[scooteraz]

Originally Posted by Preacher

Great advise on less is more, too many times it takes a "seasoned" player to understand that...
We have a young guitar player (15) and he is good. His father is our P&W leader. For the last 7 years I have played and sang on the praise team and now that we have grown, they have come on board. So I told him if he wanted me to step down I would to make way for the young blood. He told me I needed to stay put, yes he is a good player but he doesn't know HOW to play yet.
So he sticks this young talented kid with his acoustic guitar, (No EQ, no vloume, all controled from the BOH) and tells me to play my eletrics. Now I have a Tele, '51 and a LP which I usually rotate (although the '51 is getting more and more playing time) and I do the runs and the pentonic fills on our worship songs playing lead most of the time.
So I asked our leader why he did not want his son to play his eletric, and he said, "I will show you". So at practice the other day, he told his son to play lead on this song and I would play rythem with the neck pup on the '51. Well he played lead through the whole song... no breaks, no pauses just endless riffs and bends through the WHOLE song.
His dad looked at me and said, "OK lets go back to what we had before", he and I made eye contact and exchanged a "that's why" look and went back to what we do.

With eletric, fill the gaps, add, don't take away and if you have nothing to say, then don't play...

I think the toughest thing I had to learn was to play little enough. Everyone wants to be heard and have a part. But it still feels better when the leader says "Hey can we have a little more of that thing you are doing?" rather than "Hey, would you mind not stepping on the singers so much?" Having had both comments thown my way.... I think I can say I speak from experience.