Technique can be taught. Inspiration is harder to pin down — but Andy Timmons has thought about it more carefully than almost anyone, and in this masterclass he shares what decades of playing, listening, and performing have taught him about staying musically alive and growing as a guitarist.
What you’ll get out of this lesson
Andy’s honest and practical thinking on how inspiration works, where it comes from, why breadth of listening makes you a more original player, and how to keep your playing musical rather than impressive.
Inspiration doesn’t come from one place
Andy opens by talking about the range of music that moves him — from an Elvis Costello melody to a Chopin piece to an Yngwie solo to Eric Johnson. His point is that the very breadth of those influences is what makes a player distinct. He quotes David Bowie’s description of himself as “a great collector” rather than an original: Bowie absorbed what was happening around him and filtered it through his own taste, and what came out the other side was unmistakably his. Andy sees this as the model for how musicians develop their identity. The same process that shaped Stevie Ray Vaughan — combining the deep blues tradition with the energy and daring of Hendrix — is available to all of us, whatever our particular loves happen to be.
“I love how David Bowie talked about it. He never really claimed to be this original guy. He just said he was a great collector. And I instantly knew what he meant by that.”
Melody over display
A theme that runs through the whole session is the primacy of melody. Andy describes how he approached his performance of “Cry For You” during the class: rather than demonstrating technique, he chose to follow the melody and see where it wanted to go. He is candid about the temptation that guitar players face in front of other guitar players — the pull to impress rather than to communicate — and talks about how keeping himself in check is an ongoing discipline. The question he asks himself is whether he is heading in the direction the music needs, or whether he is trying to impress somebody. That self-awareness, he suggests, is one of the things that separates musical playing from mere virtuosity.
Question-and-answer phrasing
Andy uses the concept of musical question-and-answer to explain how he structures improvised phrases. A phrase is posed as a question; the next phrase answers or develops it. He demonstrates this during his performance — deliberately playing one short idea and then exploring how it can be extrapolated, varied, or answered in the next few bars. The same simple phrase means something different as the underlying harmony shifts, and that change of context is itself a source of musical interest. This is a concrete technique you can apply in your own improvising immediately.
Keeping the fire lit
Andy is direct about the fact that inspiration requires active maintenance. Listening widely, playing with great musicians, and staying curious about music outside your comfort zone are all part of keeping the creative energy alive. He mentions new records by Steve Vai and Eric Gales as things he’s drawn to — not because they sound like him, but because anyone who does what they do really well is worth listening to. That openness to being affected by music is, he suggests, what makes the difference between players who keep growing and those who plateau.
In this incredible masterclass, Andy demonstrates his mindset and approach to playing and growing as a musician.
Taking it further
Andy’s reference to the way Stevie Ray Vaughan synthesised the blues tradition with Hendrix is worth taking seriously as a model. Think about what two or three things you love most in music that don’t obviously belong together. Then ask yourself what it would sound like if you brought them into the same room. That friction between different influences is often where an individual voice starts to emerge.
Your homework
Pick a piece of music outside your usual comfort zone — not guitar music, not even necessarily instrumental — and listen to it several times this week with your full attention. Ask yourself what the melody is doing, how the phrasing works, and what you would steal if you could. Then pick up the guitar and try to play something — anything — that has even a trace of that influence in it.