Collaboration – The missing piece in nailing the guitar, and a thing called Drooble

So many of you guitar heads spend hours by yourself in your dimly lit bedroom, hunched over the instrument while obsessively practicing your favorite songs, refining your chops, and catching up with your idols. It’s what all the greats did, right? In reality, you are probably isolating yourself too much, which brings your mood down and makes you socially awkward. As if that’s not big enough of a problem, you are also hindering your musical progress by not exploring opportunities to collaborate with other guitar players and musicians in your area.

While I do want you to get off your computer оr mobile phone into the real world, playing and trading info with others, the opportunity to do this online, from the comfort of your screen, is extremely compelling! There’s a thing called Drooble – a social network for musicians with all the means to connect and collaborate anywhere, in a medium that’s music-first and devoid of typical social network noise. I’m impressed!

Got questions or want to share advice? Drooble’s Communities section is full of people listening. Looking for band members? There’s a special search engine for finding musicians. Got some music that needs to be heard, or your band needs a press-kit? Drooble has various promotion tools to spotlight your art. And with their Karma Points system, all of this is free – the more you engage and give back, the more Karma and options you get.

Like it or not, the truth is all the greatest guitar virtuosos of our time regularly met up and jammed with other musicians at one point or another – which helped them evolve tremendously! Some, like John Petrucci and Steve Vai, went to university and immersed themselves in a social environment full of people who lived and breathed music. Others, like Jimi Hendrix and Dimebag Darrel, couldn’t care less about formal education, but never missed an opportunity to play with – and eventually outplay – those in their local music scene. Heck, even Joe Satriani, who taught world-famous players like Metallica’s Kirk Hammet and knows everything there is to know about playing guitar – owes much of his musical development to studying with jazz pianist Lennie Tristano.

Have you ever played with a keyboardist outside band practice? Or someone who’s great at synths and sampling? If not, you are missing out – these people could open windows into huge musical possibilities you may have been blind to because of your intense focus on practicing guitar in solitude. Or you can simply have plain ol’ fun trading licks with them! And sure enough, you will end up learning something valuable – whether it’s small insights or knowledge that stays with you for the rest of your life. You will certainly make friends and connections along the way, which tends to be nice.

Definitely check Drooble out, it’s a great place with tons of possibilities for musical growth.