Ok, I'm throwing my guitar away...

[craigb]

 

[Rain]

Thanks to social media, I see kids whose parents weren't even born when I picked up the guitar who can play the craziest stuff - little 8-9 year olds a lot of them with genuine talent and heart, not just mechanical skills. 

Meanwhile, I'm still figuring out Shock Me... 

Good thing I'm old enough to no longer really care. I'm just enjoying whatever's left of the ride. And I'm in good company too, because, objectively speaking, most of my heroes are outplayed by those kids.

[T Boog]

20 minutes ago, Rain said:

most of my heroes are outplayed by those kids

Agreed. Thankfully, style & feel outweigh speed & technique. That's why most people prefer Gilmour & Knopfler over Yngwie & Paul Gilbert. 

It's cool to impress people with technique but real art is about communication. If u can touch the listener's heart, that's more powerful than impressing their brain.

[Amberwolf]

I'd be happy if I could play two or three notes of that...

...all on the same day, much less the same performance.

[Promidi]

I would love to see how most of them would go at writing a CAL script.  Now that is not for the faint hearted....

Edited Saturday at 08:01 AM by Promidi

[Gswitz]

Looks like he's having fun. 

I know i do. 

[AndyB01]

Impressive playing for sure - but that game face is a bit much. 😂

Andy

[Terry Kelley]

Amazing how many people can play other people’s music either note perfect or with massive flair, but you never hear their compositions.

[Amberwolf]

Some don't compose anything; I'm not sure if they just can't, don't have the imagination to do it, or just don't want to.

Long time ago there was a local band that was pretty good (probably woulda gone somewhere, but they had "artistic differences"), and there was a guitarist they brought in but he couldnt invent anything just play perfectly what they did.

[AndyB01]

It's a weird one - both my sisters can play piano better than me by sight-reading music - but ask them to busk 'Imagine' by John Lennon for example, or a basic twelve-bar blues and they are literally clueless. No knowledge or real understanding of chord theory or circle of fifths.

Where as I - as a guitarist - can riff around on a piano by just putting chords together (embellished with a few inversions and arpeggios) to play simplified versions of loads of popular songs and original (ish) riffs and they think I'm some kind of musical genius. (Spoiler: I'm really not).

Yet sight reading I am hopeless at - I can read it, just dead slow. I once worked out how to play Bach's Prelude in C, memorised the notes and haven't looked at the sheet music since. 😂

On balance however, I still think the ability to play and read from the score is the superior skill.

Andy

[Amberwolf]

I have what would probably be called language problems (maybe associated with my autism? who knows), that apply to math, music, coding, anything of that nature. I can't really read and comprehend any of them in a useful way (other than English, which according to my family I was starting to read before I could crawl, though I doubt that's true).  

I can see the notes, words, etc, and transliterate them onto other forms information bit by information bit (letter, note, etc)  like taking sheet music and inputting it into SONAR's staff view, but I don't think in any of it, and they don't "mean" anything to me.   I "understand" what they mean, in a technical way, but nothing is conveyed to me by any of them, and I cannot convey meaning to anyone by using them. 

I have to hear the sounds themselves--not just the notes, but the specific sounds made with them, to give them any meaning.   And for me, a "cover" of a song that doesn't use the same sounds, etc. as the original, in basically the same way, is not the same song--I cannot connect them in my head, even if you put the same name on both of them it doesn't mean anything to me. 

I also cannot repeat what I hear; it just passes thru me.  So I can hear things (even what I myself am playing) but they are not "recorded" in my head like they should be, so I can't play them back.  I can recognize them when I hear them again, though, so they're in there somewhere, just not connected to the right systems to use like normal people do.

I'm the only one in the family that was never given the chance as a kid to learn an instrument or music or all that stuff (the rest of them got music lessons in one instrument or another--guitar, piano, clarinet, violin, etc., and I was not allowed to be in the house while they were at their lessons or practice, and never figured out why; nobody ever told me either), but I am the only one that actually has any interest in making or playing music, and I'm the only one that ever created any, performed any, etc.  Makes me wonder if I'd be any better if I had been included, or just different?

 

 

[craigb]

Or, as I like to say...

@Amberwolf YOU ARE UNIQUE!  (Just like everybody else! 😆)