How The Internet Made Learning Guitar HARDER

hey everyone brett shaw rick biatto all right so if you've seen this layout before you're probably aware that most of time when we do a video like this it's for his channel but i can't play guitar right now so i'm getting creative some might say that red can't believe so today we decided to come down to rick's to have a discussion is it easier to learn guitar today rick and i are more than a generation apart 28 years 20 years apart i'm almost twice right sage exactly so when he learned guitar and when i learned guitar versus if you picked up guitar in 2020 and you're crossing that threshold from beginner to intermediate as a player three completely different experiences is it easier today is it is it a better time than ever to learn how to play guitar today than any time in history i thought you think about this a lot and i have a couple different answers actually yes it's easier to learn but it's not as easy to be creative and and there's a lot of deficiencies that people have because of learning guitar on youtube instagram wherever they learn from we have tablature we have videos we have all these things available that can essentially teach everybody the same thing at the same time uh when i learned larry carlton famous session guitar player great great one of my favorite guitar players ever his solo from kid charlemagne or don't take me alive these were famous steely dan solos there were no books out on them you had to figure them out by ear off a record the record would play if you had a nice record player maybe it would play at the right speed but typically it didn't and you'd have to tune your guitar to the record okay if the record was even in tune so right there right off the bat people just naturally that i grew up with had better ears the other thing is when you're learning something like a kid charlemagne what strings is larry playing on this is where you have to actually use a lot of logic that you don't have to use if you're watching larry carlton played that is one of the downsides of learning today with all the same learning aids available to people anyone can learn the same thing at the same time so you're not really developing your own style and typically people's musical styles would develop by learning things wrong off records you learn it in a weird spot and you get used to that spot but it may be in a position like a blues position that people don't play in normally right pentatonic position and even though you and i are pretty far apart in terms of age i think the way you and i learn guitar is actually not all that different instead of learning on a turntable i learned with cds or listening to the radio but i learned pretty quickly that although you could look up tablature and things like that online most of the time it was wrong and during that when you were growing up in 2000 true i started playing guitar around 2003. very good at that time you had a few janky websites where you could find tablature that's right and even it was always wrong always and even after only playing for six months you could listen to the recording and see what was written down and figure out pretty quickly like no that's completely wrong and it taught me to go back and just try and play what i heard and it did help develop that year nowadays i've even found myself doing this learning a song for a gig or learning a solo for a video i'm doing it's so much easier to just go on youtube and pull up even an original performance of the artist or the guitar player playing it and watching what they're doing it's a completely different skill set you're not working on developing your ear as much you're not utilizing these uh these skills that you certainly had to develop and i had to develop at an early age but the flip side to that is it is so much easier nowadays to find examples of great guitar playing and with these algorithms with youtube with spotify with instagram be exposed to new types of guitar playing and new sounds and new music that i certainly would not have found back in 2003-2004 one of the things that to me also is difficult this is this is kind of counter-intuitive the availability of so much music is kind of a hindrance because when i was growing up here's the old guy talking right when i was growing up when i was born led zeppelin didn't exist the beatles weren't out yet the rolling stones were now black sabbath wasn't out none of these bands were out none of the records had been made so as the stuff was being created you'd hear it on the radio but there just wasn't that much of it so it's easier to wrap your head around things and the ways to consume music were either on the radio or through buying albums that you and we didn't have unlimited access to records the only place you get records is if you bought them your friends had them or the local library and that's where i would get exposed to stuff because i would go to library and get records out or if you streamed them on limewire or if you stream which i of course never did i knew people that did but i never partook in such criminal behavior and actually to add on to that so where i went to music school here in atlanta atlanta institute of music um the the dean of the school night we've had this discussion that he sees guitar students coming into the school now i went there 10 years ago and even in the span of 10 years it's changed so drastically because he says a lot of the guitar students now that are coming in have such a patchwork of knowledge about music theory and harmony whereas when i started 10 years ago i didn't know anything i was completely self-taught i'd never had a teacher which is a huge regret of mine and so i was literally starting at square one in terms of music theory but a lot of the players that are coming in now might know their major scales and then skip over most of the major modes and go to you know the hungarian minor scale or some crazy out there piece of theory that you had to skip over a massive amount of harmony knowledge to get there because you can just look something up on youtube or you can see something on instagram and i think that is from knight's perspective is making it more difficult to try and create a a sort of more cumulative or comprehensive knowledge of music theory because you have access to all the information all the time now my point about the accessibility to music if i put on spotify it's like what do i listen to i mean how do you actually consume music you guys have seen my on my channel if you guys follow my channel out i'll do these uh things every you know every few weeks or so where i'll do a countdown of the top 10 pop songs rock songs metal songs you know just the fact that you can go and do that you can bring up anything on spotify listen to any kind of music i mean you can really consume so much music nowadays that it's can be really overwhelming by being limited growing up i think it was actually helpful because there were so few things to learn that it was easier to kind of just learn the things over time so then you gradually build up your knowledge base over the years it's like it's like new guitar players today are basically drinking from a fire hose you're being bombarded with musical content on all sides all the time right if you just started playing guitar last year and you're on facebook or you're on instagram and you're on youtube you're on all these social media platforms they all know that you started playing guitar last year and more than likely if you're being recommended this video or rick's channel or my channel you're being recommended all of this musical content this instruction what what overdrive pedal should you buy next or you know what modes should you learn next it's really overwhelming so to your point i think it was easier to learn guitar a more comprehensive understanding of guitar and guitar based music back when you learned or when i learned versus today but the flip side to that is it's easier than ever if you can put together a somewhat disciplined approach to learning guitar it's easier than ever to find the information you can get the information from more sources than ever the downside to that you can kind of get a little bit out over your skis i think especially if you're a beginner you can kind of start to look a little bit further down the trail than you need to when you might need to be working on your pentatonic scales and your triad shapes you're you're already worried about your you know your your major modes or whatever is further down the line so i think you're right what would you tell someone who maybe just started playing guitar last year they've been playing for a year if they picked up a guitar right at the beginning of the pandemic they're coming up on playing for a year what would you tell them well the first thing to to do is to learn songs you can play for people that's 100 that's one of the most important things one of the conditions on my mom buying me a guitar for 120 bucks a penco 12-string guitar is that anytime i ask you to play something you need to play it and my mom bought my brother john a guitar too we both started right at the same time he's four years younger than me and every night after dinner we had to play for the entire family that was just part of the deal so we had to come up with new tunes to play and so i would always recommend to people learn songs that's probably one of the most important things before scales a lot of the things the playing stuff comes from and the learning of of ideas and and developing you know more vocabulary in your playing comes from songs and the techniques from those songs you're like okay where are these scales coming from where are they coming up with these notes and then you went and found out the answer that's still how i learned techniques and ideas and harmony today is through songs that's the whole reason i got into guitar in the first place was i wanted to play songs and a similar story when i got my first little 99 stratocaster for christmas my dad got me a james taylor songbook at the same time cause that's what they wanted they wanted you to learn how to play guitar and play them songs and i think that's i think that should never stop i think everything at least for me everything that i try and do and learn and get better at whether it's you know working on technique or a new idea or new piece of gear is always in service of a song somewhere and i think i would also say work at your own pace if you're getting into something like guitar getting into music this is something that you will have and you will do for the rest of your life and you'll never master it you'll always be learning it but you'll never truly master it and so especially if you're starting out and you're following these people online you're seeing this amazing guitar playing on instagram for example there's no rush the people got to that point because they've they've been doing it every single day for years and years and years and years and that's the only way to get there so work at your own pace take your time follow your interests and keep it fun because at the end of the day this is something that we all do for fun we all do this because we love it it's enjoyable it's an expression it's a way to get something out it's a way to have a voice and sometimes at least for myself i know it's easy to kind of lose sight of that and the noise and everything else that's going on all the information all the music comparing yourself to other players seeing other people online it's easy to lose sight of that and uh so i would tell you especially if you're new to this just take your time and stick with it and follow your own path take ideas from a lot of different people but turn them into your own ideas things that sound good to you developing your own personal style is probably the most important thing uh no matter how you don't have to play anything complex one note can say uh you know a picture's worth a thousand words well one note can be worth a thousand pictures does that even make any sense no idea it sounded all right i guess i don't know all right so is it easier or harder to learn guitar today well it's definitely easier i think so too but the fire hose thing of having so much stuff available is really uh that's a difficult thing and that's more on a listening level that that that you're relying on on either other people to tell you what's good or places like itunes or you know apple music or spotify to curate lists for you to listen to and suggest things based on algorithms well thanks everyone for watching uh be sure to check out i mean let's be honest everyone who watches this channel probably follows rick anyways but if you don't check out rick's channel in the description box down below and uh if you haven't done so already be sure to subscribe click the bell icon so you can be notified when i'm posting new videos going live also rick has a new video course available that just came out speaking of drinking from a fire hose if you want to add one more thing to your lineup uh all of his lessons that he's been doing on instagram for the past year year and a half year and a half they're not all available so i'll have that link down below as well thanks man thanks

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 198,298

Keywords: Rhett Shull, Rick Beato, Learning Guitar, Beginner Guitar, How To Learn Guitar, guitar lesson, beginner guitar lessons, guitar lessons for beginners, how to play guitar

Id: B_HrC5N2cKQ

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021