Yeah, it’s a clickbait title. And it’s mean-spirited, too, but I don’t really mean it. In some musical situations, you will not fit in if you can’t play fast. Being a guitar player for a Metallica cover band, for instance. Or hell, even trying to play Slash leads. There’s a certain level of skill you need for those roles, and if you can’t do it, you won’t stick around.
Nobody should dictate musical goals to you, with the possible exception of your guitar teacher, and those should be about playing, not musical direction. In college I studied jazz and classical. I learned a lot from both, but I don’t really play much of either. I cover a few songs that have been covered by jazz artists.
Making YouTube videos is teaching me a lot. It’s a great avenue for creativity, but I’m starting to realize that playing a guitar part or solo in isolation is boring for viewers. BORING. Most people want to hear songs. So I’m starting to do more demonstrating with some backing tracks.
It’s also taught me that I’m out of practice and playing very, very sloppy. I used to practice an hour every night, getting ready to do gigs that all got cancelled. Without that playing and singing for an hour every night, my playing (and singing) skills have slipped.
The online world of YouTube guitar is very, very vast. There are lots of great players out there doing free lessons, which I think is awesome. In most cases they have paid courses if you want to learn more, and I think that is awesome, too. I’ve debated doing Tim Pierce’s course. My biggest issue is time – I need to get back intro a practice schedule to get good again first.
But my perception is that a big percentage of guitar players watching YouTube just want to get better at guitar, period. Too much “I want to sweep pick” and not enough interest in composition. And here’s where the title comes in. Being able to play scales a million miles an hour is like being able to do 100 pushups. It’s very, very hard, but no one cares. What will you DO with those scales? No one can dictate your musical goals, but… do you have any?
That might seem harsh, but what’s worse is that horrible feeling you have when you get sick of playing scales or sweeps and wonder why you bother. Understand that being able to play fast makes you above average – there are plenty of people who can never play fast. They don’t have the physical tools. I don’t. I never will. Just like I’ll never run the 40 in under 5 seconds. Or hell, in my case, under 7 seconds.
So you have a talent. What to do with it? Say you get some backing tracks and you record yourself playing over them. Now you’ve actually created something. You’re giving something to the world. I think that’s great. Live performance is another way to create – you’re creating an experience for the audience. That is worth doing. In some cases, the audience WANTS to hear crazy fast speed. I saw Joe Satriani in Clearwater playing a slower song, and his playing was great – very expressive. And some jackass in the audience shouts out “Play something FASTER!” Fortunately Joe didn’t listen. Why would he? He’s Joe. What kind of a jackass does that?
Well… someone who values speed over actual music. I’d forgive a 14 year old who felt that way – we’re all kind of stupid when we’re young. We’re still learning how to be us. This dude was older. But to be fair, we all wanted to see Joe play fast. But I saw David Sanborn, the famous jazz sax player, play once, and everything was 32nd notes. I was horrified. It was boring as hell after 5 minutes. I wonder what got into him that night?
There was an era in the 80’s where everyone seemed to value speed. Those days are gone. Put a speedster in a mall and tell him to play endless fast solos. A few guitar players will stop, and everyone else will keep walking. Put a singer/songwriter in a mall and tell him to play James Taylor songs. He will draw a crowd. People like MUSIC.
But the Internet is good at bubbles, and people can move from video to video and keep hearing the same musical philosophy or politics or whatever, and they start to think that the world cares about things like sweep picking. Sweep picking isn’t bad. It’s just a technique. How you use it makes it good or bad.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to write a song.
