Just when ya think your getting better at playing..

[RowdyMoon]

...you go and watch a you tube vid of some no-name shredding or wailing and you realize your not that good, damn I gotta stop watchin you tube video's!!!lol..oh well back to the confidence drawing board... ..ok self pitty rant over hehe

[quapman]

There is always someone better. Means nothing.

 

If you enjoy playing it's all good. No need to compare.

[Kennis]

It's not a competition. Play because you love it.

Passion trumps technique.

[Izzy]

I guess it is all a matter of goals. There are always better players if you're thinking speed or feeling or anything, but who has to be the best?

 

Kurt of Nirvana made some of my favorite songs and he was no shredder. I'd sooner have his songwritting talent and guitarplaying shortcomings than the ability to fly up and down the fret without the gift of creativity.

 

 

I mean, I'm over here like, "I just want to strum clearly and not buzz and shift from chord to chord smoothly for one whole song," and most ya'll are over there like, "tone." I'm like, "tone? Later, let me get these songs to sound less like a$$"

[Riffster]

We all need a kick in the pants once in a while to keep trying to learn. Even if it is all in your mind. If you use it as motivation it can't hurt.

 

My brother in law did quit playing guitar back when I did 20 years ago, he picked back a few years ago at the same time I did and while visiting home we jammed and his skills are way superior than mine, he has been taking lessons consistently and truly practicing when he does have time, he jams with my brother consistently too.

 

Me, I am a slacker and it shows, while I have been hard at it this year I did not play much last year and it shows.

[daveinspain]

Hah!! That doesn't bother me... It's the 14 year olds at Guitar Center...

[kidblast]

that's just the reality of it. you're technique and you're strengths are "yours"

 

Others are looking out a different prism all together.

 

If it sounds good, and if it feels go, it is good...

[badbluesplayer]

Me personally, I've figured out all the excuses I need to justify my mediocrity.

[btoth76]

Hello!

 

I can shred in all modes of a key You say...

 

If You wonder why I never post videos of myself playing, it is because I can't play not even one song properly.

 

Shredding is a technique, not the goal. Proper expression of emotions and moods is what matters. And it's not in the fingers...

 

Cheers... Bence

[pippy]

As the great philosopher Homer once observed (to Bart);

 

"Just remember son; No matter how good you are at something, there's always about a million people better than you."

 

It doesn't even have to be an expert bit of playing to make me feel crap. Just watch this 9-y-old......and is that the infamous 'James Bond Chord' played at the very end?

Good fun!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0OHqU1pjuI

 

P.

[Twang Gang]

I know what you mean. There was a guy I used to go see live back in the 70s whenever I could as the group was just incredible. But for a day or so afterwards I really didn't feel like playing because I couldn't even come close to what they were doing. But then you get motivated again and hopefully improve.

[charlie brown]

I can only say to Try to improve, and learn a bit, each day...at your own pace.

If I got depressed, or quit, everytime I saw someone better than me,

I would have given up, decades ago. I DID, in fact, do that...but not

because of my lack of "shredding" ability. Another "passion" took over.

Now that I'm back to playing, I just do so, for the best reason alone...

simply because I love to do it!

 

CB

[milod]

I think one of the problems with so many of "us" owning guitars is that, as a group, there's a tendency to hear something we like and determine that's our goal. If we make it then we look for another "cover," and if we don't, we consider ourselves inferior guitarists.

 

It's not easy even for me after 50 years, but I think we need instead to consider ourselves "artists" and concentrate on creating art the best way that's practical with what appears to be our level of skill and talent.

 

"Covers" is a concept that kinda bothers me.

 

I think it's my age. When I was a "kid," everybody played the same songs but did them their way. Now it seems that if one plays a given song, there's an expectation from the musicians, and probably not most audiences, that "we" sound just like the record. Hell, the original artist won't sound just like the record, so we have already an unrealistic expectation.

 

Kiss ain't my idea of what I wanna play, but they are what they are. So my question is, "why would anybody wanna paint up like that band and try to play note for note what they recorded?"

 

Aw... I s'pose I'm just ranting like an old guy.

 

But note that I'm an old guy who always wants to do a better job of creating music that "works" to communicate mood to an audience, not to pretend I'm somebody else.

 

m

[pippy]

Milo brings up an interesting point.

 

Like his own experience, when I was growing up bands would play their own versions of popular songs / tracks.

Sure, there was usually an effort made to make them like the original but no-one expected a note-for-note copy.

 

Nowadays there are countless bands who painstakingly reproduce exactly what the originators recorded ONCE as if that were the only way the song should be heard.

Which version do you copy? I used to be in a band which played Free's version of 'The Hunter' but we all preferred the live cut to the studio one so we based 'our' version on that one.

 

Bob Dylan, famously, used to re-invent his own material with pretty much every tour and sometimes on an individual performance basis.

Blues players never expect to play the same notes twice - at least not in my experience.

Even what we know as the 'standard' recordings of the likes of, say, Django Reinhardt are only the most well-known cuts. Compilations include many alternate takes which, more often than not, bear little resemblance to the 'Real' version of the track.

 

In the world of the Classical Baroque this situation, understandably, is different as the players clearly have to follow a particular music score but even here the soloist is usually allowed a Cadenza to showcase his or her improvisational talents (although there are a number of famous cadenza which have subsequently been annotated).

 

There are a couple of tracks I play where a note-for-note replication IS desirable, such as the Danny Kirwan composition* "Jigsaw Puzzle Blues" as any variation would also alter the actual melody-line; but I'd far rather be free to experiment and see where I go...

 

P.

 

 

 

* Yes; I know Joe Venuti did 99% of the groundwork 35 years earlier...

[LarryUK]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr_8U_fOkzw

I watched this the other day. He was only 19 when he did it!

I couldn't do this stuff even if I practiced forever.

[Pin]

This whole matter of trying to copy note for note a song does strike me as weird. Why? Yes, sure, you might see it as a challenge and, if so, then there is a point in meeting the challenge. That video lashurst posted of Richie Kotzen is a case in point (by the way, I can't play it either!)- you might set yourself the challenge of playing those licks and eventually (hopefully) get there.

 

But for the life of me I just can't learn a song note for note. I'm just not interested! Bence posted on another thread that he doesn't post video's of himself playing because he can't play one song all the way through. Well, I suppose I'm similar in that there is simply NO song that I would or even could play play note for note and you know what - I really just don't want to! I am much more interested in what comes out of me.

[RowdyMoon]

Don't get me wrong I have no desire to be a "shredder" and I don't like doing songs note for note .but I think a big part of being a guitar player ( or anything for that matter) is the battle you/we/me have to keep a mindset going that is positive...sometimes I find the biggest challange is the mind set and getting that confidence.