It’s especially common on electric guitar to try and emulate your guitar hero’s. While this is a natural desire and will do your playing a lot of good it can also be a curse. If you focus too much on sounding like your guitar hero’s there’s a danger that you will never find your own particular identity. At some point you have to leave guitar lessons behind and go your own way.
If you really want to be like your guitar hero, then learn to play like yourself with your own style and sound – just as they did.
It’s definitely helpful to learn techniques and licks from other players, the trick is to not limit yourself to just a handful of your favourites but rather study and learn from the styles of 10 – 20 different guitar players. That will give you a much more well rounded musical education on guitar and not lock you into sounding like a worthless copycat who no one is going to respect.
By having broader horizons you’ll leave a lot more space for your own development as a player and consequently stand much more of a chance to discover your own particular playing identity.
When you have your own style and sound then other guitar players will respect you, it’s all about finding yourself on the instrument. Your own unique voice to express who you are.
Variety is the key and you’ll probably find that the majority of great players are able to play a little bit of everything. They are interested in many different players and able to appreciate a wide variety of different approaches to the instrument. Follow their example and do the same for yourself, you’ll be a much better guitar player for it.
