The Steve Stine Podcast

Send Steve a Text Message Fifteen minutes on guitar can either change your playing or disappear in a blur of half-finished licks and random scrolling. We’ve all done it: sit down, noodle, chase a new idea, and stand up feeling busy but not better. So we lay out a simple, repeatable approach that turns short practice time into focused progress without making your routine complicated. We work throug...

Send Steve a Text Message Practice vs. Playing: Turning Scales Into Music Knowing a scale is one thing. Turning it into music is something else entirely. In this discussion, Steve breaks down the difference between practicing the guitar and actually playing/improvising , with a focus on helping developing players move beyond simply running scale patterns. Topics include visualization, metronome pr...

Send Steve a Text Message The fastest way to lose confidence on stage is a simple problem that turns into a spiral: you don’t know the tune well enough, the arrangement is different than you expected, and your paper chart is fighting you with page turns and missing notes. We’ve all been there. So we’re talking about a solution that’s practical, affordable, and surprisingly “old school” in spirit:...

Send Steve a Text Message Fast chargers are everywhere, and that’s exactly why guitar wireless systems get accidentally killed. We talk through the Sonic Sphere Neal Wireless System from CFG and start with the unglamorous detail that saves your gear: power. The manual calls for a standard 5V 1A USB source (5 watts max), and using high-voltage fast chargers can fry the batteries. If you’ve got a dr...

Send Steve a Text Message Can you tell major from minor with your eyes closed? That single skill can change how fast you learn songs by ear, how confident you feel in a jam, and how “musical” your playing sounds without relying on tabs. Steve Stein from Guitar Zoom walks through a simple ear training approach that helps you recognize chord quality first, before you worry about the exact chord name...

Send Steve a Text Message A lot of guitar careers are built around louder stages, bigger rigs, and the next gig. Tommy Armstrong Levitt’s path gets there too, but it takes a turn that’s both unexpected and deeply moving. We talk through his full arc: growing up on classic records, learning guitar by trading riffs with friends, leveling up through GIT at Musicians Institute, and turning hard-earned...

Send Steve a Text Message If someone says “This one’s in G” and your brain goes blank, this will give you a simple map you can actually use. We’re kicking off a practical ear training series by focusing on chords first, not complicated interval drills, so you can learn songs by ear faster and feel calm when playing with other people. We start with the major scale as the foundation for understandin...

Send Steve a Text Message Your blues can sound bigger without moving your hand at all. Steve Stine (GuitarZoom Academy) shows how to get real, melodic blues phrasing by camping in one spot on the neck and treating that position like a full roadmap of the song, not a box you get stuck inside. We build everything around a 1 4 5 in the key of A (A, D, E) and make it more authentic with A7, D7, and E7...

Send Steve a Text Message Stiff fingers can make you doubt your playing before you even play a note, and that frustration is often avoidable. We walk through a practical “pre-practice” routine for guitarists who deal with arthritis, morning stiffness, or hands that just need time to wake up. The big shift is mental first: we stop expecting peak performance the second the guitar hits our lap, and w...

Send Steve a Text Message Your guitar shouldn’t feel like a hand-strength contest, but a lot of players unknowingly make it one. We dig into the fastest ways to make guitar easier to play, starting with the stuff most people ignore: guitar setup, string action, and string gauge. If your strings sit too high or your neck hasn’t been adjusted in years, you’ll work harder for every note. And if your...

Send Steve a Text Message Major pentatonic and minor pentatonic get treated like separate skills, but that mindset slows down your playing. We break the whole thing down to one clean visual: a single pentatonic shape you can move anywhere on the neck, plus a simple way to find whether you are hearing the major sound or the minor sound. We start with a clear A minor pentatonic example, naming the f...

Send Steve a Text Message Pentatonic scales can feel like a cheat code because almost anything you play “works” but that safety can also keep your solos from sounding like real melodies. Steve Stein from Guitar Zoom Academy shows a simple way to hear and see the difference between pentatonic and diatonic playing, using the fretboard shapes most guitarists already know and trust. We start with the...

Send Steve a Text Message I went Live on Social Media with this, so if you are interested in watching the video, here it is: https://youtube.com/live/IaBZQVuPCDI?feature=share Your solos can have perfect timing and perfect notes and still feel lifeless. Today I go live (on my birthday, no less) to show the opposite approach: how to make guitar leads sound more authentic by adding grit on purpose....

Send Steve a Text Message Your guitar can feel rock solid indoors, then completely unravel the moment you roll up to an outdoor gig. Heat, humidity, and direct sun push the wood and hardware into fast changes, and that shows up as tuning instability, sticky playability, and sometimes a neck that suddenly needs attention. We walk through what actually helps when the weather is the problem, especial...

Send Steve a Text Message Your major key solo sounds “happy,” but it does not sound believable. That is the gap we close here, using a track in A major and a chord progression that stays diatonic and musical: A major, C sharp minor, D major, and E major. We start with the practical foundation most players skip, knowing the key, hearing the chords, and understanding why those changes matter even if...

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...