Instagram guitarists are lying to you...
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- In this video we discuss internet guitarists that fake their guitar playing skills and the magic tricks they use to fool their fans!
If you'd like to hear my mixes, my website is byjacobhansen.com
Instagram: @JacobraCommander
My band: Dark Watch
Business Email: JacobraHansen@gmail.com
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Now do vocalists.
I did 2 weeks ago, but for some reason the video hasn't hit the algorithm
NO WE MUST HAVE MAYONAISE NEXT
Trust me the problem isnt as prevalent, and were used to singers doing a few takes and editing their vocals and using things like auto tune
It's rampant. It's so rare these days to find a "live" vocal on IG/TT/YT and it NOT be edited in post. There are so many BS videos of people sitting around casually at a mic at their desk in their pajamas, singing, and it's completely pitch corrected and cleaned up. It's become the standard, unfortunately. "Everyone else is doing it, so I have to as well...".
Fil from Wings of Pegasus has already cornered that market
Man makes video to combat fake guitar playing while ironically educating an entire new wave of players on how exactly to do it
Don't do meth; anyway here's how you make meth.
if everyone learn how to do it and suddenly everyone becomes a guitar god in IG it will be clear that it is all fake, so I think it is a way of accomplishing the objective 😅
so go do it
NEWSFLASH: Editing and/or recording at lower BPM isn't a secret.
@@user-te3qq1rb7u Because then they'll know exactly what not to do
Honestly, I needed to see this. For a long time, my cop-out to not making something I really believed in was “Everyone else is so far away from me with their extreme levels of talent, there’s nothing I can add to music.”
Well, turns out there’s something I CAN add: authenticity. Thank goodness
Same brother! Technology cannot play us out! Practice,practice, practice!
This is good
I feel this.
I can’t do that. But I can poop. Really powerfully.
Agreed, and also *style* which can't really be faked (although it can be copied) The problem, though--as I mentioned in my own comment--is that the majority of the public is too stupid to value authenticity and style--they *want* homogenized crap. Which has been true for a long time, but it's only getting worse with the rise of social media crap.
Everybody wanna be Guthrie Govan, nobody wanna practice.
I don’t wanna be him and I practice that
@@EOHRyan Guthrie vs Ronnie, who is more powerful?
tbh very few people could practice enough to be guthrie govan
I don't wanna be him. Great but boring.
@@RotterStudios Each to their own but I gotta say your the only person I have ever heard of to call GG's playing "boring" lol. His style isn't my preferred taste, but watching and hearing him play is nothing short of extraordinary. He is respected by all of the greats for a reason. What do you think of Alan Holdsworth?
On point, agree 100%. All the greatest musicians in history make noises and mistakes when they play. It's a sad trend that people in social media think they need to sound perfect when the real greats never did. That was never the point to begin with.
This is just the reality of digital media. Even if people aren’t faking it, you are seeing the absolute best specialists in the world that sacrificed everything else in thier life to maximize this one thing. The sacrifice is never acknowledged.
Do you think Tim Henson could change the toilet in his house if he needed to? It’s not a hard thing to do but it’s most likely that he can’t do much besides be one of the worlds best guitarists. It’s a silly example but what else has he sacrificed in order to devote his life to being a guitar god? Normal people don’t want to specialize that much even if they could achieve that level of ability.
Also the singer from Periphery has said that he screams differently live compared to the album. Because the album gets immortalized he wants it to be his best performance. But those vocals would beat him up on tour so he has to prioritize the ability to play another show in a few days. So he holds back.
So you’re basically gonna get the best in the world giving those best performance possible, or people using tech to elevate themselves beyond what the best in the world could possibly do. That’s the internet. Nobody wants sloppy performances to be recorded. It’s not the nature of the media.
Plot twist...this whole video and audio was recorded at 85% speed and sped up in post to look more impressive too
😆
I typed this reply at 85% and sped it up so it reads faster.
Actually, listening to him talk, I think he forgot to speed it back up to 100%
I typed this reply at 100% and slowed it down so it reads slower for you.
@@ironsaint bless
I'm a jazz musician so I'm not sure how I ended up here, but if any of us did these editing tricks I don't think they'd ever, ever live it down. Especially if they lied about it. Great topic and video
I tell students all the time they're fake, this video just shows you exactly how they do it
Thats because there aren't many morons that listen to jazz. Seems only the intellectually inept are comfortable with being lied to.
That's true. A jazz poser would be a huge laughing stock 😂
@@geargeeks8955they? As in all of them? Do you think every video of someone playing guitar online is fake?
You’re here because you clicked on the exact same video as everyone else here.
I don’t think genre should matter here, being a faker shouldn’t be acceptable in any genre of music.
Careful! These instagram perfectionists will start to add imperfections in their DAWs after your video 😅
P.S. I love I Declare War!
that's why I love when guitarists upload their raw and no processed camera audio recordings, where you can hear the picking and even the pickup switches and stuff.
The irony is that those recordings are usually received a lot better. Live versions of songs are becoming a lot more popular recently, I think people are starting to get tired of over polished music that has no soul.
This needs to be talked about more... Many people feel discouraged after not being able to replicate such 'perfection'
This is a great video and I really appreciate how calm you are and that you don't do the typical UA-cam voice.
Nice to see people starting to catch on and actually see the problem with it.. totally appreciate your video!
About a decade ago people would catch hell for pulling these kind of grifts, ie Rings of Saturn, now people are so gullible they praise the skill in obvious fake sped up videos. If you try to point it out everyone claims toxic negativity. It's so depressing.
Everybody trynna be Rusty, nobody wants to practice it.
Rings of saturn is legit tho@@floydhopkins7901
Rusty is a real one 🙌🏼
One of the greatest ever!
Bro this gives me peace because I was truly feeling talentless for awhile seeing how many people knowing how to tap and play guitar on time THAT WELL. Like everybody was all of a sudden Van Halen with a jazz twist. Thank you for showing me the internet is wrong again.
I've been feeling talentless since the late 90s lol. Don't worry about it. Just play what you can, and find joy in the creation process.
I really hope every aspiring guitarist comes across this video on their journey someday.
It’s always been super obvious that it’s all fake, and I’m soooo tired of people trying to convince me it’s real. You see these guys try to play live at a NAMM booth and it’s a joke 🙄 the whole music scene has just become fake perfect baloney. Be a human musician. It’s way cooler
the brrr deng style they go for is already soulless, and even less djenty hype guitarrists fall for "all technique, zero merit"
Sometimes I make the comparison of how much goes into making Porn
@@trveheimer6360
I hear you. That nonsense grinds my gears too.
I’ve heard some plain-jane hardcore guitarists with no squiddly-diddlys who’s jams are LEAGUES above most of these soulless wannabe prog machines.
Everyone just wants to show off some impressive technique nowadays instead of just writing riffs that kill.
sophie burrell is one of the legit people
@@Celatra
I’m unfamiliar with her, but there are indeed legit guitarists that are all about the chops. Not all of em are phony or make soulless trash.
It can be very frustrating to try to build an audience for yourself as a guitarist when you're constantly seeing fake videos get all the attention and success... I wouldn't feel right if I ever uploaded a video like that.
why not it's just a glorified music video
@ There are no rules in art, so people can do what they want. But still, when someone posts a video that is just guitar playing, most people will assume what they are seeing is also what they are hearing. The line between music video and performance video can be blurry, but a lot of these videos are portrayed as performances.
I think the point in the video is good. It sets an insanely high standard, and a lot of people will think what they hear is what they see.
It also takes away attention from guitarists who deserve it more, at least if we’re talking about the skill level. (I’m not saying I’m one of them, I’m not really that good, but there are plenty of legit players out there who don’t need to mime, edit, or speed up their playing that deserve more attention. In my opinion, of course. )
But it seems to be a situation that affects all sorts of fields on social media where everyone is competing over getting as much traffic as possible. But I guess with art, people are free to do whatever they want, but I think it’s good that people are aware of this stuff.
@@gitarmats the problem is we live in a video world. You can’t just post the song up with an album art. That won’t cut it anymore. You need a visual. Even legitimate guitarists from big bands do this. Misha, Rabea, Intervals, Tosin and etc have been doing these types of videos before reels and tik tok have been a thing. I think it’s not right to pin this as the fault of instagram guitarists.
At the end of the day music also has a showmanship aspect. That’s why when we watch shows we love it when the drummer spins his sticks or a guitarist does a a guitar flip.
Sorry in the music scene / in the world, it doesn’t matter who is more deserving. It’s all about who is hustling and working hard. Hate all you want in the instagram guitarist, but they are consistently putting out content. It may be edited, not all of them are as exaggerated as this video. They still took the time to write the guitar solos. They took the time to light and do the video
It hurts.
@@gitarmats It's not the art or artistic performance that is the problem--it is lying about it and presenting lies as reality (which is a problem across the board, not just guitar videos)
the part about "unreachable standards" and "online persona perfectionism" is just true as fuck honestly and applies to all social media in general regardless of genre
Hold my beer...
...Matteo Mancuso.
@@Rainbow-Chicken but how will you do that trickery on stage, you can't fake it then...
@@paultaylor1812 But will Matteo Mancuso be the soundtrack of someones life in 20 years from now? Will some dude whisper in his girlfriends ears when they hear a Mancuso tune: "Darling, they're playing our song"? I doubt it.
Sure, he's an amazing player, but his music doesn't touch me at all. This music isn't made to leave a lasting impression on generations for the next couple of decades, it's made to impress people on the spot, so they click the "like" button. After that it's gets old rather quickly.
@@Patbwoy This is cope. Having more talent doesn't mean he doesn't have "feel" or whatever nonsense you're trying to push. Technique and feel go hand in hand. You don't need all the technique to have a great sense of feel but to say Matteo doesn't make moving music just comes across as seething jealousy.
@@Del_987 Your opinion, my opinion.You like it, I don't. No reason for stupid ad-hominem accusations, don't you think?
But hey, being able to handle different opinions seems to be a dying skill set.
In today's deceitful world, being real already means being a hero. Very relevant video, thank you
It's not just social media, listen to the albums too. The production is so prim and perfect nowadays but go back and listen to your favorite albums from anything earlier than like 2010 (or something, idk, you get what I'm driving at) and you'll really hear how charmingly imperfect they were, and realize how much they still rip regardless.
Spot on with that time frame.
Except Steely Dan ;) They achieved perfection in the 1970s, but they did it the hard way
It actually makes me appreciate how insanely good people like Yngwie and Batio were/are. Back in the day it was completely normal to miss notes.
I consider Periphery's first album from 2010 to be the beginning of all of this.
Agree. I used to watch a lot of youtube til the 2010s as a self taught player. Almost all the guitar covers were genuine. One take, filmed with a digicam or primitive smartphone. Now everybody is just faking stuff. We even have a facebook page in the Philipines where people can share report and shame fake guitar players and content theives in social media
This video is the message that needs to be sent and read. For years I was struggling to record a guitar song, because I felt pressured that it must be perfect in every way, edited as tight as possible. Seeing guitar players rise to fame with their impossible to play guitar content (even for them) was very painful for me as a guitar player. Everytime I play a song I take at least 3-5 days to learn it by practicing 6-8h a day. Of course I edit some minor stuff to make it better, but never to the point of playing it slower and stitching it up. Lol, sometimes I even leave minor mistakes just for the sake of it. It's great to hear that I'm not the only one who hears this... thing.
Btw, I always write my songs in a way that's possible to play for me when standing up (yeah, playing when standing and sitting are like two different ways of playing). Been gigging for the last 8 years and the one thing you know is to NOT WRITE IMPOSSIBLE RIFFS, because one day you will have to play them live.
Yeah, the online world is very different to the real one. IMHO an average person doesn’t care about one’s musical prowess and just wants to be entertained, listen to something they relate to or something that is familiar. And guess who the audience consist of - yeah, regular folks not studio musicians that check if every note is true to the grid.
I had a similar experience to yours and tbh it’s hard to believe that you struggled given the fact that your channel is so popular right now.
Thanks for sharing your comment, it helped me a lot.
I think it’s really important for up and coming players to be aware of this. Realizing that things are mimed and edited was one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome.
Recently getting back into serious practising again, I've only just started to learn this. It seemed that the amount of elite tier players with 0 mistakes and insane creativity and skill was endless nowadays, seems I was wrong. It's actually somewhat comforting lol.
Holy yisus, I’ve been playing for 17 years and never imagined this. I used to hear a lot of complains about ig guitarists, but never thought this was the technique they were referring to. You just opened my eyes lol, I recently made a prog metal video and it was such a pain in the ass to record the guitars without screwing it. I really thought those DI audio videos were real lol
The video portion of your edit is where I noticed the fake. The blur in the hands gave it away. Great video. I agree with your sentiment.
God I'm so glad this video is blowing up. I've been seeing that kid in my feed constantly. And it's like you said, he's clearly a PHENOMENAL guitarist.... but the videos are clearly edited to anyone who can actually play. But you can't explain that to some people without sounding "jealous" or "crazy", and it's like dude... I just wanna see people showing their talent off *authentically*.
LOL fr the people that don't play guitar will get all up in arms telling you it's real when it's so so so obviously fake to anyone that actually plays. I really could not care less if you want to speed up the playing, the point is to make music. But pretending it's real is so fucking embarrassing.
@@basilisktheory7781 that kid has 40 different videos all with the same audio file 😳 i wanna see them play for more than 12 second clips… that berried alive guy’s albums are straight shit lmao except for a few seconds of this “dubstep style editing” that they do. Which is fine and cool sometimes- but the trying to hard to be cool with what are essentially dance videos so they should be made fun of for sure. Always hear tone changes fx wah harmony etc but will never see them use a footswitch hahaha
I go live every week and cut clips direct from the recording yet some people think I’m fake. With the rise of AI and all these special plugins, it certainly makes it harder to tell. This was a very interesting video and I thank you for it! Hopefully, it will help people understand what is real and what is not!
Great video.
A dead giveaway for me always was not muting the strings they are not playing and every note is crystal clear. One of those Instagram famous guitarists has a video where his fingers are in the air and notes are being played, as soon as I saw that it was enough for me to unfollow him. Needles to mention that he NEVER mutes the bass strings while he is playing on treble strings and it sounds perfect.
Thanks for this video. What irks me about the Instagram guitarist comes in the form of an “instructor” shamming us intermediate guitarist into taking his/her course. To “ “get to the next level.” I didn’t actually start progressing until I accepted that I can make OK to good music at the level I was at. Anyway, thanks again.
Preach
Shaggy
Ned from spiderman
Mike Dawes I love your stuff!!
bru
THANK YOU for calling this junk out dude!
I've always thought that the mistakes in a recording are what make it human, special and unique. For me, its the slight imperfections that make music perfect. Great video!
Internet guitarists are too obsessed with perfection, Every time I meet or get to jam with a touring guitarist, They seem to make more micro mistakes IE chords where one note is slightly muted or things like that, But they're just better musicians than the guys obsessed with perfection
The "slight imperfections" are your signature style and what makes you unique. Giving that away via editing is taking away what people truly want.
@@DangleSan Well said!
All the chickens come home to roost when internet guitarist have to play live or jamming.
There surely can be perfect solos. I think you can absolutely make a point that a professional musician wants to at least try to reach perfection and many do. But not at the cost of authenticity. They practice until they get it right and can do it on the spot. Not by editing until they achieve something they could never play themselves.
Dime has a good quote saying that raw stuff that makes you cringe. Is what others can’t get enough of.
This is just incredible, super respectful breakdown of the truth behind insta vids
YES! and please make a video calling out the backing track stuff, it drives me nuts.
Also Dark Watch is great!
You're the goat. Only real reason I can cut right through the bullshit is literally 8 years jazz school in guitar and over 10 live experience. That was an amazing video, thank youu for bringing light to this. Respect for the craft
One of my music teachers once said "we live in a world of musical fiction" and this is a great example of how it's evolving 😂
Great video man. It's crazy how guitar playing has changed since I was like 13 (i'm 33 this year). The expectations have changed, but also what people actually like, or at least - what get's famous or popular is so differnet. I guess it isn't what people like really, it's more what gets clicks etc.
0:57 all of sudden feel better about myself 😆
😂 Not Alone
Haha, I really felt this same vibe learning harsh vocals and trying to match certain overproduced, layered stuff was so confusing
Tim h
@@Josh-thixxneuron oh yeah even truer with vocals haha
@ yeah dude exactly. I record myself. Sounds like shit. Add 2-3 layers, some reverb and compression. "Hey this aint so bad all of a sudden"
Subbed. As a solo writing/recording guitarist I do strive to make my music as close to perfection as possible, but I recognize I’d never replicate it perfectly in a live situation. I like to keep occasional smaller mess ups in my music because that’s just real life.
Just some fun trivia on the other hand: Mike Malyan (drummer of Monuments) didn't know the first Periphery songs had programmed drums, so he pushed himself and practiced really hard to achieve that level of consistency, which is stupidly inspiring!
I don't know why this isn't the consensus.
If perfection sounds good to you, then strive for it. Don't settle for less because you heard there was some smoke and mirrors to get there. If it isn't impossible, then it's possible.
My buddy Leo in Psycho-Frame did the same thing but with Infant Annihilator drums… he thought they were real and pushed himself to play that fast and now he’s absolutely cracked
@@seanedwards94I am an extremely mediocre guitarist that records his own music. I have a better ear than I do talent for guitar, and it's been a process to accept that I will not sound as perfect as I'd like to
@@subularrenoIt comes down to work ethic. The great Eloy Casagrande claims talent is meaningless because if you devote all your life to the craft, at some point it'll be impossible to discern who's talented and who isn't. This is very common among children of musicians who were shaped for greatness from an early age, but it can also be achieved by obsessive practice.
@@JacobraRecordsArt Tatum supposedly learned four-hand pieces as if they were written for two, the rest is history.
This is true. Focus on writing good music, more than shredding. Everyone wants to shred. But there’s nothing more rewarding than writing a song with your band and seeing people dig it when you play it live
I’ve been trying to tell my students this for years. I am going to share this vid with many of them. Thank you for the detailed explanation!
Really cool break down, thanks you for sharing!
Solid video dude. I've been pondering around the idea of making a similar video myself but looks like you beat me to it.
I've been editing videos for over a decade, and been doing studio work for around 7 years. When you've invested enough time into a craft, you're conditioned to see and hear things that the average person probably won't ever pick up on unless it's pointed out to them, and so these kinds of videos have never made it past me. And as you become more skilled, you also become more able to deduce certain... things, and figure out which methods work to accomplish said things. Nonetheless, I've only seen a few of these "faked" (not mimed, faked) videos, but the fact that they even exist is honestly disheartening. What's even worse is that these people are actually great players too. It's the whole doubling down, and then posting a raw DI + raw camera audio clip that does it for me (which, mind you, ends up being a mimed video of a pre-recorded camera audio clip of a perfectly edited DI and then replaced in post). At that point, you've basically thrown away all your integrity, and in my opinion is 100x worse than just saying you mimed over something that was solely produced to grab eyes.
Even with miming videos, you can easily tell if a person is probably able to play it just based off of how their fretting hand looks, and if they're miming articulations synonymously with the recorded track. I'm not against miming. I've done it. Everybody does it. Your favorite musicians do it in playthroughs, music videos, etc. It saves a lot of time when filming because you're not starting from scratch if you mess up, and if done right, your video looks a little prettier.
At the end of the day, just like you've said in the video, it all boils down to morals and integrity. If you produced an original cover from the bottom up, or even just do a cover with double tracked guitars, I'll never ding points from you if you don't have a live recorded track in your showcased playthrough because that's not the expectation. At that point I'm just there to enjoy your video. Though, if you're doing a one-take playthrough or in this case, doubling down on accusations, that sets the expectation that what you put out is going to be aligned with what you claimed. If it's not, you've just shot yourself in the foot.
Anyways great vid and earned a sub, sorry for the essay LOLOLOLOL.
I used to make bass cover videos, and would always use real "perfect" takes. It usually took me like 4 hours to learn the song note for note, and record a perfect take. Some songs, I had to come back a few days later after really understanding the groove. Some I couldn't even play and still can't.
I quickly realized everybody was miming. And I decided that it was a pointless endeavour and just stopped.
David Caraccio, the OG youtube bass player, always recorded his stuff 100% live, and it shows: he's now so good it doesn't matter if he's not edited.
amazing quality n transparent :) clarity is key :) Fantastic Video
because this I'm afraid to upload my sloppy playing and my mistakes in my covers
@@SerienChiller86 look at how many people commented in agreement, none of us are perfect and admire playing even with imperfections!
I think it means you should post it even more🎉🎉
sloppy and playing bad are different things. in 70's are many legends and they were noisy, and most of us started playing guitar because of them and not because of current circus machines.
I'm in the exact same boat writing an album right now and refuse to post things online because of all these people. Feels terrible right now.
The hardest but best thing you can do for yourself if you wanna make music, is not give much of a shit about the people who don't like it, they will always exist, and always have to voice their opinion, but screw em. 👍
I needed this video, man. I've been playing guitar for 28 years, but I'm too scared to post anything because everyone on the internet is so perfect, and their viewers are so vicious. I literally only posted ONE video in my lifetime on UA-cam.
This video has inspired me, and makes me want to at least TRY to put myself and my music out there. Thank you so much for your insight, and inspiration!
Literally was going to make a guitar based channel just to call this stuff out and break everything down like you did here. You did it better than I would have. Out here doing god's work sir.
Lol he said literally
@@ImperialCityNord Literally, literally
I don't understand this obsession with pristine playing. I guess it's the guitar version of instafilters and angles for girls.
The great guitar players are great because of how human and imperfect their sound is. I'd rather listen to Yngwie's raw, emotion-filled shred over anything I see these days on Instagram.
It's ok to not play perfectly as long as you do keep time really well... I think though, that to perform the complex playing that they do whilst keeping time is just too hard.
@@Obi-WanKannabis Yngwie, BB King, Clapton are just a few examples of players with a loose approach to rhythm.
Tim effing Henson. He'll get found out soon enough.
Guitar hero made everyone want to play perfect lol
@@tussk. I dunno - he's a goober but I have seen Polyphia live and they were very clean.
loved this. humor included. nice one. Friday Fretworks guy, forgot his name right now, published a video with the same message, just not about editing, but perfection at the first take, showing how he shoots more than 50 tries of the same video before deciding to go with it for his instagram. Which before him, few had "confessed" it.
Great video, as a composer I agree with you 100%. Seeing all that "perfection" and obsession with technical skills on social media can be discouraging. Music creation is supposed to be fun and a way for artistic expression, playing complex and fast elements serve a role but it should be a tool, not the goal. Art should be a journey not a competition.
I remember in the 80's and the shredder era...at least the old shredders had musicality. Now they just take the technical part and completely left the musicality part. It's impressive for like 5 secs then you to forget them in a split second since it's kinda boring and uninteresting. It's a rat race of technicality without soul. Those people will get replaced by AI since they already sounds like a machine.
Amen, bro. I came to comment more or less the same. 90% or more of that stuff is useless in a band context, where the main task is embellishing a music piece, whether with or without vocals. Take a listen to the old prog bands (Yes, ELP, Genesis, Camel, Focus, Kansas, Rush, etc), they played chromatic stuff in complex metrics and even so they were able to retain a lot of musicality intact on it!
sounds like more mindless emotional nostalgic gibberish disguised as critique but ok buddy.
you do realize you can hear the exact same complaints when eddie van halen started tapping yes? "soulless" and "all technique" were some of the exact words they used lol. hell even tony Iomi used the exact same words when talking about malmsteen. the music of todays far better guitarists is just above your taste old man, its ok to say you just dont like it out of pure nostalgic bias and moving on. you are no different than the critics of old.
@flamingmanure Tony Iommi never said that, Wikipedia boy.....
@flamingmanure Except EVH didn't sound like a robot and could actually write good music. The "far better guitarists of today" can't even play live music and if they do, they aren't as good live as their albums because they can't actually play that well. Their songs definitely aren't as good as the guitarists of the 80s. Do you know why people are such big fans of bands from the 80s and 90s? It's not nostalgia.
@@flamingmanuresounds like somebody touched wittle babys nerve, huh? Are you going to cry, buddy? Theres been phenomenal guitarists in every generation. No one was “far better” at any point in time. Im not saying shred from yesteryear is inherently better but you certainly didnt see eddie van halen or malmsteen faking live guitar for clicks. No you just saw them play live at shows where they crushed it. I bet half the guitarists you follow have never played a live show and the ones that have do it with a laptop and backing tracks. Touch grass, little guy.
Thanks for posting this. This made me feel better about where I am.
I’m starting to get into making content and my playing is never as clean as some of these IG guitarists. I was starting to think I must be doing it wrong. Or that I’d never be solid enough of a player.
I grew up playing in punk bands with very limited/non existent budgets. Everything had to be recorded and mixed quickly. Our drummer would often take the tracks home and make mixes in his own time, but that all ended in 2014 for me.
I’m starting my new career trying to do it with authenticity. Where I try to play cool and original stuff, but without editing out the mistakes.
I have just been doing a Twitch stream late at night, usually to nobody, and then make clips of my best takes.
I get practically no engagement, but I’m still experimenting. Also I think I’m shadow banned, or have some kind of limited visibility. I get very few views.
Still, I subscribed to your channel because you seem to have some real world experience and I think I can learn something from you. Keep up the good work!
I love how this topic comes up every few years or so
and its mostly brainles nostalgia bias and old man lawn syndrome.
This is a pleasant and well made video that straddles two genres that are already getting really tired: “bait the UA-cam algorithm by throwing shade at Instagram guitarists” and “expose musician X for editing their technical wizardry videos”. And yes, I realize that by watching the whole thing and commenting that I’m part of the problem.
When guitar players looked up to Jimmi Hendrix there was no way to fake it
This is why I miss the days of guitars and amps. Not only do you not have the ability to mask stuff, it makes you practice and play cleaner and you can really hear imperfections. I've been playing for 25 years and the amount of masking that goes on is insane now. Also, seing bands is less of a show these days and more based on how complicated something can be made. I wanna go see a band who are having fun with what they've written and not just and evening of pure concentration looking down at their hands all night. Really good video dude ❤
This is a clip that every casual music fan should see, great video👏
Loving the approach of this vid. More than proving fake or real videos, I like the "I assume the suspension of disbelief, but don't try to explain it or justify it"
It's difficult to hear the differences between the edited and real tracks tbh, i just catch the fake videos with the "open ringing string" or maybe some weird vibrato that doesn't match the sound. I like to see videos with imperfections and i'm glad more people are sharing more organic material :) thanks for making this video man!
Nice video man, as a guitarrist I really appreciate your knowledge and advice, and specially nowadays when everyone is trying to play perfect takes all over the social media.
It was about time someone said it. I hope this video gets 100 million views!!!
Too many “famous” guitarists post videos of things they can’t even PRETEND to play, resorting to subtly speeding up the footage-just a little bit, to make it feasible. That 10-15% makes it nearly undetectable but turns something fairly difficult into something absolutely impossible for any human to play. And yet, they build careers on this illusion.
The real disappointment sets in when you see them live. In situations where they can’t fake it, they suddenly play slowed-down acoustic versions of their clips or completely different material-playing like humans for a change. When busted, their invested fans even defend them, saying: “Well, it’s just a 15% speed-up; they need to put out a lot of videos to maintain their schedule.”
No, it’s not a harmless shortcut. It’s deception. It’s a lie. It’s unjust and immoral. It ruins the guitar scene for everyone involved. It makes practicing to play virtuosic guitar parts absolutely depressing, because you can spend four hours a day for a month to make a video that’s still less impressive than one done in two hours and sped up just a little bit.
Imagine a great runner-someone who can run 100 meters in 11 seconds. A fantastic athlete, just not world-class. Now speed up that performance by 15%, and suddenly they’re running 100 meters in 9.5 seconds, smashing every world record in history. Would we call that fair? Would we celebrate them as the best in the world? Of course not. Yet in the guitar world, this kind of deceit not only goes unpunished but is rewarded with adulation, endorsements, and monetization.
It’s a betrayal of the art and of the fans who genuinely believe in what they’re watching. And it is F******* EVERYWHERE.
care to link more examples? i see laughably more ppl claiming that its everywhere than it actually is tbh.
I don’t want to point fingers because, as usual, it would just summon an army of defenders. However, as a rule of thumb: it’s fake if what’s being played seems absurd.
Examples? The trendy super-quick jumps from super low to super high pitches with zero note tails, laser-like precision in 16ths with perfect tempo and identical note attack sounds, ultra-clean execution on high frets with not a single misplaced string noise (and even the string noise somehow perfectly timed and musical) without distortion!
You’ll notice nobody ever does the exact same thing on stage. I don't care about the “slightly slower” or “slightly simpler” versions: I want to see the hard stuff they became famous for online. They never do it.
Curious how they suddenly get all emotional and feely on stage, sticking to the slow stuff… isn’t it? And when they do try to replicate it, they sound so… so merely human.
And yet, somehow, they have Ibanez signature models with their name on them.
You hit the nail on the head with this comment!
@@gitarmats Somehow, nobody cares. Have you seen the shred-collab entries this year? It’s amazing how people think they can get away with faking videos when submitted to none other than Jared Dines, the one big channel that actually dared to talk about this, since years ago!
@ Yep, it seems to just have become the norm and people are just accepting it. Many probably aren’t even aware though. The average viewer will assume they are hearing what they are seeing.
I haven’t watched anyone else’s collab entries yet 😂 But I’m not suprised to hear it.
Thank you for this video. Makes me feel so much better after seeing so many of these videos on social media and thinking I'm too far behind to ever become a good player.
Thanks so much for calling this out! I’m so tired of non guitarist friends sending me IG reels of these dudes, and then trying to decide if I should tell them it’s fake and sound like a curmudgeon or just let them believe the lies.
Great video and good topic! Finally someone is saying something about all that bs clout.
Bedrooms guitarists used Instagram and TikTok to decimate the reputation and interest of the craft
Yip
That’s why I put up videos of gigs on my pages. Only way I can really verify I can play what I play
Nah, getting rid of music classes in grade school destroyed guitar culture.
@@Charles-mv7sv that too
@@Charles-mv7svwhere do you live? Lol. Schools still have music classes
Solid takes in here. As a producer and songwriter, I'm always aiming for "what's the sound that's in my head" if it's not possible for me at full speed yet. That's fine. I'll edit it in or punch it in. But as a guitarist. I always want to aim for being able to do something live. Great video. You've gained a sub this day!
This is my new favourite guitar channel. Instantly subscribed! I'm an intermediate guitarist, and man do so many of these guitarists give me impostor syndrome. It helps to acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect.
Dude this video was perfect!! Thank you
Wow so much work to make a noise I’d never want to listen to!
Thanks for highlighting this dude. The internet is rife and the days when people used to just play and redoes are done! What a shame
@2:02 I like how you can even hear the little pops from his edits lol
That kid actually sucks and is extremely thin skinned. I’ve gotten on him a couple times on the app and he’s been super defensive about it every time.
That gibberish is obviously sped up
Nice catch!
Thank you this video is therapeutic to watch. Wishing you all the best on your musical journey.
A while ago, someone said, "Every guitarist uploads their best take among several sloppy previous takes." It appears that this isn't true anymore.
Anyways, this "perfect guitarist persona" you spoke about is the reason why I don't follow any guitarists on Instagram or TikTok. I remember when I started playing, 15 years ago, and watching players like Jack Thamarat, Andy James and many others here on YT made me feel like I would never be able to be a decent player. Many years passed by, and I realized that this "technical voyeurism" led most of the guitarists to nowhere other than frustration. You may follow other guitarists who inspire you, but it is a very narrow line that you must pay attention to not get frustrated with unreal expectations.
Thanks man! I saw that video and said “that’s bs”, but now I know how it was done. I love playing guitar for real and real guitarists, but this garbage is annoying.
I love it raw as well. Not too many effects or other fancy things.
And yet these cocky youngbloods are the ones railing on about “boomer bends” smh
Put any of these kids in an LA studio in the late 70s, recording to tape in a session and see how they fare…
Finally somebody talking about this! Too many internet guitarists using tech and editing to their advantage.
I was recently sent a video of a very popular internet guitarist, who can obvious play very well, totally faking it…the giveaway was the sound switching between the bridge and neck pickups, but the selector switch never moved 🤔
I think the problem here is some guitarists see music as a sport vs an artistic expression. Some people think if you can't play it live then you shouldn't write it, while some don't let skill limited their ideas. Imagine you have such a kick ass idea, but you can't play it live so will you just let that idea go away or find a way to realize it? Yea it sucks that people have to mime, but this is a video age we live in. People like people they need to see a visual. You can't just slap the song with a static album cover on instagram or tik tok. It's basically a music video
I agree! Most edm artists can’t play their synths they’ve programmed and that’s fine. They’re composers, not players. It’s only a problem when you become dishonest and stack lies on top of lies.
@ Maybe it’s dishonest if they show the DAW in the back as if it was recording in the moment. That is one trend that used to be a thing. Rob Scallon, really talented used to do it in his videos
hey nice thoughts man, that's basically what I thought, but a little bit more to the live side.
They should make a spectrum for this thought, bc I'm on it. Center right.
Dragonforce should not play live
Wise words. Loved the video, loved the whole thing.
Thanks so much man
That insanely complicated process for editing notes together at 3:53 seems like it’s more work than actually learning to play the part. Very interesting video.
It takes less discipline, that's the difference. You can do a bunch of editing in a daw with your eyes while also listening to a podcast or music or something in the background, whereas learning how to play something at or above your skill level on guitar takes complete focus and patience
@@BittersweetDuality editing things without listening to them is pretty hard.
@@corasundae Oh yeah you'd have to listen eventually, but a lot of the steps he covered here only involve your sight like aligning waveforms with gridlines
@@corasundaeI can edit drums pretty cleanly without listening. Obviously I still listen but I do 4-8 bars at a time before listening back and making little adjustments most of the time with a podcast or something in the background
Thank you for making this. This is a topic I’m very passionate about, and it’s great to see someone make a video about it. Thank you
I've been arguing this for years...IG, FB reels etc. My argument isn't that the guitarists that do this can't play... obviously they can... or at least most can (some miming is really off, but that's a different story). My argument is that there are people starting out on guitar who will see these "perfect" performances, believe they are live unedited recordings, and stunt their own progress by feeling that they just aren't good enough... or even quit.
Additionally... viewers that watch these videos and then in comments, trash guitar players for putting out raw videos that don't sound as polished.
I saw a FB reel where a girl was playing (the way many of us do) quick cellphone recording of her. She was good... good as any band I'd see at a bar etc.
So many comments trashed her... and it was mainly the lackluster recording with the cellphone that caused the ruckus.
I've said for years... these videos should have to have a disclaimer, stating they are edited for entertainment purposes.
This is so awesome to see. In such a weird, competitive space Governed by likes, it’s so refreshing to have some honesty. thank you man❤
Thanks for the shoutout. Happy holidays! 🍓🤘
Is awesome that you show real videos.. something that I've done and seems to be very rare
there's just something really charming about a form of art that has all of its imperfections intact. If you're really skilled, you can learn to make those flaws integrate into the art in a way that adds more appeal to what you already have. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to forget that the "soul" of many things come from their humanity, and as a biproduct, many things nowadays either look/sound really artificial, or just downright unsettling or wrong. So I'm really glad to see stuff like this video being posted!
that guitarist is a ctrl c ctrl v of berried alive lol
I wouldn't say that, he's clearly inspired by berried alive, and makes the same crazy genre, but that's like saying grunge bands are ctrl c ctrl v of nirvana, berried alive didn't invent that mathcore/djent thing fused with trap music, I think it's fair if the dude plays the same stuff as long as the songs are his compositions
Guitar Pro Midicore
@@AtanoKSi nah hes a straight clone of BA.
@@natebeal18and what’s wrong with that? Very few guitar players can even play that type of music. Being a douchebag and trying to gatekeep it by calling someone a “copy” is pretty shitty
Thank you. I've been working so hard to get some of these tones and effects live. But it has taught me a lot about how to get badass tones. But I appreciate knowing I not as far from the bar as I thought.
I worry about this with my looper.
Like the audience might not realize I wrote and recorded the other parts when they see me playing the melody.
So I try to write in a way where I “demo” each part to the crowd before adding the next layer.
Right. Otherwise you're almost just a karaoke performer. I haven't done any looper gigs, but I've considered it, and that thought was one of the first that came to mind.
I've sat next to non-musicians at gigs where a loop station is used and hear them say "he was using playback on that song." even if the guy did record it live in front of them before playing lead on it. But that goes for a lot of things happening on stage. Some people think you are sight reading every note you play in a jazz solo if you're looking at a chord chart 😂 Can't expect the audience to understand everything that goes on.
Great video! This persona thing was haunting me too, but now I seem to have overcome it, totally agree with every line you said... Greetings from Himalya...
Good video and love that opinion, Thanks for sharing...
Great vid dude! I've known about this for like 5 years now or so, but I definitely did not know about it before that. More specifically, I didn't realize how edited some tracks are on albums of difficult songs I wanted to learn, and I went through quite a lot of depressing moments on guitar because my take sounded like such dogshit compared to the record. Whereas, if I'd known that the actual recording artist would have multiple mistakes if I listened to a *raw* isolated stem (but they still would've sounded 10x better than me) it would've made it a lot less daunting. Even just knowing that basically every artist will have at least ONE mistake in almost any track they record of something technical makes it a lot less disheartening than thinking these people can play 100% *perfectly.*
And my ignorant self thought they were legit the whole time :(
Man... this is the video EVERYONE who starts to play guitar must see... I can't tell how many times I wanted to quit learning how to play the guitar because ALL of the youtube and instagram guitarist are "fake", they are edited the sound and even if you play the same riff perfectly you will sound garbage compared to them. Once I bought presets for my Boss Katana 100/212 MKII and when I complained the seller said "you are using different pickups thats why you sound different" :D Of course my DiMarzio D-Activator pickups in an RG550 sound like a cheap guitar on a toy amp and the "same preset" on his RG550 sound like hell.... Everyone lying on the internet and I hate this... Thank you for your honest video!
I love D-Activators lol
The fun part of it, and also the sad one, is that all these players never heard any isolated solo ever from any great player... When you do, you clearly hear that perfection only comes with the context of it.
That said, the videos you showed us is not only faked but yeah, sped up as fuck.
Thank you for shining a light on this dude… makes me reflect on my own participation in a little bit of this recording/editing trickery with my playing 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
You’re right - maybe you can pull off the magic trick but at the cost of self respect
Integrity is no longer a valued commodity in this world. In recent years, many mainstream music performers have been caught lip-syncing and using pitch correction live but people still love and throw money at them. It's the same with the gym scene, modelling scene, and even taking photos of family vacations for social media. Everything is fake and people genuinely adore the hokeyness of it all. I am a mediocre musician but I always, only do one-takes - they may not sound great but at least I can live with myself and at least people hire me for what I can actually do.
As somebody who just finished audio recording school, I’ve been going back and listening to some of my favorite records differently and catching minor mistakes or sloppiness, but in the context of the record, it doesn’t feel that way. Imperfection is what makes art human, and what makes it meaningful to us
I think if you took two clips of the pick scrapes, put them on top of each other and then inverted the phase of one track, they would cancel each other out and you’d prove that it’s fake.
You might have to search for a few in case the samples are round robined.
Ooh that’s clever!
you don't need too. You can literally see the same pick-scratch waveform being copy-pasted in the audio track. Fake as f.
@ the problem if you do this is that people not educated in production will just say something like “that just shows how good and accurate he is.”
Where using null testing would be undeniable “scientific” evidence.
Awesome video and a much needed point to be made. Rock on!🤘🤘🤘
Awesome bro. Keep this content coming. These people are the worst.
Reminds me of people who take steroids. Nobody could give a shit if you take them, but when you lie and claim you got that way naturally, it screws everyone over!!!
This is crazy bro! Thanks for showing us what’s up
LMAO right after the intro I already knew what example you were going to reference haha. I remember seeing that on insta and being like "yeah I'm pretty sure this is fake too" haha
I just want to point out Noah Crenshaw. He also does the modern Berried Alive style playing (killswitch + Floyd Rose) but he’s legit. He livestreams himself playing and tracking takes and I can hear all his mistakes, but he nails the techniques. Surely for the tracking he could still edit things but his real playing and playthrough are as close as possible and sounds pretty much the same (even if dubbed over after).
Now I gotta hug you idk
@@Noah_Crenshaw not if I hug you first 😈🙏🏻
@ not if I touch you first
@@Noah_Crenshaw ☹️