That's Not How You Play Guitar.
I need to tell you about my last three weeks.
I have been completely, totally, gloriously lost in a YouTube rabbit hole of Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jeff Healey performances — and more specifically, I have been watching young musicians and music lovers discover these legends for the first time in reaction videos and absolutely LOSING THEIR MINDS.
The gasps. The dropped jaws. The "WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW" energy. The moment someone watches Jeff Healey play for the first time and their entire understanding of what's possible on a guitar just... shatters.
(If you haven't gone down this rabbit hole yet — cancel your plans. I'll wait.)
Now here's the thing that keeps striking me as I watch all of this:
Every single one of these men was playing guitar "wrong."
And every single one of them changed everything.
Jimi Hendrix: Wrong Hand, Right Everything
Jimi Hendrix was left-handed in a right-handed world.
Rather than learning to play a left-handed instrument, he took right-handed Fender Stratocasters, restrung them, and played them upside down. The angle of everything was different. The physical mechanics of what he was doing shouldn't have produced the sounds that came out.
Except they did. They produced sounds nobody had ever heard before. Feedback used as melody. The whammy bar as a language. Distortion as emotion.
He described his own playing this way:
"Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion."BrainyQuote
And then there's this one — which I think is one of the greatest pieces of performance advice ever given:
"Don't use your brain to play it, let your feelings guide your fingers."A-Z Quotes
He was told that wasn't how you played guitar.
He played like that anyway.
Rolling Stone named him the greatest guitarist of all time. (Technically.)
Stevie Ray Vaughan: Wrong Strings, Wrong Grip, All Right
Stevie Ray Vaughan played with string gauges so heavy that most guitarists wouldn't even attempt them. Where standard players use .009 or .010 gauge strings, SRV played with .013s — strings so thick they require significantly more finger strength to bend, more physical force to play. His thumb wrapped over the neck in a grip that classical training would flag immediately. His raking technique — dragging across multiple strings — wasn't in any method book.
He described his technical approach with the perfect amount of swagger:
"I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it. Floor it. That's technical talk." So Much Great Music
Floor it. That's technical talk.
I want that on a t-shirt.
But here's the thing underneath the swagger — SRV understood exactly what his "wrong" approach was actually producing:
"Your sound is in your hands as much as anything. It's the way you pick, and the way you hold the guitar, more than it is the amp or the guitar you use." Bookey
The "wrong" grip. The "wrong" strings. The "wrong" technique.
That WAS the sound. The unorthodox approach wasn't a limitation to overcome. It was the entire point.
Bonnie Raitt said it better than almost anyone: "He played his complete self through that guitar. And he knew that playing music wasn't about who sounded better than who else. It was the style that counted, and it was about having a good time." Burban Media
He played his complete self.
That's it. That's the whole lesson.
Jeff Healey: The Best Reason to Never Know the Rules
Now. Jeff Healey.
Buckle up for this one.
Jeff Healey lost his sight at age one to a rare form of eye cancer. He never saw a guitar being played. When he was three years old, someone gave him a guitar. He mastered it, accidentally discovering his unique playing style — he initially thought that all guitarists played the instrument across their laps. Ultimate Guitar
Read that again.
He thought that was just... how you played guitar.
He had NO IDEA he was doing it differently. He had no idea there was a "correct" way. He just picked it up at three years old, put it across his lap, and played it the way that made sense to him.
Here's how he described it later: "I tried playing guitar the normal way, but I just wasn't very comfortable, so I decided to hold it in my lap and work out all the chords that way."
The result? A technique so extraordinary that Guitar Player magazine described it as "astoundingly fluid bends and vibrato" — a distinctive dynamism not heard before or since. The Sound Cafe
When BB King heard Jeff Healey play, he said: "I've never seen anything like it. Your execution is the best I've ever seen. Stick with it, and you'll be bigger than Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stanley Jordan, and B.B. King."
And speaking of Stevie Ray Vaughan — he discovered Jeff Healey at a Toronto club when Jeff was 19. Stevie Ray Vaughan happened to be in attendance and was so impressed with Healey's skills that he invited him to perform with him on stage that night. SRV later called Healey the best guitar player in the world. The Sound Cafe
The best guitar player in the world.
Who learned to play the "wrong" way.
Because he never knew there was a wrong way.
(I need everyone to just sit with that for a moment.)
Why Young People Are Still Losing Their Minds Over These Three
Here's what I keep thinking about as I watch those reaction videos.
These men have been gone for decades. Jimi left us in 1970. SRV in 1990. Jeff Healey in 2008. And yet — every single week — someone discovers them for the first time on YouTube and has a genuine, visceral, jaw-dropping reaction that no algorithm manufactured and no marketing team engineered.
WHY?
Because you can feel it.
You can FEEL when someone is playing their complete self. When someone is channeling pure passion through a physical instrument. When someone is so fully, so specifically, so unashamedly THEMSELVES that the sound coming out is unlike anything else in the world.
Technique is learnable. Sound is copyable. Style can be imitated.
But THIS — whatever this is — cannot be faked. Cannot be manufactured. Cannot be produced by playing it "correctly" if correctly means like everyone else.
These legends endure because they gave themselves completely to their own way of doing it. Their weird, unorthodox, technically "wrong" way.
And the world has been discovering — and rediscovering — that ever since.
"That's Not How You Do It."
Now let's bring it home.
Because this isn't just about guitar.
Somewhere in your creative life — maybe recently, maybe years ago — someone told you:
"That's not how you make it as a voice actor."
"That's not how you write a script."
"That's not how you sing a song."
"That's not how you play guitar."
And maybe you believed them. Maybe you adjusted. Maybe you tried to conform to what they meant by "correct."
Here's what I want to offer you instead:
Jimi Hendrix's upside-down Stratocaster WAS how you play guitar — if you're Jimi.
Stevie Ray Vaughan's heavy strings and thumb-over grip WAS how you play guitar — if you're Stevie.
Jeff Healey's guitar on his lap, fingers flat across the neck, completely unique to any technique ever taught anywhere — WAS how you play guitar. If you're Jeff.
Your sound is in your hands. The way you approach your craft — the quirks, the instincts, the things that come naturally to you that might not follow the rules — those aren't problems to fix.
Those might be exactly the thing.
We've talked about this throughout this blog. In Be So Good They Can't Ignore You. In Confidence Is Silent. In Bold Choices. Every single time, the answer points the same direction:
The thing that makes you different IS the thing.
Not despite the "wrong" approach. Because of it.
Follow Your Passion. Floor It.
"I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it."
I have been thinking about those four words for three weeks.
Floor it.
Not "play thoughtfully." Not "approach with caution." Not "check the rules first."
Floor it.
Follow your passion. Your truest desire. The thing that speaks to your soul — whether it's voice acting, writing, playing music, building puppets, telling stories, or some combination of all of them that nobody has a category for yet.
Embrace your unorthodox approach. Your specific way of doing the thing. The way nobody taught you and nobody would have thought to teach you.
And then give it everything you've got.
The world needs what you — specifically, particularly, unorthodoxly YOU — have to give.
Jeff Healey put his guitar in his lap at age three and changed music forever.
He thought that was just how it worked.
Maybe he was right. 🎙️
Nate Begle is a voice actor, audio producer, voice director, and coach with 25+ years of industry experience. His credits include national campaigns for Taco Bell, Verizon, Xbox, and Mazda; animation work with Disney, Nickelodeon, Sesame Street, and The Jim Henson Company; 30+ audiobooks; and MST3K Season 13. He coaches voice actors at every level through Begle Booth Studios. Life in Every Line. Stories that Stick.
