“I see guys playing and it is almost like they are afraid of silence and space. You’ve got to think of playing as a conversation”: Tom Bukovac on 4 mistakes every intermediate player makes – and how to avoid them

There comes a point in every guitar player’s journey when they hit the wall. They can play, no question, there are chops, a lick vocabulary, but there’s something missing that separates the beginner-intermediate player from the pro. Tom Bukovac has been thinking a lot about this lately, and has distilled it down to four things that all intermediate players get wrong – and addressing these issues in your playing can take you to the next level.

On the latest episode of his Homeskoolin’ YouTube series, Bukovac laid out four telltale signs of the intermediate player. “These are things I noticed guys doing that are just getting going and I noticed it immediately,” he says. “I can’t stop noticing it. It’s things that everybody must get through.”

Bukovac, one of the hottest session players out of Nashville, can relate. He was no different. When it came to timing, it took him years to get it right, to land on the pocket without rushing.

“Don’t feel alone,” he says. “That’s a really difficult thing to beat out of your playing. I struggled with that for many years.” And that’s probably the best place to start. Bukovac says the best players don’t rush, and you need to learn how to relax an play in the pocket.

“Intermediate guitar players have a tendency to rush everything,” he says. “They can’t wait to play the next note. They are so worried about getting to the phrase that they just can’t stop… You’ve got to learn to get right in the pocket and play something with intensity but don’t rush it. Really hard to do. Everybody struggles with it.” 

When the stage lights come on, or the red light is on in the studio, that’s when it can get really bad. The key is to relax, but that’s easier said than done. Long sessions, playing to the metronome, playing with records, recording yourself and listening back can whip your timing into shape, and help you relax into your playing. Because that’s another big thing on Bukovac’s list…

Don’t be squeezing the life out of the guitar. This is not jiujitsu. 

“When you are not playing fluidly and loosely, your timing is… urgh! urgh! urgh! urgh! It’s not flowing,” Bukovac says. “You are squeezing the neck out of tune. You are squeezing the notes out of tone. Killer of tone. It’s like a drummer hitting his cymbals too hard, or a snare drum too hard. It just kills all the tone.”

Too much tension in the body is the problem. There’s nothing wrong with aggression, he says, but there is an efficiency to how the pro players play hard that gets the point across just fine. 

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“The trick is to play with intensity and passion but not squeeze the living shit out of the neck, or tense your whole body up,” he says. Again. This is a stage that Bukovac has pushed through. It’s a natural staging post in a player’s development when they find a level of control over that emotion, a refinement of technique.

“I think a lot of guys, beginner guys, intermediate guys struggle with that,” he says. “I’ve struggled with that in the past, when you get so excited, so much energy flowing through your body. You go play the solo and you’re just squeezing the shit out of the neck. It kills tuning. It kills everything. You watch the greats, man, and they are just barely touching the guitar. You look at these guys like Mike Landau, all these guys who have done amazing things on guitar, they are getting tons of intensity and aggression out but they are barely touching the guitar. Like, that is pro-level shit.”

How to work towards this? Again, it’s a question of being able to relax with the instrument, to develop an economy of movement, and learn how and when to dig in. And it doesn’t mean you don’t have to make it look easy; just remember you’ve got C-shaped piece of maple in your hands. This is not an arm wrestle with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. 

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Bukovac’s other two observations? The use of involuntary vibrato, i.e. vibrato with everything, all of the time, and playing too much. The good news is all of these pitfalls of the beginner and intermediate player stem from the same issues, of being too eager, too tense with the instrument, and feeling the need to play all of the time.

Bukovac advises us to think of playing the guitar like a conversation, like telling a story you’ve got to give your audience time to pause and think about what you’ve said. Pace yourself.

“I see guys playing and it is almost like they are afraid of silence and space,” he says “ You’ve got to think of playing as a conversation. Bend the note in a solo and just let that shit ring, uncomfortably long. Let people feel that. You’re not in a hurry to get to anything. That’s what I love about great players. You can see that wisdom there. They are not afraid to just let something hang for way too long. You don’t have to be playing constantly.”

Ditto, vibrato. In fact, sometimes no vibrato is what the phrase calls for. As with sustaining a note and just letting it hang there, Bukovac says it can be every bit as effective to let the note sit, using vibrato only when you really need it to say something. He calls it “nervous vibrato” and it is a dead giveaway.

“They’re not choosing their vibrato,” he says. “They are not doing it with intent.” Of all the things Bukovac is thinking about when he is playing onstage, it is vibrato. Not the notes. Those he has learned and squirrelled away on background. It’s when and when not to apply vibrato.

“You watch great players, great players choose very carefully when they vibrato, how much they vibrato, the speed of the vibrato, the intensity of the vibrato,” he says. “It is constantly changing… I love to bend a fucking note and just hold it, no vibrato. And as it’s dying shake it off.”

If you are looking for unvarnished personalised feedback from a seasoned pro, well, you’re in luck, because this is a service Bukovac is now offering “for a small fee”. Check out the video above and definitely subscribe to his YouTube channel because as we have said on this site before, Bukovac's Homeskoolin’ series is some of the best guitar tuition you can get for free.