It's great to sound like your favorite guitar hero...but even better to sound like you!

“I want to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughn”, “I’m looking for Clapton’s tone”, “I want to play like VanHalen”.

Back when I owned a music store I heard statements like this more than I can remember. It is, after all, a perfectly natural desire as we make the journey from taking guitar lessons to arriving at a point where we start to become more proficient on the fret board.

Emulating our guitar heroes is not only a healthy exercise for our chops, but is a great way to expand our musical vocabulary. We slowly gain confidence in our own abilities as we painstakingly work to learn the licks of the guitarists that we idolize.

The concern I had upon hearing statements like the ones above, however, is what the motivation was and, more importantly, what the ultimate goal was.

For many young aspiring guitarists the motivation in emulating other well known guitarists is to impress listeners with how much they can play like their favorite artist. As a result, their main goal is to be that artist with the belief that being  the artist will somehow result in the same success that the well known artist has had.

The obvious flaw with this mindset is, of course, that the world already has a Clapton, or a Stevie Ray, or a Hendrix or a VanHalen, and, as a result, does not need another. An often missed point is the fact that these guitar icons reached the pinnacle of success because of their uniqueness, each with a distinct musical personality separate from the others. With this awareness in mind it may be a more prudent approach to focus our attention and energies on the uniqueness factor and what we can do to develop our own brand of unique.

If we, first of all, acknowledge the fact that none of us came out of the womb shredding up the guitar neck we can begin to understand that all of us, famous or obscure, have traveled down the same road. We all, at some point, started out at ground zero. Granted, some are born with more natural ability than others, but none of us is born instantly knowing all the mechanics of putting our fingers on the fret board in the right place to produce the right sound.

In the movie “August Rush” the young title character, an apparent musical prodigy, picks up the guitar for the very first time and just starts to wail. That is great fodder for a movie storyline but we all know that the reality is a lot different. That is not to say that there have not been some prodigies out there that were blessed with this innate ability, but only in extremely rare cases.  

It might be hard to imagine that Stevie Ray, or Clapton or VanHalen ever sat down with a guitar early on and fought hard to play a clean F chord; or struggled with a major scale. But the fact is, they have all been there, just like we have all been there, and anyone who picks up a guitar for the first time will be there.

The point is, of course, that when we level the playing field in our mind we begin to realize that none of those we idolize was unique when they first started. They were all, at one point, at the very level of proficiency that we are now.

How did these legends get from down here with the rest of us to up there in the stratosphere? It’s a pretty safe bet that they started out by emulating their guitar heroes. By learning the licks and styles of the guitarists that they idolized.

The difference is that their goal was to ultimately become their own artist. They saw the emulating process as simply a stepping stone toward achieving their own unique style and sound.

It is often interesting to read a biography on a guitar legend and discover who their early influences were. Quite often you can hear traces of those early influences in their music, but you will never hear an exact replication of that influence.

All if us are, after all, just a product of everything we have ever heard and played. Like a pot of spaghetti sauce cooked by the old Italian woman who tosses in whatever ingredients strike her fancy at the time. She makes a great pot of sauce, but it always comes out a little different and unique every time.

So what can we do to chase our own uniqueness? Well first of all we must make the decision that we actually want to be unique. Some of my former customers and students made it clear to me that becoming  their favorite guitarist was ultimately their goal, thinking that they could ride the same train to success. No amount of discussion could bring them to the realization that, at the end of the day, we all have our own train to ride - we just have to decide to get on it.

Surprisingly, it is amazingly liberating to simply make the decision to be unique and to be our own person. This is true not only in the sense of who we are as artists, but with life in general. Once we decide to shake off the bonds of chasing something we are not - and the inevitable frustration that accompanies that path - we experience the exhilarating freedom to become what we are.


A good course of action for success, in anything, is to look at what successful people have done, and repeat it. More particularly, you can start by immersing yourself in the music of your favorite guitarists. Learn the chops, cop the licks, get a true sense for how they approach the art of playing guitar.

A funny thing happens when we spend countless hours learning how to play the licks and runs of our favorite guitar players. Eventually, over time, in a gradual process that we almost don’t even notice; we start to develop our own style, our own unique sound emerges that no one else can claim.

Don’t be overly concerned with copping every lick note for note or beating your brains out getting the exact tone of another guitarist. The point is to learn from them, not to become them.

Nowadays there are so many resources for a musician to learn their trade that traditional guitar lessons are not as common as they used to be. But a good guitar lesson program can give you the foundation and knowledge you need to pursue your higher goals much faster.

With the availability of music online and tablature written for guitar, you have a wealth of information available at your fingertips - for your fingertips. Compare this with the early days when this author was first learning to play. Other than guitar lessons at the local music store, the only way to learn the music of my favorite guitarists was to sit down with a vinyl record and put the needle down in the right groove over and over and over until I figured out the lick, or scratched the record beyond recognition.

Today that is, happily, not the situation. You are only limited by your imagination what you can accomplish on the guitar if you are willing to put the time in and focus your efforts.


So resolve to learn a new lick every day, figure out the chord changes on the cover songs and classics that interest you. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Regardless of what they tell you, music has no rules, only guidelines that are meant to be broken.

Play ‘til your fingers bleed - then play some more. Refuse to run with the crowd, have fun, be persistent, be patient, be your own voice, be unique, enjoy the process of developing your own style - and most of all…be yourself!

Staff - TopMusicLessons.com