced me to his playing and the first four Van Halen albums my life changed forever, I became completely obsessed with his playing and I wanted to be able to make a guitar sound like that one day. He in my book took the world of guitar and completely turned it on its head. 30 years down the line people are still trying to work out what he was doing on those albums. his playing is so unique and nobody has even came close to replicating it, I think that shows how amazing of a musician he is.

Name your favourite Instagram/youtube internet guitarist and explain why

Thats a tough one, there are so many amazing guitar players out there, each and every one of them are unique to themselves and bring something great to the table. Right now i’d say my favourite Instagram/Youtube guitarist would be Mateus Asato, I always get excited whenever he posts a new video. He makes guitar looks so effortless and the stuff he plays is mind blowing. His sense of melody and feel is so unique, he’s one of those players that the moment you hear him, you know its him.

What are you currently working on in your your practise time, and why?

I’m currently working on phrasing and trying to be a more versatile player. I took a couple weeks of playing guitar just recently so that I could focus on discovering new music to keep myself inspired. I think its important to keep learning and discovering new things so you don’t fall into the trap of playing the same licks/same styles too much.