52 years ago, I told my parents I was going to music school to get degrees in classical guitar. I loved it. Everyone I knew rolled their eyes and questioned my future. I'm now retired after a long career as a college professor, a Dean, and a performer.. I've had a great life.
hey friend, you are something special. I love that you followed your dreams. You aren't ever without love and support. Keep being you buddy, you are the best at it. 💜
I always remember what my band instructor said, and I feel this applies to everything in life: “you have to sound bad to sound good.” Don’t get discouraged
The “just feel it” part really hit home. When I started teaching myself guitar, I heard “you just gotta feel it” so often and I never could. Even the songs that I had nailed down, I couldn’t “feel” them. It all felt mechanical to me (use this strumming pattern then this one, play this note then this note etc.). It made me think that I would never be good at guitar because I didn’t have this natural ability to feel the music. Now after 2 years of practicing consistently, the mechanical feeling when playing is going away. I’m still nowhere near where I wanna be, but I’m getting better every day and that’s all that really matters. Practice and consistency is key!
Dude. Yessss same here. My dude and I would always be jamming and he would bust out this ridiculous solo and I would ask him how to even begin learning how to do that, and he would always say “just gotta feel it”. Same as you, I thought that something was wrong with me since I couldn’t play like that. Feeling is definitely part of jamming but you gotta develop your ear first and learn some scales.
Worst advice I got was that it was too late to start playing at 22 "all good players started when they were kids you're just gonna sound awful forever" well guess what? It doesn't fucking matter how old are you as long as you enjoy playing and you keep practicing, you always learn that riff eventually, you may not become the next Hendrix but you *will* become a musician version of yourself and be fulfilled with who you are
I too will never be the next Hendrix, but you are absolutely right. Playing music never gets old and has been one of the most reliably joyous and fulfilling things I've done.
Yeah, eff that. My mother started playing the Celtic harp at 68. She loves playing. You are never too old to start. Are you less likely to make a living out of it? Maybe. It depends on what are are expecting out of it and how much you're willing to put into it.
The worst musical advice I was ever given, was from myself. When I was starting college in 1981, I gave up on a musical career because I told myself that “I wasn’t creative.” Focus on engineering or computers and find a left-brain type of job, Kevin. In 2014, I moved to San Francisco, got serious about guitar again, rediscovered my creative side, and now I have two UA-cam channels - one that I play guitar on to use as backing tracks. If I had focused on being creative 40 years ago, what could I have accomplished? Who knows, but I’m loving being a creative now. Cheers!
Also a software engineer. Not sad that I chose to spend my life making software, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t have also been playing guitar every night and been in a band. I wish I could go back and tell myself to go ahead and try it.
I'm a Civil Engineer that had a professional career working in the music industry for 25 years. I also enjoyed a successful career in construction , mechanical and electrical engineering. Not at the same time though! I discovered that both the Arts and Science were as equally creative. For me life is not about accomplishments or 'what if's' its about no regrets. You did OK so cheers to you!
@@circlemover Thanks! I agree that creativity comes in many forms and I used mine mostly to create software for the past 40 years. Coincidentally, some of that software was for the construction industry. ;) I just wish that I hadn't lied to myself at such a young age. I might have done more with music, photography, or video along with building apps. Cheers!
@@kevinhoctor62 sounds like you accomplished a great deal to me!! And now you are rockin' in the free world again! As l have recently retired from engineering guess what? Yep... Presently building a pretty cool home studio with all them lovely audio toys... Cheers again!
I came to guitar relatively late as I was poor and a lefty, didn't get any chances to try it as a youth and many people told me when I was 20 that it was already too late to make anything of it. I started that year and now I am 40 and guitar is now intrinsically part of who I am. I'm not a great player at all, but what I CAN do absolutely sings to my soul and I just love the journey of learning more and getting a little bit better each day. This channel has been a huge part of that in recent years, so thank you Paul
Similar story for me, lefty and all. I started at 20 for a bit but I didn't commit till around 45. I see my improvement over the past couple years. It's all like therapy for me. Paul is great at helping me get out of ruts.
Worst advice was from my father. I told him, “Dad, when I grow up, I want to be a musician.” He looked at me and said, “Son, you can’t have it both ways.” (Old joke)
One of the first to help me learn told me to practice until it was good enough to present and everyone will be amazed. Forty years later.... Seriously it was good advice and spared listeners ears but it comes with a price. Those who don't make music think it comes without practice and those learning feel discouraged because they don't want to make embarrassing noises. The general public begins to think music is a gift you're born with and there's no point in trying to learn. Intermediate players with potential feel they're not worthy of letting vibrations escape that aren't perfect. Everything gets hushed in an uneasy silence. Well I am calling B.S. on that!!! Make glorious noises,stumbling first attempts,flaming train wrecks of musical bumbling. Annoy the whole neighborhood. Get the cops called if need be but create an environment where music can survive and flourish. One quiet evening the drums started and it was on. The natives are restless.
@@loxng6801 theory is the language and structure of music. Get onstage and hear, we are doing a quick change blues in Am with a b6 in the change. You will know and not have a deer in the headlights look.
Daring to sound horrible (and be heard doing it) was the first hurdle I had to overcome to start learning to make music in the first place. And it took me a damn long time, all the way into my twenties!
I liked this perspective. And I will weigh in on the subject of noise as a nuisance…there are about 6 dogs on our street…when one of them starts up, they all get going if it’s lusty enough. This, is without doubt, nuisance, because there’s no armed robber, nor burglar, at 10pm, they are going at…I rattled my shed padlock, that started them…our neighbour now gone, demonstrated the psychological aspect of nuisance noise: they made the mistake of training their dog to hate me just like they did. As a result, with its uncanny hearing, when I slowly slid my key in the latch of my back door, the ‘clik, clik, clik…’ of tumblers was all it took…and it took only three tumbler clicks, for their dog to launch into an absolute tirade. Now here’s what’s funny - they blame me for their dog making that racket. They complained to people I was ‘up all hours’ and ‘not normal’ and so on. Dogs are smart, they latch on devotedly to their masters’ attitudes, it would only take one miserable comment as I moved my wheelie bin and the poor mutt’s attitude was defined. From then on, I could simply slip my key in at any odd hour I got up, and the dog would satisfyingly respond, awakening their entire household…I mean, that’s funny. But what I really wanted to say was, if you like the person making the noise, it’s not half as bad. If you don’t like them, anything, even a terribly small and normal amount of anything, is magnified. Then there’s children, for some people, inescapable and normal racket…but is it?! It’s the decent thing to give way, and compromise, but not ALL the time. That’s meek, not decent. Take care all anyway, just press on with music however you decide, that’s the important thing. Do you.
I know the whole "learning from records" thing is very common, especially to musicians from the older generation, but after doing both I can honestly say that the *fastest* way to get better at figuring out songs using your ears is to first learn and master intervals, both melodic (played one at a time) and harmonic (played simultaneously) and to get a basic grounding in theory. Once you have that, figuring out songs by ear becomes exponentially easier, with the added bonus that you actually are able to understand what you are hearing, and can play it in different positions on your instrument, improvise your own version, etc ...
The only problem is that’s how a lot of great old guitarist got their style , they didn’t learn from theory or how others have done it they created their own technique by listening to songs and trying to play it . I think that’s partly why I find modern guitarists so boring, they sound very similar .
Yeah sure, take some time to learn intervals and solmisation as tools. But the important thing is to not noodle around. Listen to the phrase you want to learn 10 or 20 times or however often. (Ideally at full speed, if to hard: slower) Try to sing along in your head, but dont sing out loud until you have it. Then stop the recording. Try to sing it again in your head until youve got it. Then sing it out loud. If there is still something unclear: listen again. And then you start figuring out the notes- in the beginning if you are unsure about the intervals you can sing it multiple times out loud, but eventually figure it out in your head. Imagine how you play it on your instrument and then do it properly immediately. 1. Listen 2. Audiate 3. Sing (to prove your audiation was right and clear enough) 4. Figure out the notes without touching any instrument 5. Play it Eventually you want to play melodies back you heard once. You cant noodle around to figure out the notes on stage.. so do it in your head.. once you can do it in your head its just a matter of doing it faster and the progress for that is pretty quick in my experience.
I freakin' LOVE this! All my fave youtubers hanging out and giving concrete advice from personal experience. Everyone seems genuinely nice and willing to share to us..
Would love to hear what happened to the record label producer that gave you a reason. Keep being you! Even the percussion you use in your songs is a direct expression that you convey in your music. You’re gifted in music dynamics. Still can’t understand their logic!
Paul, you also have an instinct for what makes a good video. Instead of a boring walk thru you had a great idea of interviewing guitarists on a valuable question while giving highlights of NAMM. Well done.
Worst advice I was given: "You don't need to learn theory" While learning theory will not directly translate to better playing, it certainly indirectly translated in my case. I was able to join the dots better about what I'm playing and also improved my fretboard visualization to a significant degree. And I didn't even have to dive too deep into theory. Just basic knowledge about intervals, scales, modes and chord progressions was enough.
Thanks, as a beginner guitarist I have had trouble figuring out what things to learn and especially whether or not I should learn theory. I am going to try to learn these things. Thanks again for your comment.
@@ashleyjohansson230 But not having the tools and having to stumble around in the dark every single time is going to result in a lot of ideas forgotten before they can be performed or written down.
@@ashleyjohansson230 bullshit on the first statement - humans are creative and everyone can improve. talent is a platform, but studying/practicing with intent will help you get better at anything.
Worst musical advice I was given was to push through and keep hammering if you don’t get something. That led to major burnout and actually led to retiring from playing live because I fell out of love with it. Never force yourself to do something you love.
Absolutely excellent vid. I’m just learning guitar at the tender age of 67. I’m still waiting fir my lefty GLPC 57 reissue, having ordered it 2 years ago!
I was 14 years old improvising songs using big Latin style chords on our grand piano into rock like rhythms and wanted to learn classical guitar but no instructor lived within 500 miles of my house. I wanted to move to where I could learn classical guitar but my father said,”no son of mine is going to be a musician”. So I ended up in medicine retiring early but now arthritis nags my hands at age 60. I missed the boat decades ago. So nice to see so many young musicians living their dreams.
Great video Paul... I don't have a "worst" advice that I can recall, so one of the best pieces of advice I learned was "if u make a mistake on a groove, repeat it" and shockingly that always works.
Your entry here was so validating @Philip Conrad, since I received similar advice (I posted the whole thing in the comments above it you're interested in the original). In my case, trying to follow it almost ruined my career in music. My biggest regret is that I didn't have your reaction, to just brush it off as pretentious and move on. Brilliant, mate!
At 55 years old I was told I was too old to start playing. I’m 77 now and playing in a band, still learning everyday, cut a CD and arranging songs. Having the time of my life, too.
"Eventually, what you're good at will find you." Well said, Sean Daniel. I totally agree. I always wanted to be a working musician, but photography found me. Paul, your channel has quickly become my absolute favourite. Thank you for this inspiring video, and all of the others, too.
I love the epilogue. Because that's exactly it, what can be the worst advice for somebody can be exactly what somebody else needs to hear. Thanks for doing this video, Paul. It's nice to feel the joy and the passion from all these great people as they open up about their experiences.
Worst advice ever was, for me, more a situation. I was just graduated from high school, and as a family we had little money. I was self taught and could play good lead guitar, but i was stuck. I wanted to learn composition and theory and make my living out of music. A year back my family could afford lessons for a year only at the local conservatory... By the time i graduated from high school i had to choose... beg for a scholarship for a traditional career and convince myself music couldn't be taken seriously, or give it a last try. I tracked my guitar teacher from that year at the conservatory and came to him with a guitar on my hand and desperate for support to stick to music. I explained to him the situation, that a couldn't pay full price he was asking for lessons, that a needed some advice to confront my family from someone i looked up to . He just said "lesson cost this amount of money (money i couldn't afford) weekly", and just left me there. After that I gave up, enrolled where my family wanted me to study, got half scholarship as my family did the effort to pay for the rest and went with their plan. Today I have a half time job that barely pays the bills and I'm trying to do something with music before it's too late (I'm 46). Will never get back those 20 years that I believed i couldn't do it. I have no doubt my family and people around me did it with best intentions at heart, trying to advice what was in my best interest (i have arthritis since i was 14, which is an important obstacle) , and I'm thankful for that, but i was deep down miserable anyway. Today I'm trying again, don't care for the latest cell phone, car or house, just want to be happy doing what I love, at least for a while.
I hope you succeed living your dream. In the end, I believe it's all about the journey itself. While you follow your dreams and your happy, it's worth it!
Thanks for making this video! So cathartic to watch these. Mine was a variation on Philip Conrad's example of bad advice: "Picasso had his pink/blue periods where he painted realistically before he broke the rules. Therefore, you need to learn how to play classical guitar before you can learn to play any other style." I understand the gist of this version of the advice and even agree with it in some areas, albeit in moderation. In my personal case, it went too damn far. For years, I was pushed to follow this advice and this kept me away from learning what had originally attracted me to the instrument: jazz and rock. It turned me off the instrument and music entirely for years and I've had a love/hate relationship with both ever since, even though I did graduate with a degree in classical guitar performance. It's a miracle I still play sometimes, but now I mostly stick to experimental and metal.
Basically, "Stick with your comfort zone." In college, I had been playing violin in my local P&W band, like background fills and basic countermelodies and stuff. After our leader graduated, I learned guitar to be the leader (singing and rhythm guitar), and got many people advising me to go back to violin just because they liked that and no one was filling that role anymore. But now, leading music with guitar is pretty much my full-time job.
Your conclusion is correct. You have to absorb everything and be your own teacher because music is a personal journey .. I was very happy with the conclusion of this video.
When I was a kid, everyone said "classical is the only real music" and all these adults always tried to turn me into a classical player. I was good at it, but I didn't enjoy it, I was only doing it because I was promised that learning classical was the path to learning rock and blues and all the stuff I really liked. I loved music enough to tolerate this and work past it, and eventually picked up the guitar and started learning folk and blues on my own. I often wonder how many kids were scared away from music because of this focus on classical.
I've found classical is better off learned and listened to later on as you see and feel the root connections to it. Follow down the rabbit hole, don't start at the bottom of the hole or it isn't as fun.
I think a lot of traditional music teaching is terrible. Too much focus on sight reading to pass certain grades but zero explanation of music theory. So even some good students who can play very well from a sheet of music cannot improvise or transpose easily or pick things out by ear. Self taught musicians, especially guitar players (e.g. me), have the opposite problem.
Here, I was one! Thanks to this archaic top-down approach to music, I never paid attention to music class in school. I didn't care to learn something that seemed to only be good for impressing some arrogant, boring old snobs. And then I thought I was completely unmusical because I had no freaking clue what the class was talking about when analyzing classical pieces (forgetting that I just didn't know because I refused to learn it earlier) and that discouraged me from learning an instrument (because you totally need to understand how Beethoven's 9th Symphony is composed to play Foo Fighters' The Pretender on Guitar, lol). Before I received music education in school, I would often play around on the keyboard in our basement or use old baby toys and other random junk to recreate the soundtracks of my favorite games from my parents' NES console. But then I learned I can't do music, cause I don't know the circle of fifths, can't read notation and have my worst grades in music. Now I sing in a band, learn guitar and am still searching for a good/quick way to learn theory...
Well done Paul, really dug this one! The worst advice (and possibly the best too) was from an interview with Billy Corgan in a small local zine in Santa Barbara that I read while studying for my music degree. It was something to the effect of "Don't learn other peoples songs. It's a waste of time, write your own." Of course by this time I had learned many covers! And I still do because it's fun and you learn so much from learning songs you love, and even ones you don't. Cheers!
Listening to this was actually pretty inspirational. I'm still early in my journey (basically the beginning) but I'm not giving up. I don't remember who it was, but I genuinely heard from someone that guitar would be too hard to learn unless I started as a kid; when in reality any age can learn if you have the drive and desire to learn.
The worst advice I’ve ever received was, “You won’t make any money from guitar”. That made me think why should I invest so much time into something I love? They were supportive and drove me to practice and gigs when I was in high school, but it just kind of made me give up on letting any hint of potential grow. My major support system was just looking out for me in a way they saw fit. I let that idea totally wreck me as a musician though. I didn’t care about money, I just wanted to do what my heroes did on the songs & albums I loved. I just want to be in a unifying experience with many different souls just feeling music and feeling like I’m in the right place at the right time. All good though, I picked up the guitar, other instruments & singing again after being injured and now playing to my hearts desire when I can. Great video, Paul!
9:55 Pauls point about the same advice being great for someone and bad for someone else may be the most important part in this video. Signal music studio’s point is that is not studying and just feeling it is bad and Adam Neely’s point is that the just having fun and playing with other people is much better than practicing for hours. These points almost completely contradict each other. Now I don’t know much about Signal music studio, but I imagine he might come from a rock and pop background. Here this advice is thrown around a ton and people don’t practice enough. It’s a real shame. I know that Adam Neely comes from a very studious jazz background at Berklee, where people may be concentrating too much on perfecting themselves and not focusing on what music is really meant for: playing with and for other people. So as Paul said, take all advice with a grain of salt and always use logic and common sense to figure out what advice is good for you!
The actual bad advice you reference: "ignore the technical side", "just practice by yourself and you will get better". The opposite of these is not "pay attention only to the technical side" and "always play with other people exclusively". It is "make sure you pay attention to the technical side" and "make sure you play with or for others often"... neither of which oppose each other.
@@PaulSpeed42 Yes, I agree with you. However, Adam Neely explicitly said "the worst advice I've ever been given is: if you practice long hours you will become good at music. I don't believe that". He explicitly said that practicing long hours will not make you good. I do believe that statement does contradict the statement "make sure to practice and study". Of course, practicing and learning music theory does not at all contradict playing with and for others. However, I do not believe that these were the statements made in the video, hence my clarification in the comment. But thanks for pointing it out, it is a very important point. One should of course do both!
I’d like to counter this with the best musical advice ever given… by you! You did a video on the five things you would do if you could start from the beginning with guitar playing. The number one thing you listed was… Learn to play the piano. It was the beginning of the lockdown when I saw that video in 2020 and I did that very thing, went out and bought a piano. I’ve been a drummer my whole life and tinkered with guitar for the last 20 years and really struggled with theory. Once I got the piano all became clear instantly on how things work in musical theory. And being a drummer my whole life I already had the percussion thing down so it was just a matter of learning chords. Within just a month or two I wrote my first song on piano and now I don’t know how I ever did music before learning piano. Thank you! Best advice ever!
Definitely second this, the tuning scheme of the fretboard and the fact that none of the frets reveal which notes they contain without you memorizing them, makes guitar incredibly mysterious for most people because it's logic isn't intuitive, even though it can be picked up and strummed by anyone and felt out intuitively. Piano really helps you build skills that let you tackle the guitar how you want to because it's note layout is linear and transparent.
Adam Neely hit the nail right on the head. Playing with other musicians is a really great way to grow and improve. Especially in an era where so much music is just one person recoding in a small studio.
"Learn the basics first." Nothing wrong with knowing the basics, but you can start anywhere. If you want to start with tapping with both hands on the guitar, go for it. I think motivation comes when you start to be able to play something you think sounds good. Then you want to learn more, including the basics. My advice is: Make learning fun.
Right? Who cares if you don't develop as quickly or efficiently as possible. No one has that foresight. If you don't think you'll ever want to strum chords, why should you learn them? If you don't care about going fast, you don't need to.
100% I think the upper echelons of Guitarists (in terms of technique/skill) and especially ones who "Almost made it" are bitter about the sonic capabilities of those less technical but having fun. You need to believe in the music before you believe in yourself. The idea of validating yourself first through being able to 'hang' is an elitist myth, as old as time. If you are reading this while thinking 'ah that guitarist is shit' check your bitterness VU meter.
That is hardly a worst advice ever, actually is a pretty good advice. If that the worst you have ever gotten, shit, you have been adviced by the Olympus gods of music your whole life
@@rmv9194 Some people like the systematic approach, however, so it might not be the worst advice for everyone. I had plenty of good advice when I was a kid, being taught by a very good trombone teacher. But the approach of "basics first" made it a bore for me, so I quit. An advice that made me quit. That's bad. Then I took up music again as an adult, and have spent thousands of hours practicing, jamming, and performing. I could play seriously difficult things before I knew the basics. When the next difficult thing required me to learn another basic skill, I learned that basic skill.
While so much of YT is the same old stuff Paul seems to always come up with some interesting and informative ideas. My good advice is to watch his videos.
I was told by my grandfather (who was a huge jazz fan) that I would never make a great guitarist as my fingers were too short to play chords. I still think subconsciously, that this still inhibits my playing. Though I am slowly progressing past that a step at a time. I was 16 at the time he told me that. I am now 47 and played my first gig in my new band just last week. I have played in several bands over the years and I am currently playing with some great musicians who push me to be better each time I play. I have a passion for learning, writing and performing music. It is a never ending journey that I love being on. Thank you for this and all your other great videos!!!!
I've been playing guitar for 42 years, and I only about three years ago, I discovered the wonderful world of tone and dynamics, that you get when you turn down the guitar volume pot. All these years I'd always played with the volume pot up full... It has transformed my sound... I guess most guitarist discover this much earlier in their playing career..:)
Actually, no. Very few guitar players play with their fingers, use low output pickups, or turn down and vary their guitar volume! Congrats for figuring this out. Jimmy Page definitely did this ALOT!
No, most guitarists and bassists I know play with their volume on 10 all the time because they think turning their volume down causes tone suck(when it's really the opposite). I have been playing slightly longer than you at 46 years, but I had the advantage that my first guitar hero was my Uncle Bil, he showed me all his secrets; turn the guitar volume down, amp volume up, use dynamics in playing, how to induce feedback, finger tapping(2 years before Van Halen 1)playing slide, alternate tunings, etc... I forgot about my volume control on the guitar after so many years playing channel switching master volume amps(they didn't exist when I started playing) until I started playing Blues in the 1990's, THEN I remembered his advice!
That’s the BEST NAMM video I have seen for years.. with so many heroes (for 30secs). So inspiring!! Hope one day I can bump into you at NAMM.. hope one day I can GO to NAMM. Dreams.. crafting them into reality. 🙏
i never really got any substantial advice, but my advice is: record yourself, listen to it and then decide, if it's good! you like it? keep going. you don't? keep trying!
I’ll tell you my man…you’re truly special. I picked up the guitar after years of it being used as a clothes rack while raising my kid. Did the NY band scene in the ‘80’s & thought I’d give it another try for fun. You really provide great instruction but it’s that positive emotion you exhibit that keeps me pushing on. Thanks.
Paul, I think you nailed it in the outro, there might be advice good for one but bad for others. The importance is to be open to listen, but then also have the awareness to assess things you are told. Keeping that in mind, i think there can only be one bad advice: That is NO ADVICE!
8:34 I think the "no repeat" thing is something that might just come up after a while, because when I was young and in a metal band we also had a song where no chord progression ever repeated itself in the entire song. I have no recordings of this song, but I can tell you now that you know it as well as I do - which is not at all.
There's a German word that describes music with no repeated sections, durchkomponiert, which literally translates as through-composed, i.e. written all the way through.
Great video, good info. Not trying to be ironic but I've heard people be advised not to seek out private instruction because you can learn it all on YT. YT is a great resource (love your channel!) but can't beat a personal mentor that resonates with you.
Sorry I missed you, I was there that Saturday, too, watching the 4:23 band also. Yes to so many of these comments are good, and hell yeah to 7:09 I am SO sick of sound guys saying "turn down" before you even play with the drums and bass. and 9:55 your advice about how to take advice is perfect
Worst advice I recieved was when I was asking a friend if he could show me a couple things when I was 16, and he said it was too hard and not to waste my time. So, I didn't. At 19 I bought a guitar anyway, looked up chord charts online, committed to practicing and asked anyone who was willing to show me something new. It has turned into one of my best outlets, allowed me to communicate universally through music, and something that has remained constant 17 years later through all the changes in life. Love your passion for guitar David keep up the great content!
When I told some family members I wanted to pick up the guitar they basicly told me it would be pointless since nobody in our family had a musical ear.
Nobody really discouraged me like that, but now that I put in some practice my family thinks I am naturally talented, lol. I assure you I'm not. I have gained so much pleasure from guitar over the years and 0 talent was required. Talent is overrated.
@@laurelrunlaurelrun talent is nonexistent. People use the word talent to justify their own inherit lack of skill in a field, attributing anybody who is able to learn efficiently or who is good as naturally gifted and that they could never be that because they arent naturally gifted. It just surves to downplay my achievements and my hard work, I hate when people attribute shit I have practiced painfully and forced myself to do slogging through clinically diagnosed depression as some kind of genetic fluke. Never listen to that shit because that stuff rubs off, those words become ingrained and soon you start to believe that you arent as lucky as the gilmours and hendrixes out there and it just makes you want to give up like all the small people that belittle anything you make of yourself
My high school music teacher played the Tuba. He told all of us passionate guitar players that “the guitar is not a real instrument”. He made us play our electric guitars at the end of year concert unplugged. Fuck that guy. Most of us went on to form successful metal bands. The previous music teacher who he replaced was great and even came to my first gig. I’m a teacher now and I would never do anything to discourage anyone from playing any instrument.
Ewww he sounds like a real loser. What kinda self respecting musician would call another instrument not a real instrument. Anything that can make music is a real instrument. Hell if you can make a recorder sound good then it’s a real instrument haha
I hate that attitude so much. Just because you don't like guitar doesn't mean it's not "real". Neither does the fact that it needs electricity and an amp
Great episode. Such an intelligent choice to just let the pieces of advice contradict each other here and there and let the viewer decide how to deal with that!
I watched Adam Neely's best guitar advice video and you and Mary Spender's cover on the mountains. It inspired me to write a song. Excellent content as always!!
More Great Content by Paul David’s. I don’t know how he does it, but mini guitar-based channels have come and gone the 10 years I’ve used the UA-cam platform. But Paul Davids Channel just seems to keep on producing. On an intellectual,technical, and emotional level, He entertains me and keeps me investing thank you
Great video! "Just quit". I followed that self-advice for 30yrs due to severe stage fright which I still suffer from, but not as bad (reason coming). Also convinced myself blues was dying and nobody wanted to listen to it anymore. Stopped playing altogether (I do blues organ & piano). Art of Guitar dude (Mike?) changed that as well with a video he made about stage fright. A few months back I reconnected with an old friend and drummer of the band at the time who went pro. He reinforced what ?Mike? had said. He also reinforced the "To get better, practice... but ALWAYS play with people better than you and your skills will rise quick." I still think I suck... yet the friend and anyone who's around when I smash a keyboard at a store clamor about my 'greatness'. Yeah... no, sorry... I'm no Jimmy Smith, Joey DeFrancesco, Pinetop Perkins, etc. Obviously still torn, but I can probably get on a stage now and still suck... pair of shades to hide behind might help. As far as guitar... I can do the C-D-G-Am-Em cowboy chords. Went neck deep when I picked it up 2 yrs ago and bought tons of guitars. Sold all but 2 (kept Gretsch Electromatic and Squier CV60 Jazzmaster (1st & 2nd I ever bought)) and kept the Fender Tone Master Twin Blonde as well as several pedals. Spent a lot of money on Fender Play when I started and paid for 2 yrs using it about 2 weeks total initially. I'll pick it up again... but still watch and enjoy Paul's videos as well as a lot of the people in the video who I respect.
I see everything, including music, as riding my bike, just get on it and freakin ride it. Focus on the wind and not get hit by a car, how u do it, how beautiful u do it, it matters not, just go and have some fun on the bike.
Best advise my parents got was from my one and only piano teacher when I was 10-11 yrs old. About to move to another part of the country she told them not to waste money on another teacher because I would figure it out myself.
Worse Advice I absolutely abhor is when anyone tells me I suck at guitar, piano or anything I set my mind to ! Reason : I figured out that there are a thousand ways to pluck, groove and get into your craft and realize that since I hate plagiarizing others riffs, I would have to stand on the Island as a Tower of Light and make my own waves and enjoy each one as they come to shore. Hope this helps aspire your creative talents and explore the ability we all have but were told to limit the impossible and dream like a warrior !
1:06 As Picasso once said (probably in Spanish), "learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist". Worst advice is probably "you don't need lessons". Utter, utter bollocks. *I* certainly could have done with some lessons much earlier.
Damn, PD!!! This is a GOAT video. 🐐 I’ve shared with all my younger friends and their kids. This isn’t music advice… it’s life advice. Thanks for working so hard to make this video happen. Truly epic my friend. BEDANKT!!!!!
At first I was a little shocked when Adam said lots of practice was bad advice, till he explained the rest about playing with others. I have to say I definitely concur. I have seen well educated musicians that have horrible time keeping, no ability blend harmonies(tuning), and a major lack of feeling the movement of the music (dynamics, tempo, expression). Until you play with others, you really don’t know how good (or bad) your personal practice is.
Nothing kills music like people who can't play in time together. Sloppy playing with a solid groove can get you much further than pristine playing with no groove.
I had an ear training professor that told us to clap with a metronome for 10 minutes a day. If you can hear the metronome, your timing is off. The slower the speed, the more difficult. He said after a few months you wouldn’t be able to play with your “musician” friends anymore because you’d notice how off their timing was. He could clap at 40bpm and you’d never know the metronome was on.
the one that hit the hardest for me was Sean Daniel's - "go all in, quit everything etc". Most of the people who've told me that aren't even musicians themselves lol
Unless you have a super supportive family and friends, being homeless and hungry with no insurance is a truly bad experience. Also, if the bandmates are not serious about being at practice or gigs, you never get off the ground. And location matters.
@@ewokwarrior2656 Even if the other band members are extremely serious, you can still get trapped in some bad situations by going all in. Captain Beefheart's Magic Band would be a prime example.
As a beginner/intermediate player, I took so much away from this video and am so happy you made this! Thank you to Paul and to everyone else for their great advice 🙏
The thing is, we're all sort of different so obviously we respond differently to different things. I've heard all of that advice and so so much more over the last 40 years, and the thing is, I can think of certain people in particular that I've known that could use one of those bits of advice. For instance, and this used to be beyond obvious; a lot of musicians need to learn when to turn down, especially us guitarists. I used to intentionally turn down to get the rest of the band to turn down just so they could hear me and the drums, because at a certain point it's so loud it's difficult to actually hear the different parts and the drummer is no longer able to play with as much finesse because they have to concentrate on playing louder and the mix just becomes a giant mess. Unless you're in a huge venue where you need to mic the drums, play at the volume your drummer plays at naturally. Note: Pete is so sonically aware that I don't dispute the issue he's run into though either. I've had sound guys say all sorts of different things to me. As as a recording engineer who has mixed live sound here and there, the reason they want him to turn down is valid. But as a guitarist, especially because I've played a lot of metal, I fully understand what Pete is saying too. What most people, including some guitarists, don't know is that guitar being on the edge of feedback is a _magical_ place. Anyway, each of those *where appropriate* can be good advice. Other than _"give up, the guitar is dead."_ That's purely ego-maniacally spawned ignorance. Fools have been saying that about rock and roll since at least the 1960's. That really is the most ignorant musician advice I ever heard. Here's my advice as a guitar instructor since the 1980's: have fun. If you want to be good, make practicing fun. If you want to be really good, *also* make playing with other musicians fun. If you want to be great, *also* learn to love the audience and the audience will love you back. ^-^
For me as a self-learner the worst advise was the one you find everywhere in cheap guitar books and articles in the internet: "Learn the chords, learn the popular picking patters, do the tabs - that's it". And I've got stuck in that loop for years, just learning tabs, not knowing a single note on my guitar lol. Only after changing my life-style and starting giving more time to my guitar and thinking more on the music I listen to, I'm now learning music theory on a 20 yo stage piano and practice notes and scales on guitar. And the second one - the same level bad, maybe even more depressive in a time perspective was: "you don't that more expensive guitar, you're only starting". Bullshit, you gotta buy what you feel connection to, otherwise you're just holding a tool. I wanted a Cort cr 280 and there were none in my town. The nearest shop that had them was 3 hours drive in one direction. So this guy at our local music store gives me a different les-paulish guitar, but more flat, thinner, with different body proportions, and says it's not worse, it's just different and it's even a bit cheaper, but it's just as cool. So my mom who didn't fancy a drive and wanted to save some of our non-existent finances started supporting the man and I'd got the guitar I didn't really want. I never felt connected to it, it felt wrong to have it and I was only feeling cheated looking at it.
I would put the second one down to a matter of context. In your case, wanting to spend a little extra for a Cort guitar would have definitely been worth it just for the difference in craftsmanship alone. Where I would consider stepping in is when someone turns their noses up at the Corts and Squiers of the world and insist on buying a $4,000+ brand name instrument as their "starter" guitar. That's why I prefer to say "High end gear does not replace practice."
Both of those are great. For the second, I delayed purchasing a high-quality instrument for over 10 years, during which my enthusiasm for playing never waned, but I felt like I needed to get to the point where I was limited by the guitar before moving on, even though I could afford it. It's not terrible advice for a total novice, but upgrading has shifted my desire to play into an even higher gear. Sounding good, feeling good, looking good with style, perfect action, intonation, level frets, good controls, proper adjustability, great sounding tone from quality pickups and materials. The sense of pride and positive reinforcement from those 'extras' added up to what has probably been my single most productive year as a musician in terms of ability. Don't be a decadent gearhead dad that just collects expensive toys that sit in the case, but if you love to play, if your cheap guitar just continues to spark joy and you keep coming back to it instinctively over a couple years, and you can afford it, don't be intimidated to step up. It might take you to the next level.
See and I'm a self-taught guitarist who also spent considerable time learning to pick out specific instruments in a mix so I could learn songs by ear. It took me probably 3 guitar tabs to determine that I have 0 trust in the guitar community to tab anything correctly (have since come the the same conclusion about piano scores, since trying to learn a song or two on piano), and thus I gave up on tab and try to learn everything by ear. With that I also started writing, very much with a process of play notes and keep the ones that sound good. But recently I have been trying to think more about theory and scales and the like, not really from books or anything, just thinking about what notes or scales I'm playing when I play, and it has improved my ability to freestyle and the like. In regard to guitars... I learned on my brother's guitar, but when he moved out, I immediately bought my own guitar that was such trash it really motivated me to buy something nicer. Because my parents weren't exactly well off, I knew I was going to be paying for it myself, so I went in to the local guitar store one day to try some guitars and decide what I was saving up for. I told the guy I was thinking PRS, and he showed me one that had been traded in not long before. I played it, loved the sound, loved the look, and it cost less than I had in savings, so I pulled the trigger and bought it. It spent several years as my only guitar before I went on something of a frenzy and bought something like 4 guitars in 3 years. Nowadays it's the cheapest electric guitar I own, but it has a special place in my heart due to those years where it was my only one. I'll probably never sell it.
I struggled under terrible music teachers of all kinds for years and then one day a good friend of mine posted that he had been hired as a guitar instructor; I knew from a distance that he was extremely good, and until then had basically just resolved to never bother him about music, because I had assumed that electric guitarists who are actually good have to regularly fight off fawning amateurs nerding out and trying to weasel into their bands..... 🤷♀️ However, when I saw his post, I decided to just start browsing inexpensive used guitars and IF the right instrument presented itself, I'd sign up for his class. Well..... Within 15 minutes at the first place I looked, it did. I've always been a visual artist, creative in a whole different field, and incredibly opinionated about how things are made-just meaning that the odds of liking what I found so quickly were extremely low. Finding the right starter instrument, practically just via an intuitive connection, something that made me excited just by picking it up, was critical to how I made my decision to even begin studying guitar at all. Since then.... I've watched a lot of videos about how other musicians guitar-shop: the features they require, how guitars are manufactured, tonewood voodoo, etc.... And my conclusion is that it's really NO different from simply picking out a pair of shoes. 😆 You just gotta try a bunch on, see what's comfortable enough to walk a figurative journey of 10,000 miles in, and certainly self-image has a lot to do with it too, no matter what the snooty purist academic musicians say. I've had that guitar for eight years now, and even though I'm still crazy hard on myself musically (sad story about my instructor friend.... RIP 😭) at least I still love my instrument. I ended up putting metallic steampunk decals all over it, including quality false-inlay stickers on the fretboard..... As a convert from the visual arts, I practically couldn't help it. 😄 I've tried a few other guitars just to learn what the differences are, and still can't believe my luck. I even got a bass at one point, and so far my particular bass is the only one in the world that I actually like and connect with...and that too was a used cheapie. 🤷♀️ Personal selection really does count for a LOT-otherwise, it's like walking that figurative 10,000-mile journey in shoes that somebody else picked out for you!! 😟
Hell Yea, Paul is back this man has taught me more about playing guitar than just how to play chords. He inspired me to jeep looking for what I sounded like rather than trying to sound like someone else.
"Don't fret with the thumb, it is bad technique." Maybe it isn't traditional technique, but bad? It opened up so many options in my playing! I still thumb-fret like a mofo.
Use all the techniques - that's what they're there for! The most musically liberating skill is not necessarily to master dozens of different techniques, but to learn as many as you can well enough and then master transitioning between them without breaking the musical flow.
I don't think I ever got bad advice. People only advise from their own experiences. I wish I took people's advices more to heart. Especially, "don't rush" when making a release. I just wanted to get my music out there, that I rushed through my productions, and published them without letting them sit for a few weeks or months. Of course what happened was that I grew as a producer and could hear everything wrong with the production, while listening to it on vinyl or youtube. Now I take my sweet time.
The best advice I ever got was from my dad who said "you have not got a lick of rhythm in your whole body" Then he said "pat your foot". My dad was a pretty good guitar player. So I let my body enjoy rhythm by patting my foot or rocking my body, whatever I have to do or feel like doing, and my timing has gotten very good. and I love playing/experimenting with lots of rhythms. Not so hard. The worst advice I ever got musically, was from my own wrong thinking. I kept hearing "you can't do that, its for good guitarists". Now I learn whatever I want to learn and tell the intimidation to take a hike. BTW, Thanks Paul Davids! You have been an inspiration. I'm thankful.
About 60 years ago my mother and I went to a music store to buy my first guitar. The salesman asked to see my hands and told me I didn't have the right shaped fingers for guitar and that I should consider piano. I'm 71 now and I play one of my 9 guitars every day for a couple of hours .... seek advice but listen to your heart.
I had a music teacher who used to say something along the lines of "Practice makes perfect is the worst advice you can get or give. The truer statement is 'Practice makes permanent'. If you practice one technique and style, you'll end up only being good at that technique and style."
Soooo great to see all these folks I've come to follow on UA-cam over the last 10 years or so all there.. and although they all wouldn't know me from a bar of soap, I still think of everyone as some sort of friends.. Everyone shares their knowledge and ya, some is useful, some isn't.. but it's all relative and depends on your background.. and if you have the nouse to be able to integrate the info into what you already know... and can already do... y'just going to expand your skills and enjoyment of music.... Fanx! for seeking out all these great folks, Paul... and for posting the video. .....Many *hugggggs* to all from Oz... :))
Worst advice I got was from myself, at age 18, when I first started playing electric guitar after playing exclusively acoustic fingerpicking and flat picking for 6 years. Of course I was terrible on electric at first (it didn’t help that my 1st electric guitar was terrible). I told myself I was not cut out to be an electric player and should go back to playing acoustic only. Luckily, I didn’t listen to myself.
Buy this and that gear to sound like that and this! It took ages to sound like me, you have to find yourself, then you sound like your heros more honest than with just the right gear. We are all unique and that is the beauty in it! 🤘🏽 Awesome channel, thx Paul!
I really love watching these kind of videos, because while growing up all my life I've been told by my family and friends that I can't make a living doing what I like, i.e. playing guitar and making music. Against everybody's advice I saved up money as a 13 year old and bought a crappy knock-off strat and started practicing even without an amp and completely self-taught. I then enrolled to college, and later university, and graduated with Audio Production degree. While studying the technical side of music production, I was also writing and producing my own songs, playing guitar in a small band, and getting much better at it (we even did a few Hendrix covers as I could play a lot of his songs even in my late teens). Was also collecting gear over many years, got a really good Marshal head and cab, managed to slowly acquire a decent collection of pedals, and even saved up money for an expensive Fender American Deluxe Strat in natural ash body (it was FSR, so has long been discontinued since then). I also built a small home studio, nothing fancy, but I had all the essentials, a DAW, a pair of decent monitors, an interface, a few dynamic and condenser mics, stands, cables and so on. I was working part time as a freelance sound engineer and some of the gigs we played were also paid but that wasn't nearly enough to live off. So this was all while living at my parents', who constantly kept reminding me that I'm putting money into music and getting nothing out of it. At 24 I had to move out because of the constant pressure from them to "get a real job" and I just couldn't take any more fighting. And a year later I guess some sort of switch went off in my head and I realised that everyone was right, pursuing career in music just isn't working out. Whatever I tried to do, it wasn't paying the bills. I was struggling financially, so I gave up. Sold ALL my gear to pay some debts (I still get chest pains every time I think about how I sold my American limited edition strat + 6 other guitars, my amazing amp and pedals etc.) So I did get a "real" job and now 6 years later I'm 31 and I'm absolutely regretting that decision. I am literally dying on the inside a little bit every day I have to go to my "NORMAL" job, live from payday to payday, have no passion or interests in life. I stopped socialising (covid didn't help), played videogames every time I wasn't at work just to escape reality, and started developing depression and maybe some sort of early mid-life crisis or something. And all I could remember is the last time I was truly happy was when I was playing guitar, jamming with my band, writing music, and staying up all night mixing a track we just recorded. So a couple of months ago I used all my savings and bought a strat, an audio interface, a pair of half-decent monitors (HS-7s), a cheap 1x12 combo practice amp, a multi-FX pedal board, and I'm trying to get back into music. Unfortunately after nearly 7 years of not doing anything music related, I have to re-learn most of it - how to play guitar, how to record, mix etc. And I keep feeling like maybe it's too late now, I lost a lot of valuable time and if I didn't give up that day, I could've been closer to my dream job or possibly even made it big with my band. Which brings me back to my original point - I LOVE these kind of videos because they motivate me to practice, write and produce music again, and pursue my passion in life. Sorry for the wall of text, that's like literally my life story in this one comment. Thanks for making videos to motivate people like me to do what we love.
NOTE: I am a 99% of the time a finger style player. Worst advice I ever got: "Play whatever you want with your right hand (plucking/picking), it's the chord that matters. Always improvise what you are picking". That was a lie because I got really comfortable "doing whatever I want", but it took me months and months and months to be able to play Travis picking. Learning songs by really trying to play exactly as in the records was also very complicated for a while. Today I have (almost) full control of my plucking hand but I believe that advice held me back for at least 5 years.
You make wonderful videos. With an emphasis on wonder. I wish there were better words for the warmth that I feel watching you with all these fantastic people.
Or even an advanced , lets say contry player, that one learn about smth else, instead of teaching him what he needs to know, "just feel this harmony bro" *insert sophisticated jazz chords*
Hey Paul, it was a pleasure to meet you there and spend a couple minutes chatting, you were by far the nicest guy from big youtube channels! Keep it like that
"Learn to play right-handed" is another one. If you feel natural playing left-handed, learning to play guitar or bass right-handed will discourage you from progressing in your musical journey.
It’s a sliding scale. Teaching a public school class I started everyone right handed, because it was equally awkward, and I was rescuing them from a lifetime of paying $200 extra and not being able to find the guitar they want. That said, if a kid showed up with some experience already playing lefty, I didn’t try to convert them to playing right handed. Changing the habits that they already had was not a hill I was going to die on.
Playing left saves you tons of money. No impulse purchases, you will not feel the need to travel to NAMM, since there are no leftie guitars there. Play left. Realistically, you only need 2 guitars, the rest are wants...
@James Fox @Gordon Roberts That's why us lefties learn how to play with the strings "reversed", so we can walk into a guitar store or a friend's house without completely losing our ability to play the instrument. In fact, some lefties like Dick Dale and Albert King actually prefer to play with the high E closest to their face.
I had an excellent guitar teacher growing up. He basically started with me just picking the music and the songs I like and then while learning those songs have all the theory come later. Theory can be boring especially to a beginner, so having me build interest and enjoyment into playing the guitar first helped me in the long run. 14 years later I thought, "I don't really know any music theory", so I started finding music theory lessons on youtube, only to realize , I actually knew a lot of music theory, I just never had the feeling that I was learning theory.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
52 years ago, I told my parents I was going to music school to get degrees in classical guitar. I loved it. Everyone I knew rolled their eyes and questioned my future. I'm now retired after a long career as a college professor, a Dean, and a performer.. I've had a great life.
You are the 1%. You are lucky. Other than the professor thing.
Congrats on your success!
hey friend, you are something special. I love that you followed your dreams. You aren't ever without love and support. Keep being you buddy, you are the best at it. 💜
It's not luck
Its hard work
You create you're luck by working hard and practicing
@@AB-ci6jj zzzzzzz
I always remember what my band instructor said, and I feel this applies to everything in life: “you have to sound bad to sound good.”
Don’t get discouraged
Wow! What an honour to be on Paul David’s Channel! Thanks ever so much for including me! Wonderful video
Man you're such an influence, both in music and with lifestyle. You seem like a cool guy to have beer with
Such a lovely surprise seeing you there! You are insane man.
@@szymondudzinski6661 wow! Thanks ever so much!
@@jacekjmazur that's very kind of you!
@@mahakali7086 creativity is king!
The “just feel it” part really hit home. When I started teaching myself guitar, I heard “you just gotta feel it” so often and I never could. Even the songs that I had nailed down, I couldn’t “feel” them. It all felt mechanical to me (use this strumming pattern then this one, play this note then this note etc.). It made me think that I would never be good at guitar because I didn’t have this natural ability to feel the music. Now after 2 years of practicing consistently, the mechanical feeling when playing is going away. I’m still nowhere near where I wanna be, but I’m getting better every day and that’s all that really matters. Practice and consistency is key!
A better version of the @just feel it” advice is “practice practice practice amd when it’s time to play, just play.”
Dude. Yessss same here. My dude and I would always be jamming and he would bust out this ridiculous solo and I would ask him how to even begin learning how to do that, and he would always say “just gotta feel it”. Same as you, I thought that something was wrong with me since I couldn’t play like that. Feeling is definitely part of jamming but you gotta develop your ear first and learn some scales.
Yea but also some people are just better at things others aren’t and some people have to practice more than others .
Worst advice I got was that it was too late to start playing at 22 "all good players started when they were kids you're just gonna sound awful forever" well guess what? It doesn't fucking matter how old are you as long as you enjoy playing and you keep practicing, you always learn that riff eventually, you may not become the next Hendrix but you *will* become a musician version of yourself and be fulfilled with who you are
I too will never be the next Hendrix, but you are absolutely right. Playing music never gets old and has been one of the most reliably joyous and fulfilling things I've done.
This. 100%
Yeah, eff that. My mother started playing the Celtic harp at 68. She loves playing. You are never too old to start. Are you less likely to make a living out of it? Maybe. It depends on what are are expecting out of it and how much you're willing to put into it.
Agree! Van Gogh didn't start painting until he was 30... never too late
So true
Thanks for including me dude, let’s meet up again soon and chat about Holland, I really miss it sometimes :-)
The worst musical advice I was ever given, was from myself. When I was starting college in 1981, I gave up on a musical career because I told myself that “I wasn’t creative.” Focus on engineering or computers and find a left-brain type of job, Kevin. In 2014, I moved to San Francisco, got serious about guitar again, rediscovered my creative side, and now I have two UA-cam channels - one that I play guitar on to use as backing tracks. If I had focused on being creative 40 years ago, what could I have accomplished? Who knows, but I’m loving being a creative now. Cheers!
Also a software engineer. Not sad that I chose to spend my life making software, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t have also been playing guitar every night and been in a band. I wish I could go back and tell myself to go ahead and try it.
I'm a Civil Engineer that had a professional career working in the music industry for 25 years. I also enjoyed a successful career in construction , mechanical and electrical engineering. Not at the same time though! I discovered that both the Arts and Science were as equally creative. For me life is not about accomplishments or 'what if's' its about no regrets. You did OK so cheers to you!
This is incredibly relatable
@@circlemover Thanks! I agree that creativity comes in many forms and I used mine mostly to create software for the past 40 years. Coincidentally, some of that software was for the construction industry. ;) I just wish that I hadn't lied to myself at such a young age. I might have done more with music, photography, or video along with building apps. Cheers!
@@kevinhoctor62 sounds like you accomplished a great deal to me!! And now you are rockin' in the free world again! As l have recently retired from engineering guess what? Yep... Presently building a pretty cool home studio with all them lovely audio toys... Cheers again!
I came to guitar relatively late as I was poor and a lefty, didn't get any chances to try it as a youth and many people told me when I was 20 that it was already too late to make anything of it. I started that year and now I am 40 and guitar is now intrinsically part of who I am. I'm not a great player at all, but what I CAN do absolutely sings to my soul and I just love the journey of learning more and getting a little bit better each day. This channel has been a huge part of that in recent years, so thank you Paul
Similar story for me, lefty and all. I started at 20 for a bit but I didn't commit till around 45. I see my improvement over the past couple years. It's all like therapy for me. Paul is great at helping me get out of ruts.
You are an inspiration for people like me...
Keep going...
Worst advice was from my father. I told him, “Dad, when I grow up, I want to be a musician.” He looked at me and said, “Son, you can’t have it both ways.” (Old joke)
Haha, such a dad joke!
I don't get the joke. Can someone please explain?
@@renew44 You can't grow up if you're a musician, meaning that you'll always be a child if you're a musician
@@scrobble8127 Oh, I see. Couldn't have figured it out on my own. Thanks!
Why is everything stupid or bad or gross a “dad” thing now? Too many dads and not enough fathers I guess.
One of the first to help me learn told me to practice until it was good enough to present and everyone will be amazed.
Forty years later....
Seriously it was good advice and spared listeners ears but it comes with a price.
Those who don't make music think it comes without practice and those learning feel discouraged because they don't want to make embarrassing noises.
The general public begins to think music is a gift you're born with and there's no point in trying to learn.
Intermediate players with potential feel they're not worthy of letting vibrations escape that aren't perfect.
Everything gets hushed in an uneasy silence.
Well I am calling B.S. on that!!!
Make glorious noises,stumbling first attempts,flaming train wrecks of musical bumbling. Annoy the whole neighborhood.
Get the cops called if need be but create an environment where music can survive and flourish.
One quiet evening the drums started and it was on. The natives are restless.
I needed to hear this.
@InterPRO how did theory bring you freedom ?
@@loxng6801 theory is the language and structure of music. Get onstage and hear, we are doing a quick change blues in Am with a b6 in the change. You will know and not have a deer in the headlights look.
Daring to sound horrible (and be heard doing it) was the first hurdle I had to overcome to start learning to make music in the first place. And it took me a damn long time, all the way into my twenties!
I liked this perspective. And I will weigh in on the subject of noise as a nuisance…there are about 6 dogs on our street…when one of them starts up, they all get going if it’s lusty enough. This, is without doubt, nuisance, because there’s no armed robber, nor burglar, at 10pm, they are going at…I rattled my shed padlock, that started them…our neighbour now gone, demonstrated the psychological aspect of nuisance noise: they made the mistake of training their dog to hate me just like they did. As a result, with its uncanny hearing, when I slowly slid my key in the latch of my back door, the ‘clik, clik, clik…’ of tumblers was all it took…and it took only three tumbler clicks, for their dog to launch into an absolute tirade.
Now here’s what’s funny - they blame me for their dog making that racket. They complained to people I was ‘up all hours’ and ‘not normal’ and so on. Dogs are smart, they latch on devotedly to their masters’ attitudes, it would only take one miserable comment as I moved my wheelie bin and the poor mutt’s attitude was defined. From then on, I could simply slip my key in at any odd hour I got up, and the dog would satisfyingly respond, awakening their entire household…I mean, that’s funny.
But what I really wanted to say was, if you like the person making the noise, it’s not half as bad. If you don’t like them, anything, even a terribly small and normal amount of anything, is magnified. Then there’s children, for some people, inescapable and normal racket…but is it?! It’s the decent thing to give way, and compromise, but not ALL the time. That’s meek, not decent. Take care all anyway, just press on with music however you decide, that’s the important thing. Do you.
I know the whole "learning from records" thing is very common, especially to musicians from the older generation, but after doing both I can honestly say that the *fastest* way to get better at figuring out songs using your ears is to first learn and master intervals, both melodic (played one at a time) and harmonic (played simultaneously) and to get a basic grounding in theory. Once you have that, figuring out songs by ear becomes exponentially easier, with the added bonus that you actually are able to understand what you are hearing, and can play it in different positions on your instrument, improvise your own version, etc ...
The only problem is that’s how a lot of great old guitarist got their style , they didn’t learn from theory or how others have done it they created their own technique by listening to songs and trying to play it . I think that’s partly why I find modern guitarists so boring, they sound very similar .
Yeah sure, take some time to learn intervals and solmisation as tools. But the important thing is to not noodle around. Listen to the phrase you want to learn 10 or 20 times or however often. (Ideally at full speed, if to hard: slower) Try to sing along in your head, but dont sing out loud until you have it. Then stop the recording. Try to sing it again in your head until youve got it. Then sing it out loud. If there is still something unclear: listen again. And then you start figuring out the notes- in the beginning if you are unsure about the intervals you can sing it multiple times out loud, but eventually figure it out in your head. Imagine how you play it on your instrument and then do it properly immediately.
1. Listen
2. Audiate
3. Sing (to prove your audiation was right and clear enough)
4. Figure out the notes without touching any instrument
5. Play it
Eventually you want to play melodies back you heard once. You cant noodle around to figure out the notes on stage.. so do it in your head.. once you can do it in your head its just a matter of doing it faster and the progress for that is pretty quick in my experience.
I freakin' LOVE this! All my fave youtubers hanging out and giving concrete advice from personal experience. Everyone seems genuinely nice and willing to share to us..
Love this video. Fun memories and oh I had missed everyone!
i love your music. once i get a guitar, i will eat your channel alive. and pauls' to
Would love to hear what happened to the record label producer that gave you a reason. Keep being you! Even the percussion you use in your songs is a direct expression that you convey in your music. You’re gifted in music dynamics. Still can’t understand their logic!
You really knocked it out of the park on Under the Bridge!
Jesus Christ loves you!
Thank you for not listening to that music exec! We love your music!
Paul, you also have an instinct for what makes a good video. Instead of a boring walk thru you had a great idea of interviewing guitarists on a valuable question while giving highlights of NAMM. Well done.
Thank you for inviting me to be a part of such an insightful video, Paul! Such an honor. Thank you for all you do for the music world!
Worst advice I was given: "You don't need to learn theory"
While learning theory will not directly translate to better playing, it certainly indirectly translated in my case. I was able to join the dots better about what I'm playing and also improved my fretboard visualization to a significant degree. And I didn't even have to dive too deep into theory. Just basic knowledge about intervals, scales, modes and chord progressions was enough.
Thanks, as a beginner guitarist I have had trouble figuring out what things to learn and especially whether or not I should learn theory. I am going to try to learn these things. Thanks again for your comment.
When it comes to art, you either have it or you don't. Having a music theory degree won't save you from not being able to create anything.
@@ashleyjohansson230 But not having the tools and having to stumble around in the dark every single time is going to result in a lot of ideas forgotten before they can be performed or written down.
@@ashleyjohansson230 bullshit on the first statement - humans are creative and everyone can improve. talent is a platform, but studying/practicing with intent will help you get better at anything.
i'm a very verbal person and i found that having names for the things i was hearing helped improve my ear.
Worst musical advice I was given was to push through and keep hammering if you don’t get something. That led to major burnout and actually led to retiring from playing live because I fell out of love with it.
Never force yourself to do something you love.
Brilliant. Thanks.
I resonated with this so much. Never force yourself to do something you love. Such a good quote!
Absolutely excellent vid. I’m just learning guitar at the tender age of 67.
I’m still waiting fir my lefty GLPC 57 reissue, having ordered it 2 years ago!
I was 14 years old improvising songs using big Latin style chords on our grand piano into rock like rhythms and wanted to learn classical guitar but no instructor lived within 500 miles of my house. I wanted to move to where I could learn classical guitar but my father said,”no son of mine is going to be a musician”. So I ended up in medicine retiring early but now arthritis nags my hands at age 60. I missed the boat decades ago. So nice to see so many young musicians living their dreams.
Great video Paul...
I don't have a "worst" advice that I can recall, so one of the best pieces of advice I learned was "if u make a mistake on a groove, repeat it" and shockingly that always works.
I’d like to hear an example… but it makes sense in a way
Some of the best things I've ever played were originally discovered by making a mistake. Just do it again, and it sounds like you meant it all along.
If you play it wrong once it's a mistake, if you play it wrong twice it's jazz!
Thanks for including me! Loved getting to hear everyone else’s answers ⚡️
I learned classical guitar first and I gotta say I struggle with jazz, its a completely different animal. Your teacher's advice was just wrong.
Your entry here was so validating @Philip Conrad, since I received similar advice (I posted the whole thing in the comments above it you're interested in the original). In my case, trying to follow it almost ruined my career in music. My biggest regret is that I didn't have your reaction, to just brush it off as pretentious and move on. Brilliant, mate!
At 55 years old I was told I was too old to start playing. I’m 77 now and playing in a band, still learning everyday, cut a CD and arranging songs. Having the time of my life, too.
"Eventually, what you're good at will find you." Well said, Sean Daniel. I totally agree. I always wanted to be a working musician, but photography found me.
Paul, your channel has quickly become my absolute favourite. Thank you for this inspiring video, and all of the others, too.
I love the epilogue. Because that's exactly it, what can be the worst advice for somebody can be exactly what somebody else needs to hear.
Thanks for doing this video, Paul. It's nice to feel the joy and the passion from all these great people as they open up about their experiences.
Worst advice ever was, for me, more a situation. I was just graduated from high school, and as a family we had little money. I was self taught and could play good lead guitar, but i was stuck. I wanted to learn composition and theory and make my living out of music. A year back my family could afford lessons for a year only at the local conservatory... By the time i graduated from high school i had to choose... beg for a scholarship for a traditional career and convince myself music couldn't be taken seriously, or give it a last try. I tracked my guitar teacher from that year at the conservatory and came to him with a guitar on my hand and desperate for support to stick to music. I explained to him the situation, that a couldn't pay full price he was asking for lessons, that a needed some advice to confront my family from someone i looked up to . He just said "lesson cost this amount of money (money i couldn't afford) weekly", and just left me there.
After that I gave up, enrolled where my family wanted me to study, got half scholarship as my family did the effort to pay for the rest and went with their plan.
Today I have a half time job that barely pays the bills and I'm trying to do something with music before it's too late (I'm 46). Will never get back those 20 years that I believed i couldn't do it. I have no doubt my family and people around me did it with best intentions at heart, trying to advice what was in my best interest (i have arthritis since i was 14, which is an important obstacle) , and I'm thankful for that, but i was deep down miserable anyway.
Today I'm trying again, don't care for the latest cell phone, car or house, just want to be happy doing what I love, at least for a while.
Damn I hope you will succeed! Good luck and have fun! 🍀😊
To thine own self be true. Follow your heart!! Your passion!! You'll sleep much better at night. ; )
I hope you succeed living your dream. In the end, I believe it's all about the journey itself. While you follow your dreams and your happy, it's worth it!
Do what makes you happy. Society and it's expectations are well overrated.
Heya! Im in that same boat.... doing music, dont really need much else
Thanks for making this video! So cathartic to watch these.
Mine was a variation on Philip Conrad's example of bad advice: "Picasso had his pink/blue periods where he painted realistically before he broke the rules. Therefore, you need to learn how to play classical guitar before you can learn to play any other style."
I understand the gist of this version of the advice and even agree with it in some areas, albeit in moderation. In my personal case, it went too damn far. For years, I was pushed to follow this advice and this kept me away from learning what had originally attracted me to the instrument: jazz and rock. It turned me off the instrument and music entirely for years and I've had a love/hate relationship with both ever since, even though I did graduate with a degree in classical guitar performance. It's a miracle I still play sometimes, but now I mostly stick to experimental and metal.
Basically, "Stick with your comfort zone."
In college, I had been playing violin in my local P&W band, like background fills and basic countermelodies and stuff. After our leader graduated, I learned guitar to be the leader (singing and rhythm guitar), and got many people advising me to go back to violin just because they liked that and no one was filling that role anymore. But now, leading music with guitar is pretty much my full-time job.
Your conclusion is correct. You have to absorb everything and be your own teacher because music is a personal journey .. I was very happy with the conclusion of this video.
When I was a kid, everyone said "classical is the only real music" and all these adults always tried to turn me into a classical player. I was good at it, but I didn't enjoy it, I was only doing it because I was promised that learning classical was the path to learning rock and blues and all the stuff I really liked. I loved music enough to tolerate this and work past it, and eventually picked up the guitar and started learning folk and blues on my own. I often wonder how many kids were scared away from music because of this focus on classical.
I've found classical is better off learned and listened to later on as you see and feel the root connections to it. Follow down the rabbit hole, don't start at the bottom of the hole or it isn't as fun.
Garbage on a piece of bread is really the only food. Trust me I eat it all the time
I also feel like that’s the wrong order, you can’t know jazz just by learning classical…more the other way around
I think a lot of traditional music teaching is terrible. Too much focus on sight reading to pass certain grades but zero explanation of music theory. So even some good students who can play very well from a sheet of music cannot improvise or transpose easily or pick things out by ear.
Self taught musicians, especially guitar players (e.g. me), have the opposite problem.
Here, I was one!
Thanks to this archaic top-down approach to music, I never paid attention to music class in school. I didn't care to learn something that seemed to only be good for impressing some arrogant, boring old snobs. And then I thought I was completely unmusical because I had no freaking clue what the class was talking about when analyzing classical pieces (forgetting that I just didn't know because I refused to learn it earlier) and that discouraged me from learning an instrument (because you totally need to understand how Beethoven's 9th Symphony is composed to play Foo Fighters' The Pretender on Guitar, lol).
Before I received music education in school, I would often play around on the keyboard in our basement or use old baby toys and other random junk to recreate the soundtracks of my favorite games from my parents' NES console. But then I learned I can't do music, cause I don't know the circle of fifths, can't read notation and have my worst grades in music.
Now I sing in a band, learn guitar and am still searching for a good/quick way to learn theory...
Well done Paul, really dug this one! The worst advice (and possibly the best too) was from an interview with Billy Corgan in a small local zine in Santa Barbara that I read while studying for my music degree. It was something to the effect of "Don't learn other peoples songs. It's a waste of time, write your own." Of course by this time I had learned many covers! And I still do because it's fun and you learn so much from learning songs you love, and even ones you don't. Cheers!
Listening to this was actually pretty inspirational. I'm still early in my journey (basically the beginning) but I'm not giving up. I don't remember who it was, but I genuinely heard from someone that guitar would be too hard to learn unless I started as a kid; when in reality any age can learn if you have the drive and desire to learn.
The worst advice I’ve ever received was, “You won’t make any money from guitar”. That made me think why should I invest so much time into something I love? They were supportive and drove me to practice and gigs when I was in high school, but it just kind of made me give up on letting any hint of potential grow. My major support system was just looking out for me in a way they saw fit. I let that idea totally wreck me as a musician though. I didn’t care about money, I just wanted to do what my heroes did on the songs & albums I loved. I just want to be in a unifying experience with many different souls just feeling music and feeling like I’m in the right place at the right time. All good though, I picked up the guitar, other instruments & singing again after being injured and now playing to my hearts desire when I can. Great video, Paul!
9:55 Pauls point about the same advice being great for someone and bad for someone else may be the most important part in this video. Signal music studio’s point is that is not studying and just feeling it is bad and Adam Neely’s point is that the just having fun and playing with other people is much better than practicing for hours. These points almost completely contradict each other. Now I don’t know much about Signal music studio, but I imagine he might come from a rock and pop background. Here this advice is thrown around a ton and people don’t practice enough. It’s a real shame. I know that Adam Neely comes from a very studious jazz background at Berklee, where people may be concentrating too much on perfecting themselves and not focusing on what music is really meant for: playing with and for other people. So as Paul said, take all advice with a grain of salt and always use logic and common sense to figure out what advice is good for you!
The actual bad advice you reference: "ignore the technical side", "just practice by yourself and you will get better". The opposite of these is not "pay attention only to the technical side" and "always play with other people exclusively". It is "make sure you pay attention to the technical side" and "make sure you play with or for others often"... neither of which oppose each other.
@@PaulSpeed42 Yes, I agree with you. However, Adam Neely explicitly said "the worst advice I've ever been given is: if you practice long hours you will become good at music. I don't believe that". He explicitly said that practicing long hours will not make you good. I do believe that statement does contradict the statement "make sure to practice and study".
Of course, practicing and learning music theory does not at all contradict playing with and for others. However, I do not believe that these were the statements made in the video, hence my clarification in the comment. But thanks for pointing it out, it is a very important point. One should of course do both!
I’d like to counter this with the best musical advice ever given… by you! You did a video on the five things you would do if you could start from the beginning with guitar playing. The number one thing you listed was… Learn to play the piano. It was the beginning of the lockdown when I saw that video in 2020 and I did that very thing, went out and bought a piano. I’ve been a drummer my whole life and tinkered with guitar for the last 20 years and really struggled with theory. Once I got the piano all became clear instantly on how things work in musical theory. And being a drummer my whole life I already had the percussion thing down so it was just a matter of learning chords. Within just a month or two I wrote my first song on piano and now I don’t know how I ever did music before learning piano. Thank you! Best advice ever!
Definitely second this, the tuning scheme of the fretboard and the fact that none of the frets reveal which notes they contain without you memorizing them, makes guitar incredibly mysterious for most people because it's logic isn't intuitive, even though it can be picked up and strummed by anyone and felt out intuitively. Piano really helps you build skills that let you tackle the guitar how you want to because it's note layout is linear and transparent.
Thank you, Paul. You, Sir, brought tears to my eyes at the end of the video… There is not an absolute truth, listen a lot, then use what you need!
Awesome video Paul. Thank you so much for debunking these toxic attitudes towards music. It's so refreshing
This is one of the most informative, helpful videos, put in a easy to digest format, I have ever watched. Great job, Paul!
Adam Neely hit the nail right on the head. Playing with other musicians is a really great way to grow and improve. Especially in an era where so much music is just one person recoding in a small studio.
I love this “worst advice” question. Some of it applies to sooo many other aspects of life…
"Learn the basics first."
Nothing wrong with knowing the basics, but you can start anywhere. If you want to start with tapping with both hands on the guitar, go for it. I think motivation comes when you start to be able to play something you think sounds good. Then you want to learn more, including the basics.
My advice is: Make learning fun.
Right? Who cares if you don't develop as quickly or efficiently as possible. No one has that foresight. If you don't think you'll ever want to strum chords, why should you learn them? If you don't care about going fast, you don't need to.
100% I think the upper echelons of Guitarists (in terms of technique/skill) and especially ones who "Almost made it" are bitter about the sonic capabilities of those less technical but having fun. You need to believe in the music before you believe in yourself. The idea of validating yourself first through being able to 'hang' is an elitist myth, as old as time. If you are reading this while thinking 'ah that guitarist is shit' check your bitterness VU meter.
That is hardly a worst advice ever, actually is a pretty good advice. If that the worst you have ever gotten, shit, you have been adviced by the Olympus gods of music your whole life
@@rmv9194
Some people like the systematic approach, however, so it might not be the worst advice for everyone.
I had plenty of good advice when I was a kid, being taught by a very good trombone teacher. But the approach of "basics first" made it a bore for me, so I quit.
An advice that made me quit. That's bad.
Then I took up music again as an adult, and have spent thousands of hours practicing, jamming, and performing. I could play seriously difficult things before I knew the basics. When the next difficult thing required me to learn another basic skill, I learned that basic skill.
While so much of YT is the same old stuff Paul seems to always come up with some interesting and informative ideas. My good advice is to watch his videos.
Really good! Having those other camera angles during the interviews was a nice touch -legit brodda
This video felt like a 2 min video, never a dull moment great stuff
I was told by my grandfather (who was a huge jazz fan) that I would never make a great guitarist as my fingers were too short to play chords.
I still think subconsciously, that this still inhibits my playing. Though I am slowly progressing past that a step at a time.
I was 16 at the time he told me that. I am now 47 and played my first gig in my new band just last week.
I have played in several bands over the years and I am currently playing with some great musicians who push me to be better each time I play.
I have a passion for learning, writing and performing music.
It is a never ending journey that I love being on.
Thank you for this and all your other great videos!!!!
I've been playing guitar for 42 years, and I only about three years ago, I discovered the wonderful world of tone and dynamics, that you get when you turn down the guitar volume pot. All these years I'd always played with the volume pot up full... It has transformed my sound... I guess most guitarist discover this much earlier in their playing career..:)
The guy who sold me my 1st guitar told me: Volume pot always 100% up. I guess he was wrong.
Actually, no. Very few guitar players play with their fingers, use low output pickups, or turn down and vary their guitar volume! Congrats for figuring this out. Jimmy Page definitely did this ALOT!
No, most guitarists and bassists I know play with their volume on 10 all the time because they think turning their volume down causes tone suck(when it's really the opposite). I have been playing slightly longer than you at 46 years, but I had the advantage that my first guitar hero was my Uncle Bil, he showed me all his secrets; turn the guitar volume down, amp volume up, use dynamics in playing, how to induce feedback, finger tapping(2 years before Van Halen 1)playing slide, alternate tunings, etc... I forgot about my volume control on the guitar after so many years playing channel switching master volume amps(they didn't exist when I started playing) until I started playing Blues in the 1990's, THEN I remembered his advice!
That’s the BEST NAMM video I have seen for years.. with so many heroes (for 30secs). So inspiring!!
Hope one day I can bump into you at NAMM.. hope one day I can GO to NAMM. Dreams.. crafting them into reality. 🙏
i never really got any substantial advice, but my advice is: record yourself, listen to it and then decide, if it's good!
you like it? keep going. you don't? keep trying!
I’ll tell you my man…you’re truly special. I picked up the guitar after years of it being used as a clothes rack while raising my kid. Did the NY band scene in the ‘80’s & thought I’d give it another try for fun. You really provide great instruction but it’s that positive emotion you exhibit that keeps me pushing on. Thanks.
Paul, I think you nailed it in the outro, there might be advice good for one but bad for others. The importance is to be open to listen, but then also have the awareness to assess things you are told. Keeping that in mind, i think there can only be one bad advice: That is NO ADVICE!
8:34 I think the "no repeat" thing is something that might just come up after a while, because when I was young and in a metal band we also had a song where no chord progression ever repeated itself in the entire song. I have no recordings of this song, but I can tell you now that you know it as well as I do - which is not at all.
There's a German word that describes music with no repeated sections, durchkomponiert, which literally translates as through-composed, i.e. written all the way through.
Great video, good info. Not trying to be ironic but I've heard people be advised not to seek out private instruction because you can learn it all on YT. YT is a great resource (love your channel!) but can't beat a personal mentor that resonates with you.
Thanks Paul! Love you, and love your friends.
Cool video as always from Paul. 🙂
But man, I hate the look of headless guitars so much...
Sorry I missed you, I was there that Saturday, too, watching the 4:23 band also. Yes to so many of these comments are good, and hell yeah to 7:09 I am SO sick of sound guys saying "turn down" before you even play with the drums and bass. and 9:55 your advice about how to take advice is perfect
Absolutely fascinating Paul, and great to see so many guitarists I follow giving their opinion. Only missing Rick Beato and Laura Cox!
Worst advice I recieved was when I was asking a friend if he could show me a couple things when I was 16, and he said it was too hard and not to waste my time. So, I didn't.
At 19 I bought a guitar anyway, looked up chord charts online, committed to practicing and asked anyone who was willing to show me something new. It has turned into one of my best outlets, allowed me to communicate universally through music, and something that has remained constant 17 years later through all the changes in life.
Love your passion for guitar David keep up the great content!
When I told some family members I wanted to pick up the guitar they basicly told me it would be pointless since nobody in our family had a musical ear.
Nobody really discouraged me like that, but now that I put in some practice my family thinks I am naturally talented, lol. I assure you I'm not. I have gained so much pleasure from guitar over the years and 0 talent was required. Talent is overrated.
@@laurelrunlaurelrun talent is nonexistent. People use the word talent to justify their own inherit lack of skill in a field, attributing anybody who is able to learn efficiently or who is good as naturally gifted and that they could never be that because they arent naturally gifted. It just surves to downplay my achievements and my hard work, I hate when people attribute shit I have practiced painfully and forced myself to do slogging through clinically diagnosed depression as some kind of genetic fluke. Never listen to that shit because that stuff rubs off, those words become ingrained and soon you start to believe that you arent as lucky as the gilmours and hendrixes out there and it just makes you want to give up like all the small people that belittle anything you make of yourself
What a great video. Thanks for putting it together Paul and team!! ❤️
My high school music teacher played the Tuba. He told all of us passionate guitar players that “the guitar is not a real instrument”. He made us play our electric guitars at the end of year concert unplugged. Fuck that guy. Most of us went on to form successful metal bands. The previous music teacher who he replaced was great and even came to my first gig. I’m a teacher now and I would never do anything to discourage anyone from playing any instrument.
Ewww he sounds like a real loser. What kinda self respecting musician would call another instrument not a real instrument. Anything that can make music is a real instrument. Hell if you can make a recorder sound good then it’s a real instrument haha
I hate that attitude so much. Just because you don't like guitar doesn't mean it's not "real". Neither does the fact that it needs electricity and an amp
Great episode. Such an intelligent choice to just let the pieces of advice contradict each other here and there and let the viewer decide how to deal with that!
I watched Adam Neely's best guitar advice video and you and Mary Spender's cover on the mountains. It inspired me to write a song. Excellent content as always!!
More Great Content by Paul David’s. I don’t know how he does it, but mini guitar-based channels have come and gone the 10 years I’ve used the UA-cam platform. But Paul Davids Channel just seems to keep on producing. On an intellectual,technical, and emotional level, He entertains me and keeps me investing thank you
you gave yourself a lot more than 30 seconds, Paul ;) Great video as usual! Loved the first "worst advice": "You just need to feel it".
FANTASTIC segment. Especially your addition at the end.
I really enjoyed this video! Thanks for putting so much effort into making these epic vids. By the way that moveable pickup guitar is wild.
Great attitude and a great way to feature these other contributors to the craft.
Great video!
"Just quit". I followed that self-advice for 30yrs due to severe stage fright which I still suffer from, but not as bad (reason coming). Also convinced myself blues was dying and nobody wanted to listen to it anymore. Stopped playing altogether (I do blues organ & piano). Art of Guitar dude (Mike?) changed that as well with a video he made about stage fright. A few months back I reconnected with an old friend and drummer of the band at the time who went pro. He reinforced what ?Mike? had said. He also reinforced the "To get better, practice... but ALWAYS play with people better than you and your skills will rise quick." I still think I suck... yet the friend and anyone who's around when I smash a keyboard at a store clamor about my 'greatness'. Yeah... no, sorry... I'm no Jimmy Smith, Joey DeFrancesco, Pinetop Perkins, etc. Obviously still torn, but I can probably get on a stage now and still suck... pair of shades to hide behind might help. As far as guitar... I can do the C-D-G-Am-Em cowboy chords. Went neck deep when I picked it up 2 yrs ago and bought tons of guitars. Sold all but 2 (kept Gretsch Electromatic and Squier CV60 Jazzmaster (1st & 2nd I ever bought)) and kept the Fender Tone Master Twin Blonde as well as several pedals. Spent a lot of money on Fender Play when I started and paid for 2 yrs using it about 2 weeks total initially. I'll pick it up again... but still watch and enjoy Paul's videos as well as a lot of the people in the video who I respect.
Voltaire said: 'perfect' is the enemy of good. You're a musician. No more over-thinking - just do it.
I see everything, including music, as riding my bike, just get on it and freakin ride it. Focus on the wind and not get hit by a car, how u do it, how beautiful u do it, it matters not, just go and have some fun on the bike.
I'm happy to see these amazing stories from amazing people! It is motivating in many ways! Thank you!
Best advise my parents got was from my one and only piano teacher when I was 10-11 yrs old. About to move to another part of the country she told them not to waste money on another teacher because I would figure it out myself.
Worse Advice I absolutely abhor is when anyone tells me I suck at guitar, piano or anything I set my mind to ! Reason : I figured out that there are a thousand ways to pluck, groove and get into your craft and realize that since I hate plagiarizing others riffs, I would have to stand on the Island as a Tower of Light and make my own waves and enjoy each one as they come to shore. Hope this helps aspire your creative talents and explore the ability we all have but were told to limit the impossible and dream like a warrior !
1:06 As Picasso once said (probably in Spanish), "learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist".
Worst advice is probably "you don't need lessons". Utter, utter bollocks. *I* certainly could have done with some lessons much earlier.
Damn, PD!!! This is a GOAT video. 🐐 I’ve shared with all my younger friends and their kids. This isn’t music advice… it’s life advice. Thanks for working so hard to make this video happen. Truly epic my friend. BEDANKT!!!!!
At first I was a little shocked when Adam said lots of practice was bad advice, till he explained the rest about playing with others. I have to say I definitely concur. I have seen well educated musicians that have horrible time keeping, no ability blend harmonies(tuning), and a major lack of feeling the movement of the music (dynamics, tempo, expression). Until you play with others, you really don’t know how good (or bad) your personal practice is.
Nothing kills music like people who can't play in time together. Sloppy playing with a solid groove can get you much further than pristine playing with no groove.
I had an ear training professor that told us to clap with a metronome for 10 minutes a day. If you can hear the metronome, your timing is off. The slower the speed, the more difficult. He said after a few months you wouldn’t be able to play with your “musician” friends anymore because you’d notice how off their timing was. He could clap at 40bpm and you’d never know the metronome was on.
@@thestumblingchef3146 same thing can happen when laying down a drum track with a click, it's called "burying the click" :D
You're absolutely right, timing, harmony, and feeling are all crucial. Even without a band situation.
Thanks Paul. Love it. I was at NAMM 2022 and I wish had bumped into you and several/some of your buddies, it would have been a much better experience.
the one that hit the hardest for me was Sean Daniel's - "go all in, quit everything etc". Most of the people who've told me that aren't even musicians themselves lol
It’s superrrrrr cliche. Yeah go homeless, lose your house. It part of the “success” story
Unless you have a super supportive family and friends, being homeless and hungry with no insurance is a truly bad experience.
Also, if the bandmates are not serious about being at practice or gigs, you never get off the ground.
And location matters.
@@ewokwarrior2656 Even if the other band members are extremely serious, you can still get trapped in some bad situations by going all in. Captain Beefheart's Magic Band would be a prime example.
As a beginner/intermediate player, I took so much away from this video and am so happy you made this! Thank you to Paul and to everyone else for their great advice 🙏
The thing is, we're all sort of different so obviously we respond differently to different things.
I've heard all of that advice and so so much more over the last 40 years, and the thing is, I can think of certain people in particular that I've known that could use one of those bits of advice.
For instance, and this used to be beyond obvious; a lot of musicians need to learn when to turn down, especially us guitarists. I used to intentionally turn down to get the rest of the band to turn down just so they could hear me and the drums, because at a certain point it's so loud it's difficult to actually hear the different parts and the drummer is no longer able to play with as much finesse because they have to concentrate on playing louder and the mix just becomes a giant mess.
Unless you're in a huge venue where you need to mic the drums, play at the volume your drummer plays at naturally.
Note: Pete is so sonically aware that I don't dispute the issue he's run into though either. I've had sound guys say all sorts of different things to me. As as a recording engineer who has mixed live sound here and there, the reason they want him to turn down is valid. But as a guitarist, especially because I've played a lot of metal, I fully understand what Pete is saying too. What most people, including some guitarists, don't know is that guitar being on the edge of feedback is a _magical_ place.
Anyway, each of those *where appropriate* can be good advice. Other than _"give up, the guitar is dead."_ That's purely ego-maniacally spawned ignorance. Fools have been saying that about rock and roll since at least the 1960's. That really is the most ignorant musician advice I ever heard.
Here's my advice as a guitar instructor since the 1980's: have fun.
If you want to be good, make practicing fun. If you want to be really good, *also* make playing with other musicians fun. If you want to be great, *also* learn to love the audience and the audience will love you back. ^-^
Great topic Paul! Thank you for bringing all your colleagues together - that's why you are the best!
For me as a self-learner the worst advise was the one you find everywhere in cheap guitar books and articles in the internet: "Learn the chords, learn the popular picking patters, do the tabs - that's it". And I've got stuck in that loop for years, just learning tabs, not knowing a single note on my guitar lol. Only after changing my life-style and starting giving more time to my guitar and thinking more on the music I listen to, I'm now learning music theory on a 20 yo stage piano and practice notes and scales on guitar.
And the second one - the same level bad, maybe even more depressive in a time perspective was: "you don't that more expensive guitar, you're only starting". Bullshit, you gotta buy what you feel connection to, otherwise you're just holding a tool. I wanted a Cort cr 280 and there were none in my town. The nearest shop that had them was 3 hours drive in one direction. So this guy at our local music store gives me a different les-paulish guitar, but more flat, thinner, with different body proportions, and says it's not worse, it's just different and it's even a bit cheaper, but it's just as cool. So my mom who didn't fancy a drive and wanted to save some of our non-existent finances started supporting the man and I'd got the guitar I didn't really want. I never felt connected to it, it felt wrong to have it and I was only feeling cheated looking at it.
I would put the second one down to a matter of context.
In your case, wanting to spend a little extra for a Cort guitar would have definitely been worth it just for the difference in craftsmanship alone. Where I would consider stepping in is when someone turns their noses up at the Corts and Squiers of the world and insist on buying a $4,000+ brand name instrument as their "starter" guitar.
That's why I prefer to say "High end gear does not replace practice."
Both of those are great. For the second, I delayed purchasing a high-quality instrument for over 10 years, during which my enthusiasm for playing never waned, but I felt like I needed to get to the point where I was limited by the guitar before moving on, even though I could afford it. It's not terrible advice for a total novice, but upgrading has shifted my desire to play into an even higher gear. Sounding good, feeling good, looking good with style, perfect action, intonation, level frets, good controls, proper adjustability, great sounding tone from quality pickups and materials. The sense of pride and positive reinforcement from those 'extras' added up to what has probably been my single most productive year as a musician in terms of ability. Don't be a decadent gearhead dad that just collects expensive toys that sit in the case, but if you love to play, if your cheap guitar just continues to spark joy and you keep coming back to it instinctively over a couple years, and you can afford it, don't be intimidated to step up. It might take you to the next level.
See and I'm a self-taught guitarist who also spent considerable time learning to pick out specific instruments in a mix so I could learn songs by ear. It took me probably 3 guitar tabs to determine that I have 0 trust in the guitar community to tab anything correctly (have since come the the same conclusion about piano scores, since trying to learn a song or two on piano), and thus I gave up on tab and try to learn everything by ear. With that I also started writing, very much with a process of play notes and keep the ones that sound good. But recently I have been trying to think more about theory and scales and the like, not really from books or anything, just thinking about what notes or scales I'm playing when I play, and it has improved my ability to freestyle and the like.
In regard to guitars... I learned on my brother's guitar, but when he moved out, I immediately bought my own guitar that was such trash it really motivated me to buy something nicer. Because my parents weren't exactly well off, I knew I was going to be paying for it myself, so I went in to the local guitar store one day to try some guitars and decide what I was saving up for. I told the guy I was thinking PRS, and he showed me one that had been traded in not long before. I played it, loved the sound, loved the look, and it cost less than I had in savings, so I pulled the trigger and bought it. It spent several years as my only guitar before I went on something of a frenzy and bought something like 4 guitars in 3 years. Nowadays it's the cheapest electric guitar I own, but it has a special place in my heart due to those years where it was my only one. I'll probably never sell it.
I struggled under terrible music teachers of all kinds for years and then one day a good friend of mine posted that he had been hired as a guitar instructor; I knew from a distance that he was extremely good, and until then had basically just resolved to never bother him about music, because I had assumed that electric guitarists who are actually good have to regularly fight off fawning amateurs nerding out and trying to weasel into their bands..... 🤷♀️ However, when I saw his post, I decided to just start browsing inexpensive used guitars and IF the right instrument presented itself, I'd sign up for his class. Well..... Within 15 minutes at the first place I looked, it did. I've always been a visual artist, creative in a whole different field, and incredibly opinionated about how things are made-just meaning that the odds of liking what I found so quickly were extremely low. Finding the right starter instrument, practically just via an intuitive connection, something that made me excited just by picking it up, was critical to how I made my decision to even begin studying guitar at all.
Since then.... I've watched a lot of videos about how other musicians guitar-shop: the features they require, how guitars are manufactured, tonewood voodoo, etc.... And my conclusion is that it's really NO different from simply picking out a pair of shoes. 😆 You just gotta try a bunch on, see what's comfortable enough to walk a figurative journey of 10,000 miles in, and certainly self-image has a lot to do with it too, no matter what the snooty purist academic musicians say. I've had that guitar for eight years now, and even though I'm still crazy hard on myself musically (sad story about my instructor friend.... RIP 😭) at least I still love my instrument. I ended up putting metallic steampunk decals all over it, including quality false-inlay stickers on the fretboard..... As a convert from the visual arts, I practically couldn't help it. 😄 I've tried a few other guitars just to learn what the differences are, and still can't believe my luck. I even got a bass at one point, and so far my particular bass is the only one in the world that I actually like and connect with...and that too was a used cheapie. 🤷♀️ Personal selection really does count for a LOT-otherwise, it's like walking that figurative 10,000-mile journey in shoes that somebody else picked out for you!! 😟
Hell Yea, Paul is back this man has taught me more about playing guitar than just how to play chords. He inspired me to jeep looking for what I sounded like rather than trying to sound like someone else.
"Don't fret with the thumb, it is bad technique."
Maybe it isn't traditional technique, but bad? It opened up so many options in my playing! I still thumb-fret like a mofo.
Use all the techniques - that's what they're there for! The most musically liberating skill is not necessarily to master dozens of different techniques, but to learn as many as you can well enough and then master transitioning between them without breaking the musical flow.
Fretting with the thumb is the best advice
I've tried to but I still can't lol. I do pick with my pinky though
Thumbing the fret is the best technique , which dummy said that
@@greyarea1004 A classical guitarist. I understand if it is unorthodox in classical guitar but I wouldn't call it a bad technique for sure.
This is such an underrated video. Best advise is to HAVE FUN!
I don't think I ever got bad advice. People only advise from their own experiences. I wish I took people's advices more to heart. Especially, "don't rush" when making a release. I just wanted to get my music out there, that I rushed through my productions, and published them without letting them sit for a few weeks or months. Of course what happened was that I grew as a producer and could hear everything wrong with the production, while listening to it on vinyl or youtube. Now I take my sweet time.
The best advice I ever got was from my dad who said "you have not got a lick of rhythm in your whole body" Then he said "pat your foot". My dad was a pretty good guitar player. So I let my body enjoy rhythm by patting my foot or rocking my body, whatever I have to do or feel like doing, and my timing has gotten very good. and I love playing/experimenting with lots of rhythms. Not so hard.
The worst advice I ever got musically, was from my own wrong thinking. I kept hearing "you can't do that, its for good guitarists".
Now I learn whatever I want to learn and tell the intimidation to take a hike.
BTW, Thanks Paul Davids! You have been an inspiration. I'm thankful.
About 60 years ago my mother and I went to a music store to buy my first guitar. The salesman asked to see my hands and told me I didn't have the right shaped fingers for guitar and that I should consider piano. I'm 71 now and I play one of my 9 guitars every day for a couple of hours .... seek advice but listen to your heart.
a true hero
very interesting!! I have found it inspiring.
I had a music teacher who used to say something along the lines of "Practice makes perfect is the worst advice you can get or give. The truer statement is 'Practice makes permanent'. If you practice one technique and style, you'll end up only being good at that technique and style."
Even then, I was able to correct my right hand technique after 8 years of effing it up
So many of my fave UA-camrs here and a couple of new ones- thanks Paul
Worst advice is to stop playing
Soooo great to see all these folks I've come to follow on UA-cam over the last 10 years or so all there.. and although they all wouldn't know me from a bar of soap, I still think of everyone as some sort of friends.. Everyone shares their knowledge and ya, some is useful, some isn't.. but it's all relative and depends on your background.. and if you have the nouse to be able to integrate the info into what you already know... and can already do... y'just going to expand your skills and enjoyment of music.... Fanx! for seeking out all these great folks, Paul... and for posting the video. .....Many *hugggggs* to all from Oz... :))
Argghh... too slow she cried..
Worst advice I got was from myself, at age 18, when I first started playing electric guitar after playing exclusively acoustic fingerpicking and flat picking for 6 years. Of course I was terrible on electric at first (it didn’t help that my 1st electric guitar was terrible). I told myself I was not cut out to be an electric player and should go back to playing acoustic only. Luckily, I didn’t listen to myself.
I think you would have known to throw that advice overboard the moment you got a _good_ electric guitar in your hands, running through a good amp.
Buy this and that gear to sound like that and this!
It took ages to sound like me, you have to find yourself, then you sound like your heros more honest than with just the right gear. We are all unique and that is the beauty in it! 🤘🏽
Awesome channel, thx Paul!
I think the worst advice is to give up on your dreams. It’s best to have tried something and failed than to stick to the ‘safe’ options.
I really love watching these kind of videos, because while growing up all my life I've been told by my family and friends that I can't make a living doing what I like, i.e. playing guitar and making music. Against everybody's advice I saved up money as a 13 year old and bought a crappy knock-off strat and started practicing even without an amp and completely self-taught. I then enrolled to college, and later university, and graduated with Audio Production degree. While studying the technical side of music production, I was also writing and producing my own songs, playing guitar in a small band, and getting much better at it (we even did a few Hendrix covers as I could play a lot of his songs even in my late teens). Was also collecting gear over many years, got a really good Marshal head and cab, managed to slowly acquire a decent collection of pedals, and even saved up money for an expensive Fender American Deluxe Strat in natural ash body (it was FSR, so has long been discontinued since then). I also built a small home studio, nothing fancy, but I had all the essentials, a DAW, a pair of decent monitors, an interface, a few dynamic and condenser mics, stands, cables and so on. I was working part time as a freelance sound engineer and some of the gigs we played were also paid but that wasn't nearly enough to live off.
So this was all while living at my parents', who constantly kept reminding me that I'm putting money into music and getting nothing out of it. At 24 I had to move out because of the constant pressure from them to "get a real job" and I just couldn't take any more fighting. And a year later I guess some sort of switch went off in my head and I realised that everyone was right, pursuing career in music just isn't working out. Whatever I tried to do, it wasn't paying the bills. I was struggling financially, so I gave up. Sold ALL my gear to pay some debts (I still get chest pains every time I think about how I sold my American limited edition strat + 6 other guitars, my amazing amp and pedals etc.)
So I did get a "real" job and now 6 years later I'm 31 and I'm absolutely regretting that decision. I am literally dying on the inside a little bit every day I have to go to my "NORMAL" job, live from payday to payday, have no passion or interests in life. I stopped socialising (covid didn't help), played videogames every time I wasn't at work just to escape reality, and started developing depression and maybe some sort of early mid-life crisis or something. And all I could remember is the last time I was truly happy was when I was playing guitar, jamming with my band, writing music, and staying up all night mixing a track we just recorded.
So a couple of months ago I used all my savings and bought a strat, an audio interface, a pair of half-decent monitors (HS-7s), a cheap 1x12 combo practice amp, a multi-FX pedal board, and I'm trying to get back into music. Unfortunately after nearly 7 years of not doing anything music related, I have to re-learn most of it - how to play guitar, how to record, mix etc. And I keep feeling like maybe it's too late now, I lost a lot of valuable time and if I didn't give up that day, I could've been closer to my dream job or possibly even made it big with my band. Which brings me back to my original point - I LOVE these kind of videos because they motivate me to practice, write and produce music again, and pursue my passion in life.
Sorry for the wall of text, that's like literally my life story in this one comment. Thanks for making videos to motivate people like me to do what we love.
NOTE: I am a 99% of the time a finger style player.
Worst advice I ever got: "Play whatever you want with your right hand (plucking/picking), it's the chord that matters. Always improvise what you are picking". That was a lie because I got really comfortable "doing whatever I want", but it took me months and months and months to be able to play Travis picking. Learning songs by really trying to play exactly as in the records was also very complicated for a while. Today I have (almost) full control of my plucking hand but I believe that advice held me back for at least 5 years.
omg so much this. I sort of woodshedded for a winter focusing on my right hand, and it massively improved my technique. There's so much you can do!
You make wonderful videos. With an emphasis on wonder. I wish there were better words for the warmth that I feel watching you with all these fantastic people.
“Just feel it”, drives me up a wall. How can you tell a beginner to just feel the music? 😂
Or even an advanced , lets say contry player, that one learn about smth else, instead of teaching him what he needs to know, "just feel this harmony bro" *insert sophisticated jazz chords*
Hey Paul, it was a pleasure to meet you there and spend a couple minutes chatting, you were by far the nicest guy from big youtube channels! Keep it like that
"Learn to play right-handed" is another one.
If you feel natural playing left-handed, learning to play guitar or bass right-handed will discourage you from progressing in your musical journey.
It’s a sliding scale. Teaching a public school class I started everyone right handed, because it was equally awkward, and I was rescuing them from a lifetime of paying $200 extra and not being able to find the guitar they want.
That said, if a kid showed up with some experience already playing lefty, I didn’t try to convert them to playing right handed. Changing the habits that they already had was not a hill I was going to die on.
Unless you take your guitar with you everywhere you go you will regret playing left-handed...
Playing left saves you tons of money. No impulse purchases, you will not feel the need to travel to NAMM, since there are no leftie guitars there. Play left. Realistically, you only need 2 guitars, the rest are wants...
@James Fox @Gordon Roberts
That's why us lefties learn how to play with the strings "reversed", so we can walk into a guitar store or a friend's house without completely losing our ability to play the instrument.
In fact, some lefties like Dick Dale and Albert King actually prefer to play with the high E closest to their face.
@@bymbie I never thought of it that way 😂
I had an excellent guitar teacher growing up. He basically started with me just picking the music and the songs I like and then while learning those songs have all the theory come later. Theory can be boring especially to a beginner, so having me build interest and enjoyment into playing the guitar first helped me in the long run. 14 years later I thought, "I don't really know any music theory", so I started finding music theory lessons on youtube, only to realize , I actually knew a lot of music theory, I just never had the feeling that I was learning theory.