The Steve Stine Podcast
The Steve Stine Podcast is about more than just music — it’s about life, faith, and finding meaning in the everyday. Join Steve as he shares honest stories from decades of experience as a musician, educator, husband, father, and believer navigating the highs and lows of life. Each episode offers heartfelt conversations about purpose, spirituality, personal growth, and staying inspired — even when life gets messy or uncertain.
Whether you’re picking up a guitar, walking through a season of change, or just looking for encouragement to keep going, you’ll find something here to lift your spirit. With special guests, personal reflections, and real-world insights, this podcast is for anyone seeking a deeper connection to their creativity, their calling, and their faith.
Episodes
399 episodes
Why Your Guitar Solos Don't Sound Musical (And How to Fix Them)
Your guitar solo can have the “right” notes and still feel wrong. The gap is usually groove. We jump into a practical, no-hype approach to soloing that starts where real music starts: locking to the beat. Using a “Groovy Fine Blues in B Minor” ...
A Practical Plan For Learning Guitar As An Adult
You can love guitar for decades and still feel like you’re spinning your wheels. Ken joins me to talk through that exact frustration, from years of casual playing with no structure to a clear, focused plan that finally makes progress feel real....
King Of Guitar Rabbit Holes Learns To Focus
Your hands know what to do until someone is watching, and then everything tightens up. That’s where this conversation with Stan goes immediately: intimidation, shaky confidence, and the quiet fear that you’re the only one who doesn’t “get it.” ...
Learning Guitar After Retirement
You can spend 30 years with a guitar in your hands and still feel like you’re guessing. That’s why this conversation with Perry lands so hard. He grew up in Casper, Wyoming with music in the house, built a band in the early 80s, and even got th...
How to Collaborate Remotely (Even If You’ve Never Done It Before)
Remote collaboration sounds like magic until you try it and realize the real challenge is boring: everyone needs the same roadmap, the same tempo, and a track that starts cleanly. We walk you through the exact home recording process we use to p...
Never Too Late For Lead Guitar
A kid gets a guitar with strings so high it’s basically unplayable, struggles for two years, and then hears the sentence that can haunt a musician for decades: “Stop wasting your money, it’s hopeless.” Our guest Elad did what a lot of people do...
My Overkill Gig Prep That Saves Rehearsals
Showing up to a gig with “the right notes” is not the same as showing up ready to perform. We walk through a real, working guitarist’s gig preparation process using Jesus Christ Superstar as the backdrop and it applies just as well to musical t...
Find Every Essential Chord In Any Key
Someone calls a chord progression like “1 6 4 5,” then says, “Cool, now let’s do it in A,” and suddenly your brain starts flipping through a messy stack of chord shapes. We wanted a cleaner, faster way to find the chords that actually matter, n...
Inside GuitarZoom Academy: A Real Student’s Experience
A lot of guitarists don’t quit because they stop loving music. They quit because life gets loud and practice gets messy. Steve Stine sits down with Chris Macry, a 62-year-old guitarist who played hard as a kid, stepped away for years while rais...
How To Find And Play Octaves Across The Guitar Neck
Octaves are one of those guitar “unlock” moments: suddenly the fretboard stops feeling like random dots and starts looking like a repeating pattern you can actually use. We walk through what an octave is in plain language, then immediately turn...
What If Progress Is Just Better Conversations
If you’ve ever felt buried under advice, tabs, tutorials, and “one more video,” this one is for you. We talk about the biggest mindset shift students need to make when they join an online music academy: your job isn’t to research every answer o...
Too Much Advice Can Make You Worse At Guitar
Your guitar playing probably doesn’t need more information. It needs less noise. We live in a world where presets, plugins, YouTube guitar lessons, short-form tips, and endless gear reviews are always one click away, and that abundance quietly ...
A Student's Experience inside the GuitarZoom Academy
You can love guitar for decades and still feel like you’re standing outside the music, looking in. That’s where Cary Bynum found himself: a creative professional from Birmingham, Alabama, raised on the Beatles, the Stones, classic rock, blues, ...
Levi Clay Interview - The Master of Guitar Transcription
The fastest way to stall on guitar is to confuse memory with musicianship. That is where Levi takes us, starting with the honest origin story of learning guitar for the wrong reasons, then quickly finding the right ones: teaching, curiosity, an...
If You’re Not Setting Deadlines, You’re Wasting Practice Time
Your practice can be consistent and still feel like it’s going nowhere. When there’s no deadline, it’s easy to drift through scales, licks, and exercises without ever feeling finished, and that “unfinished” feeling quietly kills motivation. We ...
Why Most Practice Doesn’t Work (And How to Fix It)
Noodling feels like practice until you realize you’re getting the same results month after month. We sit down and get blunt about what actually creates progress on guitar: a plan that matches your real schedule, plus the discipline to practice ...
How Great Guitar Players Use Slides (And How You Should Too)
Want your solos to breathe, sing, and feel human without learning a new scale? We dive into the art of slides and show how three simple categories—intentional slides, subtle half-step drifts, and “airplane” landings—transform stiff lines into v...
The One Guitar Pedal I Always Travel With (My Live Rig in a Backpack)
Ever wish your live rig could fly under the seat and still sound huge? Steve Stein breaks down a travel-first guitar setup that trades heavy amps for a Quad Cortex without sacrificing feel, clarity, or stage confidence. We walk through why port...
Stop Chasing Gear, Start Making Music
Feeling stuck even with endless lessons, tabs, and shiny gear at your fingertips? We dig into the surprising reason progress stalls for so many players: overload. From preset chasing to YouTube grazing, we unpack six traps that quietly drain yo...
The Real Reason You’re Not Getting Better at Guitar
Feeling stuck even though you practice daily and binge guitar videos? We’ve been there. The real blocker isn’t effort—it’s the lack of a focused plan that turns scattered experiences into absorbed skills you can trust when it counts.We ...
Make Real Progress by Practicing with "Intention"
Stuck playing the same licks but not getting better? This conversation maps a clear path from autopilot to intentional practice so your limited time turns into visible progress and real confidence on the fretboard. We unpack how to set precise ...
Gig-Ready: Build Your Guitar Emergency Kit
Shows fall apart for simple reasons: a dead tuner battery, a snapped string, a noisy cable. We decided to stop gambling with luck and build a compact guitar emergency kit that turns potential disasters into quick, quiet fixes. This episode is a...
Practice Vs. Progress For Guitarists
Want real progress instead of the same comfortable loops? We break down the simple shift that turns practice from maintenance to elevation, so your time actually maps to your goals. It’s not about grinding more minutes; it’s about choosing what...
The FIRST STEP in Learning to Play Authentic Sounding Solos
Ever run the pentatonic scale perfectly and still wonder why your solo doesn’t sound like a song? We shine a light on the missing link: groove and phrasing. Starting with a deep soul A minor backing track, we walk through how to hear the downbe...
Four Guitar Patterns That Break Pentatonic Ruts
Tired of solos that feel stuck in the same box? We dig into four compact shapes in E that instantly add color, movement, and melody—without burying you in theory. You’ll hear how each pattern sits over familiar E major pentatonic territory, the...