Who plays music?

[MileHighGrowler]

(05-29-2021, 10:27 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: ^^^

Youtube is amazing.  There is just so much quality stuff that available.

I'm pretty similar to you, although I took lessons for about 3 or 4 months.  Just enough time for my teacher to show me my open chrords, and tab out Witchy Woman, Lying Eyes, Smoke on the Water, Hotel California, and of course Stairway.  After that I was on my own.

I remember saving up to buy tab books or God forbid I had enough money to buy one of those instructional videos (they were like 40 bucks!).  I honestly cannot imagine having all of this stuff available today back then when I was like 14 and trying to learn Chili Pepper and Rage Against the Machine songs by ear.

Youtube actually really helped me get back into playing.  I still noodled around but I hadn't progessed in a long, long time.  Fwiw, I probably spend more time watching youtube now than actually tv.  All sorts of different guitar stuff. 

Not sure anyone really cares but here's some of my favorite channels: Robert Baker, Paul Davids, Rhett Skull, Pete Thorn, Matthew Scott, Norm's, Trogly's, Casino Guitars, etc.

(05-29-2021, 10:44 AM)BengalsRocker Wrote: I'm pretty much self taught.  Early lessons did not help me very much.  That Mel Bay approach to guitar was not appealing as a young player.

I had a teacher once give me some basic scale charts and later on I worked on some of those.

At that point I had been playing for a couple of years picking up chords and such from other guitar players.

After playing in bands for years, I finally started taking lessons from a legit highly talented player.

He asked me to show him how much I knew how to play.

Amazingly enough there was quite a lot I had already known, but didn't know what it was called or how it related in music theory.

I learned some things but I got lazy, didn't want to pay for lessons anymore, and eventually quit.

Playing in bands and being able to do most typical things with little effort makes it too easy to be complacent.

It's when I watch someone fingerpick, use a slide(I suck at it), or other techniques that I lack at that make me want to get better.

Learning different scales and approaches to phrasing is appealing as well.

I recently was playing in a band with an excellent sax player and his approach to solos was much different than mine.

The realization from watching him play and how the audience reacted was his hold out notes and anticipation spacing.

It's not all about blazing solos and technical gymnastics.

With Youtube you see a ton of great technical guitarists that play like robots and have little to no feel in their leads.

I do feel somewhat lucky to have learned how to play by ear from the start, because the internet and tabs just weren't strong back then. The tab books at the stores cost a fortune at that time when I started (for my budget) so it was all ear learning, chords and solos, all of it. What's funny is that it was embarrassingly not until within the past few years that I really started to understand scales and modes (beyond the first scale positions of major, minor and pentatonic) and realized how it all connects. If I'd made that breakthrough 20 years ago, my playing would have grown even more rapidly, because of the way most popular music fits into a fairly standard knowledge base. I tried the original Mel Bay approach when I first got my guitar and I couldn't hack it. In fact, I hated it. The book I DID get that made things start to click was "Guitar for the Absolute Beginner". There were two in the series, with CDs and a video as I recall as well. I got it right after it came out (late 90s, I guess). I lent those out to someone years later in college and never got them back.

There are some great people on YT now, though, and I'm so glad they're there. Trying to think who my regular subs are...

Robert Baker
Rhett Shull
Rick Beato
Tim Pierce
Paul Davids
Ben Eller
MusicIsWin
Late Night Lessons

I watch other people as well, but those are the channels I'll always check out when a new video drops. MusicIsWin started a new series a few months back interviewing guitar "villains" and he had Paul Gilbert on there, who is one of my favorite guys to learn from. Always re-inventing himself and just drops so many nuggets in any interview or video he does. I can't play anything he does, but he makes me approach the guitar differently, which I love. I also found some inspiration from the Cracking the Code videos, realizing there's more than one way to skin a cat.