Steve Stine Guitar Podcast

From Metal Riffs to Jazz Harmonies: A Guitarist's Musical Evolution with Juan Diego Barbosa

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Hey everyone! Welcome to the Steve Stine Podcast. I'm your host, Steve Stine, and today, I'm thrilled to bring you an insightful conversation with Juan Diego Barbosa, a talented Guitar Instructor from GuitarZoom Academy. In this episode, we dive deep into our personal journeys with the guitar and the various influences and challenges that have shaped us as musicians.
Juan opens up about his eclectic musical style, blending rock, jazz, and Latin American folk music. We discuss his early influences like Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and how studying jazz in college refined his melodic playing. We also touch on the struggles he faces in maintaining a consistent practice routine amid his busy schedule, and how he tackles both the physical and psychological aspects of intense focus on the instrument.
On my end, I share my experiences with the challenges of stepping out of my comfort zone and how immersing myself in different musical styles has irrevocably changed who I am as a musician. We explore the importance of pushing boundaries, adapting to new challenges, and the transformative power of unfamiliar musical situations.
We also delve into our shared teaching challenges. Juan discusses how beginners often struggle with hand positioning on the fretboard, while more advanced students grapple with playing over chord changes and improvisation. I emphasize the importance of personalized lesson plans to cater to individual student needs and the ongoing struggle of keeping students progressing when they hit a plateau.
This episode is packed with valuable insights on practicing efficiently, the significance of harmony and modes, and the balance between technical skills and musicality. We cover the practical realities of being a musician, the importance of having fun, and how real-life demands often shape our practice routines.
Whether you're a seasoned guitarist or just starting out, there's something in this conversation for everyone. So sit back, relax, and let's dive into the world of guitar with Juan Diego Barbosa on this episode of the Steve Stine Podcast. Enjoy!

Check out Juan here:
Juan Diego Barbosa (guitarzoom.com)

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

Steve Stine [00:00:00]:
Hey, Steve Stine here. Thank you so much for joining me again today. I am here with Juan Diego Barbosa. He is one of our instructors at the GuitarZoom academy. How you doing, Juan?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:00:09]:
Hey, Steve. It's great. It's great. Thank you for inviting me to the show. And, yeah, how are you?

Steve Stine [00:00:15]:
I'm doing great. It's awesome that you're here. I always enjoy this because I can dive a little bit deeper into the thought process of players like Juan. Juan sent me a bunch of videos of his playing, and what I love are. So when I was a kid, I was very much a metalhead, and I still am, no doubt about it, but I love melodic, fluid playing, and Juan most certainly has that. So, Juan, tell me a little bit about, like, your influences and where your art of playing and improvisation kind of comes from.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:00:53]:
Yeah, so I started playing guitar, like, 1011 years old. I started learning Metallica, chili peppers, like Van Halen, those kind of stuff. So a lot of it comes down to all of these players, like John Frusciante, Van Halen, Kirk Hammett, like, on the riff things, on the maybe scratch things from John Frusciante, stuff like that. It's a huge thing in my technique. And also, I studied jazz in college, so I had a teacher which did not only play jazz, but a lot of music. He liked free improvisation, like free jazz and noise, but he also made very, very cute, like, melodic music from folk music from Latin America or just in general, just stuff that sounds very beautiful to me. And he told me something that stuck to me ever since, and it was to make the guitar singh, like, to play melodies which are very singable on the guitar and, yeah, that really stuck to me. So I try to make the guitar sing on my solos sometimes when I really feel like the music needs it.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:02:03]:
So, yeah, I think it comes from those places from Prague, from metal, from latin american music. Yeah.

Steve Stine [00:02:10]:
So who are some of the guitar influences that, you know, when we talk about influences, sometimes it's like somebody who wanted, you know, made us pick up the guitar or something. But for you, like, influences that you feel like you've got in your playing? Like, who are some of those players?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:02:26]:
Oh, yeah, that's a great question. So I think I have a lot of stuff from the Foo Fighters. They play, like, very aggressive stuff. They have very, like, a lot of songs with open strings. That resonates with me a lot also. I don't know if you have heard of Jeff Buckley, maybe.

Steve Stine [00:02:44]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:02:46]:
Yeah, he's a great influence for me, at least, tone wise, like, I like his very clean but aggressive tone on the guitar with tons of reverb. Yeah. John Frusciante, again, he's a huge influence because of the rhythm thing, because of the way he strums a lot of the notes he plays on the tone. And improvisation that he does on his live shows is also a great thing for me. I like Pat Metheny. I'm studying him a lot. Yeah. So there's some hard, really, really hard stuff from his playing, but I really like to try to implement that in my playing as well.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:03:25]:
What else? Yeah, I think we could talk about a lot of influences, but I think those are, like, the ones that I have implemented the most. How about you?

Steve Stine [00:03:35]:
Oh, gosh, there are so many, you know, like, I'm quite a bit older than you. So my guitar journey kind of started in the eighties, and so it was 1983 when I got my first guitar and started learning. So by, like 85, a couple years into it, I'd developed some skill sets. And so, you know, that was the time of Engvid Malmsteen and Satriani and Steve Vai and Tony McAlpine and Vinnie Moore. And like, all of these shredders of the time, that's what I was really into. And then once it got to be into the later nineties, I started realizing that I was really more connected to. Not that I didn't love that stuff, cause I still do, but I really. I found Steve Lukather and Neil shone and Andy Timmons and, like, some of these players that were just really, really melodic and could still do the crazy stuff, but they just had such an immense.

Steve Stine [00:04:40]:
And not that, again, saturating. Those guys didn't. But I just was in tune with it more with some of those players. And then it just. It changed everything about the way I was approaching guitar playing. So being a predominant minor guitar player, minor key, because I was always playing metal stuff major, was a struggle for me in the. In the early days because I just. I didn't have that skill set of being able to direct my solos toward chords.

Steve Stine [00:05:06]:
I was more pyrotechnics on the guitar, you know?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:05:11]:
Yeah, but that's cool. Yeah, yeah. I had also studied those guys, but not so much. I'm not too much of a shredder, but I think I had that at least phase of listening to them and studying that stuff. Also, I just remembered about. What's the name the guitar player from Avenge Semenfold? I forgot the name. Oh, Brian Hunter is here. His actual name.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:05:33]:
He's sinister gates. Oh, yeah.

Steve Stine [00:05:35]:
There you go.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:05:36]:
Yeah, yeah, I like him a lot. And also. Yeah, I think I have influences from various places as well. So, for example, Jo Pass also is a huge thing for me. The chords sing is also a very huge thing. So, yeah, yeah. Influences are from all places. I also like Charlie Hunter a lot.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:05:56]:
I like to play like him. Yeah. All over the place, but it's good to have. Yeah.

Steve Stine [00:06:01]:
Do you find. Do you find, like, when we talk about different styles of music, like rock, and then we have blues, and then we have jazz, like, how do you feel? Do you enjoy playing, like, all of those? Is your heart in one place more than another, or. Or do you like all of those things?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:06:20]:
Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's kind of both. So I like to play all of them. I do not like to separate. I. Music. I just think of art and music and expression with different tools or styles.

Steve Stine [00:06:33]:
Sure.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:06:33]:
But, yeah, definitely my heart is in some places in particular. For example, rock. Rock has been a huge thing for me since I'm a kid, and jazz as well, since I studied it so much. But before studying it, I just listened and liked it a lot. Latin american music as well. It's the stuff you grow up to over here, and you can maybe ask Luca or Manuel or Miguel, and they are all gonna have the same references. Although we have variations based on our countries and we have different styles in between our regions, we still have the same things growing up. So that's huge as well.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:07:12]:
And it's also very melodic and very. Maybe simple on harmony, but very poetic. So that also has, like, its own sensibility. So I think those three places help my heart the most. But, yeah, I mean, I listen to a lot of soul, like maybe D'Angelo, Amy Winehouse, stuff like that. So my heart is all over the place in music, but especially. Especially rock, jazz, and folk music. Yeah.

Steve Stine [00:07:38]:
Right. So what do you like to. When you sit down to practice? I'm assuming that you probably still have some sort of a practice regimen at this point. What do you like to do? What do you go through when you're. When you're going to practice?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:07:52]:
Yeah, well, this is a question that actually comes up with my students. I like to divide the practice into, on a macro level, on two things. First, warm up and technique. That includes maybe studying scales, practicing with the metronome. I like to do sequences. I think sequences are great for interiorizing scales and also for being able to use them. So I do a lot of sequences. I start at maybe 60 bpm with a metronome and start going up on the rhythms.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:08:22]:
So, for example, I start on half notes, very, very slow and quarters, triplets, eights, 16th and so on. So until the fastest point I can get with the sequence while still being very careful with the musical material that I'm studying. So that's like a first thing to warm up, maybe half an hour or something like that. And after that, I like to implement that stuff into my playing. So if I am playing, I don't know, a jazz standard which has complex chord changes, I go into very detailed about a chord change that's really hard for me. So just that chord change, then the other one, then the other one, then the whole thing, trying to implement that stuff that I'm studying technically. So if I'm starting a sequence, let's apply that. Or if I'm starting a way of thinking the inversions of chords, I do that as well on the comping.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:09:17]:
So, yeah, on a very macro level, it's just that to warm up and study technical stuff and to implement that in my playing. But I need to confess I have been not so consistent with that lately, but I've been trying to learn how to sing, so my practice has been more focused on that as well. How about you? How's your practice routine?

Steve Stine [00:09:38]:
Well, you know, I. When I. Again, when I was younger, I was very technically minded and so, and I'm thankful for that because it gave me a skill set that I appreciate that I have. But I don't focus on the raw energy and the raw power of simply going through speed exercises and things. As I get older, I'm much more cognizant of chord changes and trying to connect musically. Where when I was a kid and I was playing, again, like you said, Metallica and Iron Maiden and those sorts of things, it was more getting into bands and playing that kind of stuff. It was more about the sequences and the licks that I could learn that were kind of unique, you know, Dimebag, Daryl, that sort of thing, these really unique things of being able to play. I was really into that and I still love it, but I really love being able to sit with a chord progression and try and really listen and then respond accordingly.

Steve Stine [00:10:47]:
So now even the bands I play with are very different. You know, it's hard to play in metal bands when you get to be in your mid fifties, but everybody's got kids and families and everything like that. But, you know, I play a lot more blues and jazz, blues stuff now with a lot of local professors and things like that, where that's what we do is we'll play, you know, I have an instrumental band with a bunch of other guys, and we just get together and we'll have a generic chord progression that is a song, so to speak. But we'll just go off. And the sax player will go off for a while, and then the keyboard player will go off for a while, and then the bass player will go off for a while, and then I'll go off for a while. And it's a lot of fun, but it's this organic thing that's happening on stage in front of people. And so I like practicing. That kind of thing is, I always call it the guitar brain.

Steve Stine [00:11:39]:
Like, learning how to limit your brain from going go, go, go, and you gotta do this and you gotta throw in this and, like, just learning how to relax a little bit and try and respond to the music. And if the music takes you to a very energetic place, that's okay, you can go there. But then, you know, contrasting that and coming back down again and then doing something, I. I really enjoy that.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:12:03]:
Yeah, that's very cool. And I think that's a huge thing as well. Not only to practice in context, but also to just have fun sometimes. Yeah, I mean, it's very important to be, like, very specific about studying some things in order to improve them. But it all comes down to having fun on the guitar or on music in general. It's just a fun and very human thing to do. So that's, I think, the most important part to practice. Focus on a context in which you can apply that thing that you're practicing.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:12:32]:
That's right. So, yeah, that's why I also don't practice as much lately. Not because I don't find it fun. I really have fun practicing, but when I do, I practice in order to play something which is required maybe for, I don't know, a recording or a gig or I just want to write something. So, yeah, I think it just comes down to what do you want to do? And is it fun to you dive into it? So, yeah, that's a huge thing.

Steve Stine [00:12:59]:
That's right. And what, what you just said is very important for people that are listening to. Like, you can spend your time developing a practice regimen and, you know, these things that you're trying to develop, and that's very, very important. But the real world sometimes kicks in, and in the real world, all of a sudden, you've been hired to do a recording session or you're going to be playing with a band and you have 30 or 40 songs or whatever it might be that you have to learn for this band or, you know, all kinds of different things where all of a sudden this practice regimen that you developed is very important. But right now you've got to put that on the back burner because you've got to do this, like, next Saturday. You've got to play with this band, and so you got to learn the material or you got to go into the recording studio. So you have to get a plan together. And it's very important to be okay with that because these are the real world experiences as a human being.

Steve Stine [00:13:58]:
You know, at some point, we're not going to be here anymore. And so it isn't just about your scale work or your speed work or your theory or whatever it might be. It's about trying to get yourself into real world scenarios where you're experiencing music with other people or in other. Other situations than just being in your, you know, your studio or your bedroom or something like that. That's very important.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:14:22]:
Yeah. And like you said, maybe the music sometimes gets you to that place where you really need those complex tools. And, yeah, it's important to know those places as well in order to be able to make music there. But, yeah, I think it comes down to context. So it's really important to keep in mind what is needed or what do you want to achieve in order to practice. So, yeah, I just try to focus my sessions towards that specific objective. Right, yeah.

Steve Stine [00:14:50]:
Oh, go ahead.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:14:50]:
Sorry. No, I just thought of something else that you mentioned, and it was to play specific things. Sorry, specific things from guitar players. That's what I call transcription. So I do that bunch as well. I like to learn solos and riffs and songs and try to bring that stuff into my playing. That's also a huge thing to have, like your. Your mind very open to what's happening around.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:15:14]:
And whether it's from stuff you already know or brand new stuff that you have no idea how to do, that's very nurturing, maybe into your playing. It's really cool to be learning all the time. Right.

Steve Stine [00:15:27]:
That's great. So two questions for you. We're going to start with you. In your experiences of playing guitar, making music, that sort of thing. What have you found as struggles for you? Whether it's in your playing, whether it's communication? I mean, it could be anything, but what kind of struggles have you gone through when it comes to. It might be just like studying something, like theory or something, but what have been some roadblocks in your way that you've really had to work hard to kind of get over.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:15:59]:
Yeah, I think, at least at this moment in my life, consistency specifically to practice the guitar, because I know how to. I have, like, my routine, and when I do, I have a ton of fun, but I just. I'm just trying so many things, like, on the rest of my life that I sometimes don't, like, get out the time into just sitting down and practice this stuff because I'm trying to, I don't know, work out, and I teach lessons and write my music and all of that. So maybe I'm not practicing as consistent as I. As I maybe could and also wanted to. So I think that's a struggle right now. And, yeah, I mean, I'm just a huge nerd, so I think theory and stuff on the guitar has not been a struggle for me just because I really like to dive in, into that kind of stuff. I think my struggle with it is, like, external to the guitar.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:16:54]:
And also when I started playing jazz, I struggled a little bit, like, getting out of my, let's call it tunnel vision. So I think I tunnel visioned into the guitar when I was playing with other people, and it was hard for me to listen to what was happening around without losing track of what I was doing on the guitar. So I think that's important as well, for example, in order to react to what other people are suggesting or playing. So, yeah, I think I tunneled vision a lot, and it was a little hard for me to, like, get out of that. Yeah, I call it hunching both on the guitar, like, physically, your back starts to get into the fretboard as well as psychologically. You just close your mind to just to just the fretboard and the guitar, and you forget what's going on around. So I think that was a. A cool thing to realize in workout of.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:17:47]:
Yeah. How about you? What have been your struggles?

Steve Stine [00:17:50]:
Well, I, you know, God, it'd be hard to say exactly what my struggles would be. I think the biggest thing for me was learning how to play different styles of music because I was so comfortable in what I did with the players that I played with and the bands that I played with. And so when I was younger, I became a Montessori instructor and I worked, you know, I became a professor at our local college and all these different things, but I felt like I was always in my comfort zone. Like, everything I was doing was in a space that I was comfortable with. And so it wasn't until I really started trying to force myself to get out of my comfort zone and play with, play styles of music that I wasn't as comfortable with or put myself in musical situations where it would have been easy to say no to and I would have saved myself a lot of time, but instead saying yes to it and then forcing myself into uncomfortable places where I grew as a player. I grew as a musician, not just as a guitar player, but really as a musician. But it took a lot of effort. And so when you talk about jazz, for instance, jazz is not my forte.

Steve Stine [00:19:09]:
It's not my area of study. And so when I first started experiencing jazz as a guitar, as a rock guitar player, how vastly different it was in its approach. So talking to friends of mine and saying, okay, so when we solo over this song or when you improvise, what are you thinking about? Like, are you thinking about emote or what do you. What do you. And most of the time, they'd be like, no, I don't really think that way. That isn't really the way I look at things when I play. So that was interesting for me, but it was difficult because as a guitar player, as a musician all the way around. But as a guitar player, there are times when you'll open that door and you'll start studying something new, and you morph into something new.

Steve Stine [00:19:58]:
And whether you like it or not, you can't go back. Like, you can't be that guy from a year ago anymore, even though you liked who that was. Your experiences have now changed who you are, and you have to go. You have to go with it, and you have to keep moving down that. So I would say those would be the most the things for me. Really?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:20:20]:
Yeah, that's very deep. Like, it applies to life as well. You are not the same person you were yesterday and a week ago. And, yeah, you have to let go of that person you were. Order to embrace that thing that you're becoming. Yeah, that's right. That's very deep.

Steve Stine [00:20:33]:
Yeah, it is. So when you teach, for instance, in your. Your career of teaching guitar, what do you find that your students have struggled with the most?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:20:44]:
Okay. That depends on the level they're at, because, yeah, you sometimes get students that have studied a year or two with someone else. Some of them are just starting. So I think for really, really people that are just picking the guitar up, I think maybe, like, the position of the left hand and the fretboard, because sometimes when playing chords, they cover other strings with their fingers. And I think that comes down to just having your knuckles, too, like, close to the fretboard. I tried them to separate them, but that's. That's hard. Other thing that they struggle.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:21:19]:
Well, I haven't actually. I just, like, tucked. My first lesson, my first lesson with this, it was to play chord changes, so to improvise over arpeggios and different scales. So I think that's a hard thing to study just because it's a lot of ground to cover. You do need to know how to build chords, how to find them on the guitar, how to find scales. You really need to be able to define them as well to understand the concept in order to apply that. So it's a lot of ground to cover, but I think it's very cool to teach that. It's just that it takes some time in order to get one person to get there also.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:22:00]:
Yeah, I don't know, maybe technique, stuff like, some people just find it difficult to maybe skip strings or stuff like that, or rhythm as well. I think that's also maybe a little difficult for me to teach. Maybe online is even harder because you're not, like, clapping in person, like, just to be able to explain the rhythm to the person. But, yes, subdivisions, for example, going from eight notes to triplets is something I always find trouble, like, explaining. It's a little hard for me to explain that, but, yeah, I think. I think those are really minuscule things overall. But we always find a solution to that.

Steve Stine [00:22:46]:
Right?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:22:47]:
Yeah. What's that for you?

Steve Stine [00:22:49]:
Well, the biggest thing is kind of sussing out what the student needs, because so often they'll come to you and they'll think, you know, well, I was told I should do this, or I feel like I need to know more about theory or whatever, and all of these things are great, and all of these things are valid, but the more you talk to them, the more you start realizing that there are other things that might be missing. And so for me, it's that initial discussion, the most important thing is that initial discussion of getting to know that student and then figure out what it is that you can do to get them from where they are to somewhere where they want to go and developing an independent plan for them. Like, for me, I've never used books or method books or anything like that simply because everybody's so. Everybody's an individual, and they're all so, like you just said, they're on so many different levels, and so it's like, well, tell me a little bit about what you're looking for. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you don't like, and then let's try and kind of craft a plan. And that's what I've always been very good at. The struggle sometimes is when you can't communicate with the student or the student is struggling to get to that next level before you can even talk about the next thing.

Steve Stine [00:24:15]:
So you're stuck in this spot where you're doing the same thing over and over and over. And so then sometimes you have to kind of sidestep that, give them time to work on this thing. Let's find something else now that we can work on while you're developing this thing. I think that's the most important thing and the struggle that I have. But other than that, like I said, I do this. I've been doing this so long, I've been teaching for so long that it's all I think about between my crafting my own self and my journey and then trying to craft other people's journeys as well. So do you find one, do you find theory on your daily journey? Do you find theory really useful? Sort of useful all the time.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:25:04]:
Very, extremely useful. Like, yeah, I'm very, very nerdy with specifically harmony and that kind of stuff. I like to study that a lot. So, yeah, I mean, at least when you're studying harmony, if you just want to play a gig with a band and you know how to find functional harmony chords, so you don't know how to find the one, the fourth, the fifth in any given key, you already know how to play a song. So that's very useful for gigging. For example, you just have to have, like, the chord changes written, and that's all you need to do in order to play that. Also, applying that to the fretboard just lets you do fancy things that are really cool to do. So, yeah, you do know how to find the 9th of a chord.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:25:49]:
So you play that 9th chord and it sounds cool. Or the 11th, or you can play with the 9th and the 11th, and that sounds very cool. So just from simple stuff like that. Or also, I do write my own music, so sometimes I'm looking for a specific sound. I do know how to find that sound. I do know the name of the chord, the name of that tension which I'm looking for, or the color of the mode I'm looking for. So it's extremely useful because I know how to find those tools that I need.

Steve Stine [00:26:20]:
Right?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:26:20]:
Yeah, I find it useful all the time. And it's really cool to study that, right? Yeah. For example, we have a student right here at guitarson, who is studying, like, composition for sync music. So I'm trying to teach him, like, modes, because I was writing the music for a short film recently, and I wanted, like, a very comical sound, but a little bit tense. So I thought of the Simpsons theme like this. That's lydian dominant. So that's very useful. That's the sound I was looking for.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:26:58]:
So based on that experience, which I just thought, oh, that's that mode. I can teach that to him. So, okay, we are starting this mode. What do you feel out of it? Like, how would you define it? Okay, and how about this other one? And this other one? So these all different modes give you different expressions, different characters. So all of that is useful for improvising, for playing, for writing. You have different expressions, different tools in order to express that sound you're looking for. So I find it useful on a very minuscule and huge things as well.

Steve Stine [00:27:33]:
Right. So what Juan just talked about is very important, because, again, when you get. When you. When you start playing guitar and you get really deep into your fretboard and fundamentals and rudimentary practice and technical skills, sometimes it's easy to forget that there's this other world out here, which is this world of feel and sound and experiences. And it's not just fretboard study and technical study, but like the. The moods of the modes, the expressions of those modes. The way that you can play certain things, even exotic scales, things like that. And the sounds that you can extract from these things when you know them.

Steve Stine [00:28:13]:
You know, oftentimes a really great exercise that I use with students is where you just pluck the six string and then let it ring out. And then you choose a scale or a mode or a shape. And you, over that e, you listen to each individual. So let's just say we were doing something like the dorian mode or something like that. So you hit that e, and then you just play all those notes. And instead of just playing them in a fundamental, rudimentary way that you normally would when you practice, you're really trying to listen to how each note responds to. To the sound of that e and get comfortable with what this has to offer and how these notes are interacting with that. And it's a really great way of practicing.

Steve Stine [00:28:56]:
But it feels awkward sometimes when you first start doing it because you're so used to, well, I gotta set my metronome, and I gotta do my thing. Well, this isn't that. This is just setting aside some time and really allowing your ear and the space that you're in to interact with the sound of this one pitch and then these other notes that are interacting with that. And I, that was a, going back to what we talked about earlier, that was a profound practice for me that did not exist for 20 years in my practice. And once I found that, I was like, oh, my God, this is really great, because not only can I study my fretboard this way, but I can study how the notes within the context, within the framework of this fretboard are interacting with that. And it gives me a better insight into what I would like to do with my fingers and the rest spots that I have when I play.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:29:48]:
Yeah. And that's, I think, a very cool thing to have, because when you start to recognize the notes, the notes you play, when you're improvising or just playing solos or whatever, you start to hear that stuff before you played. So you, you can very easily find that stuff on the fretboard. So I think, yeah, that technical stuff on the fretboard is important, but also the mental stuff that got, that comes, like, behind it is very important as well, to be able to, to recognize, to identify, to name stuff, to define. All of this comes down to being able to find those tools that you need when you need them.

Steve Stine [00:30:25]:
All right, well, that's great. Well, Juan, I don't want to take too much of your time here. I know you've got a bunch of stuff that I'm sure you've got to do. So thank you for being with us today, Juan.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:30:34]:
Yeah, no, Steve, I'm very thankful for your invite. It's really cool to talk to you so we can have another conversation anytime. Yeah, it's been really cool.

Steve Stine [00:30:44]:
Cool. And if you're interested in looking up Juan and what he does here at the GuitarZoom academy, just head over to GuitarZoom.com and you'll see the academy button there, and you can check it out, and you can contact Juan and set up lessons with him if you're interested. So again, thank you so much for your time, Juan, and I'll talk to you soon. Okay, buddy?

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:31:04]:
Sure, Steve. Take care. Thank you very much.

Steve Stine [00:31:07]:
See you later.

Juan Diego Barbosa [00:31:07]:
Bye.

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