[Talan Va'lash]

If you are looking to play guitar for a living, learn to read music as fluently as a concert violinist.

I can't stress enough how getting and keeping many gigs is dependant on this.

Playing in bands is all well and good but chances are, if you want to make a living as a musician, at some point you will need to do studio work or gig as a hired instrumentalist.

At least 4/5 session gigs will require you to play some pre-written music, either alone in a sound booth or with a live group. It may even be 9/10. Even the ones that are in essence "just comp over these changes, drums are in your monitor, we're doing the other parts later" they'll still give you some weird music (you can usually tell if the arranger is a pianist if he writes out every chord of the guitar part, sometimes, in voicings so close they're physically impossible to play on a guitar heh.) Though in this case you can usually bs your way through it and just read the changes.

Heh, though a couple times I've done sessions where the instructions were "Just play a solo over this track." Then you listen to the cut once, and cue up the solo section and give em a solo in whatever style they want.