Question: How can I express my feelings freely on the guitar without problems, without thinking about my technique, etc.?

Tom Hess's Answer: You need to develop specific musical skills that will allow such freedom of expression using the language of music. Just like when learning to speak a language, you need to first have the ability to coherently produce sounds with your voice, you need to know many words and you need to know how to put them together using the rules of grammar in a way that is understandable to others (or at least in a way that is self expressive of what you want to express).

On the guitar (as you might have already guessed), your ability to “produce sounds” is your physical guitar technique. Your knowledge of “words” and “rules of grammar” is your understanding of how music works, how chords are constructed, your musical ear etc… And lastly you must have the ability to combine all of these tools together to actually make music as seamlessly as you speak or think.

If you go to my Musical Goals page and select the goal of ‘self expression’, you can read more about the specific areas of musicianship that you need to focus on and why each one is important for you to master.

The best way to learn and master these things in the shortest amount of time is to work with the best teacher you can find who has already helped others to reach this goal and can help you to do the same. As you might have guessed I specialize in this topic and teach guitar lessons online.

Every year I give 2 big annual events for my students (one in USA and one in Europe) called HESSFEST. In these events I give master classes on various topics. One of these was on the subject of Musical Freedom (the exact topic your question is all about). The full answer to your question is in that 2 hour master class, however it is only available to my students. There is no way I can go into great detail here, however I will tell you the fundamental concept right now.

When you play something and you feel ‘NOT free’ (limited) in ANY way, notice what is causing that feeling. Is it a physical thing or a mental one? If you REALLY think about it the source of most ‘freedom’ problems are mental, not physical.

Start improving your lead guitar playing today so you can play with emotional expression with electric guitar lessons online.