The Steve Stine Podcast
The Steve Stine Podcast is about more than just music — it’s about life, faith, and finding meaning in the everyday. Join Steve as he shares honest stories from decades of experience as a musician, educator, husband, father, and believer navigating the highs and lows of life. Each episode offers heartfelt conversations about purpose, spirituality, personal growth, and staying inspired — even when life gets messy or uncertain.
Whether you’re picking up a guitar, walking through a season of change, or just looking for encouragement to keep going, you’ll find something here to lift your spirit. With special guests, personal reflections, and real-world insights, this podcast is for anyone seeking a deeper connection to their creativity, their calling, and their faith.
Episodes
414 episodes
Live Class: Beginner's Guide to Soloing- The ESSENTIALS
Practice vs. Playing: Turning Scales Into MusicKnowing 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 <...
An iPad Setup That Saves The Show
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 note...
Does Going Wireless Change Your Guitar Tone? | CFG SonikSphere NEO
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 c...
Basics of Ear Training Part 2
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 walk...
More Than Guitar: The Tommy Armstrong-Leavitt Story
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 class...
Basics of Ear Training Part 1
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 ...
Play Better Blues Solos in Just ONE Position
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...
A Simple Warm-Up Routine For Arthritis And Finger Stiffness
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...
Playing Guitar With Stiff Hands or Arthritis? Try This!
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 stri...
Major And Minor Pentatonic Made Simple
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 ...
Turn A Five-Note Box Into A Full Scale
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 differe...
Gritty Blues Bends
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=shareYour solos can have perfect timing and perfect notes and still feel lifeless. Today ...
Outdoor Guitar Survival Guide
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,...
Four Practical Steps To Make A Major Pentatonic Solo Musical
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 t...
Stop Panicking And Start Organizing Your Gig Prep
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 expectati...
Why Your Guitar Solos Don't Sound Musical (And How to Fix Them)
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” ...
A Practical Plan For Learning Guitar As An Adult
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....
King Of Guitar Rabbit Holes Learns To Focus
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.” ...
Learning Guitar After Retirement
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 th...
How to Collaborate Remotely (Even If You’ve Never Done It Before)
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 p...
Never Too Late For Lead Guitar
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...
My Overkill Gig Prep That Saves Rehearsals
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 t...
Find Every Essential Chord In Any Key
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, n...
Inside GuitarZoom Academy: A Real Student’s Experience
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 rais...
How To Find And Play Octaves Across The Guitar Neck
Octaves are one of those guitar “unlock” moments: suddenly the fretboard stops feeling like random dots and starts looking like a repeating pattern you can actually use. We walk through what an octave is in plain language, then immediately turn...