HOW TO IMPRESS GIRL WITH YOUR GUITAR SKILLS

               One of many reasons for my starting to play the guitar was to impress girls. Yes, I know it’s shallow but I was 14, and most things I did involved attempts to impress girls in some way. However, it turns out just buying a Squier Strat and leaving it in your bedroom isn’t quite enough. And then if you do get to the point that someone’s actually watching you play, it’s not really enough to go through your stretching exercises and chord practice. So I’ve compiled these two handy lists to help you impress the guy or girl of your dreams.

How to Impress Girls

1. MAKE SURE SHE KNOWS

If you’re going to impress someone with your guitar, they have to know you play. Seems obvious, but this was a mistake I made for quite a while when I first started playing. I just assumed that it would come up in conversation, or that someone would ask. You have to be more proactive than that.

I suggest starting with something subtle – drumming your fretting hand fingers on the table to create the distinctive “click” that calluses make, or “accidentally” dropping some picks when you get some change from your pocket. If that doesn’t work, start moving up the scale until you get to the point where you’re basically carrying your guitar with you everywhere you go.

2. DON’T PLAY AN ELECTRIC UNPLUGGED

Again, this is from personal experience. If you get out your gleaming, sexy Strat or Les Paul on a bus or in a bar and start playing it unplugged, you will soon find yourself alone. The disappointment is huge when you see an instrument you associate with rock and roll, and then the sound that comes from it is like an acoustic guitar three rooms away. A lot of people actually don’t realise how different electric guitars sound unplugged – they’re expecting perhaps a quiet version of the plugged-in sound. That anaemic plinking is NOT attractive and can be a permanent turn-off.

3. BE ABLE TO PLAY A SONG

Other guitarists might be impressed with little riffs and solos you’ve learned (incidentally, if the girl in question is a guitarist, you’re on your own). But if you find yourself in the situation where you need to play something for a girl, it needs to be a song. You have to show the emotional connection between yourself and your instrument. Doesn’t need to be hard, you just need to be able to play it. If you can sing then even better, but be aware that if your singing is bad then your guitar playing will sound bad too. Ideally this will be a song that would sound good on unaccompanied acoustic – something like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, or something by James Taylor.

4. DON’T LET HER WATCH YOU PRACTICE

Should be obvious really. You want to come across as an artist – not a weird nerd. No girl I have ever met would enjoy watching me play the same 30 notes, several hundred times, while my phone makes an annoyingly loud clicking sound that’s getting almost imperceptibly faster every few minutes. The results of this, however, are worth busting out.

5. BE ON STAGE

This is pretty much the nuclear strike of lady-impressing tactics. Once you’re up there on a stage, it doesn’t matter if the guitar’s out of tune, if you can’t play, if you’re ugly, or if your dress sense sucks. I don’t know what it is, but once you’ve been on display in front of a room full of ladies, it seems that every single one wants to be “the one” who gets to buy you your first post-gig beer. If you can do this one, you probably don’t have to bother with any of the others.

Needless to say, in my years of playing, I have failed on almost all of the above counts. And in fact, my wife once said that if she’d known how good at guitar I was, it would have been much easier for me to convince her to go out with me. So please make better use of this wisdom than I have.