“Competition is for sports”: Yngwie Malmsteen has an important message for anyone who plays guitar

When you think of Yngwie Malmsteen a few things spring to mind. Firstly, he can play the guitar. None have shredded the Fender Stratocaster like the Swedish maestro.

Secondly, he’s a larger-than-life character. This, after all, is the guitarist who fired a Magnum in the studio to set off a drum trigger when recording Parabellum , thus fulfilling a long-held ambition. But he is also a font of wisdom – and he has shared an important message that is worth pinning to your guitar amp at practice, whether you are a beginner or expert player.

Taking to Instagram , Malmsteen was responding to comments that he gets on a regular basis, of players who have watched him play and been discouraged, on account that they will never be quote/unquote as good as he is.

This, says Malmsteen, is entirely the wrong lesson to take from music, and he urged players of all levels to forget about comparing themselves to other musicians, arguing that this defeats the purpose when there are no gold medals to be handed out for making music.

“So I see a lot of these comments where people are saying I can’t be as good as you or I gave up playing the guitar after I saw you,” wrote Malmsteen. “Music and playing the guitar is not a competition even though since the beginning of my career, that is what they wanted to portray that’s why they have all these best guitarist that guitars blah blah blah.”

Instead, Malmsteen issued a call to arms. Stop comparing, grab your guitar and start playing. And stop competing.

“Music and guitar playing comes from within and it’s to be enjoyed at any level, no matter where you are in your life,” he continued. “Even if you are making a career out of it, if you play with the thought that I’m going to compete with another guitar player or another musician, you will be miserable. Competition is for sports and athletes not for guitar playing, period. It’s not a competition; the instrument of the guitar is to be played and enjoyed at any level. Now go pick up that guitar.”

We 100 per cent endorse this message. What makes the best guitarist? It’s probably the guitarist who keeps on playing, no matter what. Or it’s the player who makes the sound that’s in their head.

Looking through the MusicRadar archive, Malmsteen has been consistent with this message . He says funny things because he is a funny guy, e.g. “When you stand in front of the amps and turn up the volume it should sound like an elephant .“ But when it comes to the guitar, and how you should consider an issue such as technique, he has always got his sensible hat on.

“No, the truth is, you can never perfect your technique,” he said in 2010. “There’s no such thing as ‘perfect.’ If you're dedicated, you’re always learning and improving. But you do get to a certain point where technique isn't an issue anymore, and for me, it was probably when I was in my early teens.

“What I mean by that is, I learned what I needed to know and got comfortable as a player. I didn’t have to apply my mind to the aspects of scales and playing, and instead I focused on creativity. I wrote music, but I didn’t practice it. So yeah, you can always get better and improve your technique, but hopefully, that comes through being a musician and composing and being a creative individual.”

In other words, it is all about picking up that guitar and making some music.