Ron Thal: radiometal interview

You have actually been quoted saying to young guitar players that they should not practice too much. This is a contradiction to what we usually hear from most teachers.

Yes and I stand by that statement! (laughs) People practice too much. If you spend 10 hours a day, every day for years playing, then in those 10 hours you are not going to get as much out of it as in a very concentrated 2 hours. The rest of the time you should be spending living your life. It’s wrong to be sitting in your room, not experiencing life and just slaving away. That is not going to do anything for you musically; you’re not going to have anything interesting going on. You need to be an interesting person and be experiencing things in life. You need to feel things, the good and the bad. You need to get out there and live life to the fullest. And that is stuff that you get to share in your music. Those are the feelings that you will have to give in your music and your lyrics and your writing and your everything. If art is the reflection of the artist, then the best way to expand and broaden the art is to broaden the artist. And nothing would be worse than after 30 years of playing guitar, for someone to look back and say “what have I done with my life? Well I’ve sat in my room and I’ve played” (laughs). They should have seen the world and done lots of things and had other interests and connected with all kinds of different people and everything. That’s what I think will help somebody’s music because it’s not just about the playing, it’s about the writing. The song is more important and you only have to be good enough to play the song that you are playing. And I think that musicians forget that. They get so caught up on having the best technique that they forget that it’s about making music. If you want to make interesting music then you have to live an interesting life and feel a lot more than what you are going to get from living with a hand in your guitar.
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