... warning... this might literally change everything for you... I'll be honest, the work I'm doing right now, on myself and subsequently on my business, it's not easy, but it's real, it's honest, it's raw... so here goes nothing... My story: Here it is: Mel Williams — From scared kid to professional musician and beyond... 🎸 There's a lie that gets told to almost every musician before they ever play their first note. It gets told in classrooms and living rooms and school hallways. Sometimes it's spoken out loud. Sometimes it's just a look — a smirk, a laugh, a moment where someone makes it clear that music is for other people. Talented people. Not you. I know when I heard it. I was in school, talking about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said a musician. And a kid looked at me and said, "Oh yeah? Prove it. Sing something." I froze. 😒 Not because I wasn't a musician. But because I hadn't become one yet. And in that moment, with everyone watching, the silence felt like an answer. I carried that moment longer than I should have. But I never stopped wanting it. So I did what most self-taught players do — I went home and figured it out alone. Magazines. Books. Whatever I could get my hands on. I practiced. I worked. I cared more about getting better than almost anything else in my life. But for five years I had no real path. I was collecting things — riffs, songs, techniques — without any framework connecting them. Motivated but going nowhere. Grinding but not growing. Sound familiar? Here's what nobody tells you when you're in that place: the problem was never you. The problem was never talent. The problem was that you were trying to learn a language by collecting phrases — with no one to show you how the language actually works. Music is a language. And like any language, it has a structure, a logic, a grammar underneath it that makes everything else make sense. Once you understand that — really understand it — the instrument almost doesn't matter. I've played guitar, ukulele, bass, mandolin, harmonica. I've worked on my voice.

Enjoy!

… so I’m Surfin…

"Most guitarists I work with have been playing the pentatonic scale in one position for years. One box. Same licks. Same ceiling. The CAGED system is what connects all five positions into one complete picture of your fretboard. Once you see it — you can't unsee it. And you'll never feel boxed in again. How long have you been playing out of the same position?"

You're not stuck at learning guitar because you're not good enough, you're stuck because you haven't had the right path moving forward. It's not a talent problem, It's a clear path problem. It's not just that you're stuck on guitar. It's that being stuck on guitar is one more piece of evidence for a story you've been carrying for years — the story that you're just not good enough. Not disciplined enough. Not talented enough. You come home exhausted after a long hard day, pick up the guitar for ten minutes, go nowhere, and put it back down. And that tiny moment confirms everything you already feared: that you're someone who starts things and never finishes them. Someone who wants things but never gets them. Someone who will always be almost — but never actually — there. But here's the truth you haven't heard yet: You're not stuck at guitar because you're not good enough. You ARE good enough. You always were. You're stuck because nobody ever gave you a clear path forward. You've been blaming yourself — your talent, your time, your energy after a long hard day — for a problem that was never yours to carry. It's not a talent problem. It's a clear path problem. And that changes everything. Who needed to hear that today?"