HOW TO IMPRESS GUYS WITH YOUR GUITAR SKILLS

How to Impress Guys

Now to address the other side of the equation. Trying to impress a boy with your guitar requires a whole different set of rules – mainly due to the fact that guys’ brains are somewhat less sophisticated. So without further ado, here’s a list of ways to impress us with your guitar.

1. HAVE A GUITAR

Yeah, this is a good one. Just having a guitar is already enough to make most guys think you are pretty high up the cool scale. Doesn’t matter what it is, doesn’t matter if you can play it particularly well. It should have all its strings though and be pretty much in tune – without these two factors you look like you’ve got it to look cool – which might be true, but we don’t want him to know that, do we?

2. KNOW ABOUT GEAR

This is a good one. If you can talk about your guitar, your amp, your pickups, your string gauge and so on, then you’ve shifted another level above everyone else. We all claim to be musicians, so how come every guitar-related forum on the internet has pages and pages of men talking about the minutiae of their gear, down to what kind of solder they use – but only one place where people talk about playing or upload clips – and it’s the quietest page on the forum? So get reading (perhaps start with the Guitar Wiring Diploma Course) and get ready to stun the gearheads with your knowledge of capacitor values and speaker types.

3. HAVE A RIFF REPERTOIRE

In the section on how to impress girls, I stressed the importance of being able to play an entire song. The opposite is true when you’re trying to impress guys. You want to be able to run through about 30 different intros, riffs and solos in 5 minutes, ideally. Try to touch on as many genres as you can, but keep it rock focused to be safe. I recommend starting with the main riff from Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law” and finishing off with the solo from Beat It.

4. KNOW NOTHING ABOUT GEAR

Wait, what? That’s right, this one’s the opposite of number 2. It’s a risky maneuvre but when played well it can be extremely effective. The key thing is that you can only do this in conjunction with number 5. If you don’t know what guitar or amp you’ve got when asked, and you keep your guitar under the bed with no case, you can get immense respect by following up with…

5. BE REALLY GOOD

This is the one that’s most impressive to everyone, period – but to guys of a guitar-y persuasion it’s a massive turn-on. Actually knowing your way around the instrument and being able to bust out some intricate fingerpicking, or shredding, or a storming riff, is very, very cool. Unfortunately, this one requires quite a lot of work – but the work pays off to to you personally as well. There’s nothing like the feeling of being able to play something you couldn’t play a month ago. In fact, why bother trying to impress anyone at all when you can get that rush?

I hope this helps at least some of you towards either impressing someone or impressing yourself. What impresses you about a guitarist? Have you ever succeeded (or amusingly failed) in changing someone’s opinion of you in a positive way through your guitar playing? How did it go?