The Steve Stine Podcast

Send Steve a Text Message Thirty songs for Saturday. A totally different set for Monday. No rehearsals. If that sounds familiar, you already know the real enemy isn’t your technique, it’s the scramble to keep everything in your head while you switch styles and expectations from gig to gig. We talk through the exact approach we use to stay organized, reduce panic, and get songs back under our finge...

Send Steve a Text Message Your guitar solo can have the “right” notes and still feel wrong. The gap is usually groove. We jump into a practical, no-hype approach to soloing that starts where real music starts: locking to the beat. Using a “Groovy Fine Blues in B Minor” backing track as the example, we focus on finding the quarter note, then treating the eighth note as the true pulse for most lead...

Send Steve a Text Message You can love guitar for decades and still feel like you’re spinning your wheels. Ken joins me to talk through that exact frustration, from years of casual playing with no structure to a clear, focused plan that finally makes progress feel real. His story starts with classic rock inspiration and a powerful family moment, then turns into the question so many players avoid:...

Send Steve a Text Message Your hands know what to do until someone is watching, and then everything tightens up. That’s where this conversation with Stan goes immediately: intimidation, shaky confidence, and the quiet fear that you’re the only one who doesn’t “get it.” Stan is a retired guitarist and a longtime student inside Guitar Zoom Academy, and he shares the parts most players don’t say out...

Send Steve a Text Message You can spend 30 years with a guitar in your hands and still feel like you’re guessing. That’s why this conversation with Perry lands so hard. He grew up in Casper, Wyoming with music in the house, built a band in the early 80s, and even got the kind of wild, last-minute call every guitarist dreams about: his group stepped in as a backup band for Blue Oyster Cult when ano...

Send Steve a Text Message Remote collaboration sounds like magic until you try it and realize the real challenge is boring: everyone needs the same roadmap, the same tempo, and a track that starts cleanly. We walk you through the exact home recording process we use to prep a remote band collab, using a fast, punk-leaning version of “Help” (in the style heard in the movie “Yesterday”) as a simple,...

Send Steve a Text Message A kid gets a guitar with strings so high it’s basically unplayable, struggles for two years, and then hears the sentence that can haunt a musician for decades: “Stop wasting your money, it’s hopeless.” Our guest Elad did what a lot of people do after that kind of moment, he quit. Then life happened in a big way: he grew up in the suburbs of New York, found himself pulled...

Send Steve a Text Message Showing up to a gig with “the right notes” is not the same as showing up ready to perform. We walk through a real, working guitarist’s gig preparation process using Jesus Christ Superstar as the backdrop and it applies just as well to musical theater guitar, church gigs, and any band where the arrangement changes based on who’s on stage. We start with the listening-first...

Send Steve a Text Message Someone calls a chord progression like “1 6 4 5,” then says, “Cool, now let’s do it in A,” and suddenly your brain starts flipping through a messy stack of chord shapes. We wanted a cleaner, faster way to find the chords that actually matter, no matter the key, and it starts with one practical slice of music theory you can see on the fretboard. We walk through how the maj...

Send Steve a Text Message A lot of guitarists don’t quit because they stop loving music. They quit because life gets loud and practice gets messy. Steve Stine sits down with Chris Macry, a 62-year-old guitarist who played hard as a kid, stepped away for years while raising children as a single father, and then made a serious return with a new goal: stop feeling stuck and finally grow into the play...

Send Steve a Text Message Octaves are one of those guitar “unlock” moments: suddenly the fretboard stops feeling like random dots and starts looking like a repeating pattern you can actually use. We walk through what an octave is in plain language, then immediately turn it into a practical guitar technique you can apply anywhere on the neck. If you’ve ever wondered why the same note seems to show...

Send Steve a Text Message If you’ve ever felt buried under advice, tabs, tutorials, and “one more video,” this one is for you. We talk about the biggest mindset shift students need to make when they join an online music academy: your job isn’t to research every answer on YouTube anymore. Your job is to show up, interact, and let us guide you with a plan that actually fits your life and your playin...

Send Steve a Text Message Your guitar playing probably doesn’t need more information. It needs less noise. We live in a world where presets, plugins, YouTube guitar lessons, short-form tips, and endless gear reviews are always one click away, and that abundance quietly steals the one thing that actually creates progress: focused practice. So we step back and get honest about why so many players fe...

Send Steve a Text Message You can love guitar for decades and still feel like you’re standing outside the music, looking in. That’s where Cary Bynum found himself: a creative professional from Birmingham, Alabama, raised on the Beatles, the Stones, classic rock, blues, and old-school country, with a house full of guitars and a long history of stalled-out lessons. We talk through the pattern that k...

Send Steve a Text Message The fastest way to stall on guitar is to confuse memory with musicianship. That is where Levi takes us, starting with the honest origin story of learning guitar for the wrong reasons, then quickly finding the right ones: teaching, curiosity, and the addictive moment when a student’s “light bulb” turns on. We dig into what actually makes practice work. Levi explains how hi...

Send Steve a Text Message Your practice can be consistent and still feel like it’s going nowhere. When there’s no deadline, it’s easy to drift through scales, licks, and exercises without ever feeling finished, and that “unfinished” feeling quietly kills motivation. We talk about the simplest fix: give your guitar practice a real finish line, even if you don’t have a band, a gig, or a rehearsal on...

Send Steve a Text Message Noodling feels like practice until you realize you’re getting the same results month after month. We sit down and get blunt about what actually creates progress on guitar: a plan that matches your real schedule, plus the discipline to practice with intention and focus. We walk through how we think about a guitar practice routine when time is limited. The big shift is movi...

Send Steve a Text Message Want your solos to breathe, sing, and feel human without learning a new scale? We dive into the art of slides and show how three simple categories—intentional slides, subtle half-step drifts, and “airplane” landings—transform stiff lines into vocal phrases with character. From deciding whether to let the listener hear the start note to treating it like a fast grace note,...

Send Steve a Text Message Ever wish your live rig could fly under the seat and still sound huge? Steve Stein breaks down a travel-first guitar setup that trades heavy amps for a Quad Cortex without sacrificing feel, clarity, or stage confidence. We walk through why portability wins more nights than nostalgia, how a consistent four-sound layout speeds decisions, and what happens when you stop chasi...

Send Steve a Text Message Feeling stuck even with endless lessons, tabs, and shiny gear at your fingertips? We dig into the surprising reason progress stalls for so many players: overload. From preset chasing to YouTube grazing, we unpack six traps that quietly drain your focus and lay out a practical framework to turn short, daily sessions into real, measurable growth. We start by calling out the...

Send Steve a Text Message Feeling stuck even though you practice daily and binge guitar videos? We’ve been there. The real blocker isn’t effort—it’s the lack of a focused plan that turns scattered experiences into absorbed skills you can trust when it counts. We unpack why grazing on random lessons rarely leads to lasting progress and show how to shift into targeted learning you can apply today. Y...

Send Steve a Text Message Stuck playing the same licks but not getting better? This conversation maps a clear path from autopilot to intentional practice so your limited time turns into visible progress and real confidence on the fretboard. We unpack how to set precise goals, track your growth, and build pillars of skill that stack into the kind of player you actually want to be. We start by separ...

Send Steve a Text Message Shows fall apart for simple reasons: a dead tuner battery, a snapped string, a noisy cable. We decided to stop gambling with luck and build a compact guitar emergency kit that turns potential disasters into quick, quiet fixes. This episode is a practical, no-fluff walkthrough of the exact items that keep a set tight, your head calm, and the music flowing. We start with th...

Send Steve a Text Message Want real progress instead of the same comfortable loops? We break down the simple shift that turns practice from maintenance to elevation, so your time actually maps to your goals. It’s not about grinding more minutes; it’s about choosing what to grow and building a plan that sticks. We dig into the core idea of intentional practice—defining the exact skill you’re traini...

Send Steve a Text Message Ever run the pentatonic scale perfectly and still wonder why your solo doesn’t sound like a song? We shine a light on the missing link: groove and phrasing. Starting with a deep soul A minor backing track, we walk through how to hear the downbeat, count eighth notes, and turn simple movements in one position into musical sentences that sit inside the track rather than flo...