The Secret To Being A Happy Guitarist ft. @RhettShull

for today's video we are talking about something that I think is the hardest thing you can do as a guitarist also the most important thing I think that I've had my ups and downs with a thing that I suspect you have some interesting things to say and talk about you we are doing okay how to be a happy guitarist featuring rat wow it's a heavy concept but I think like you've been doing this for a while yeah you've seen a lot of sides of the industry you've had ups down success wise as have I and like this is a thing that's I like I said I think is the most important thing that we can do so we're going to try to come up with like I don't know nine ten eight seven things to think about okay on this front I think yeah I like this one of the first things that comes to my mind when I'm thinking about this is that you gotta have an outlet for everything you do yes right yeah yeah so like if you're just sitting in your room practicing that works for a while but if there's nowhere to put all this effort that you're doing then uh it's going to feel very unrewarding very quickly yeah I hate practicing guitar and I I always have I've never liked just sitting down and practicing I like to play but for me I so I need some kind of end goal I need to be like writing something or I need to be getting ready for a gig or I need to be learning something because it's exciting me and it's getting me into it so I have an outlet for your work 100 so uh okay so when you were younger and maybe you weren't necessarily in a band like how did you use out well Guitar was an outlet for me it that's how it started it was the only thing I had in my life that I was kind of so I was terrible in school I struggled a lot with school I was terrible at Sports and by all of the uh the metrics that I was being measured against as a kid I never measured up to really anything it wasn't popular wasn't cool I wasn't good at sports I was terrible grades So guitar for me until my early 20s was my Escape it's the only thing that I was like kind of good at so I was like intrinsically an outlet in itself yeah but you can't use that forever no because it was like in ways for me it was too but I know like very early on I started a band before I even had any business of like starting a band because I was like in my bedroom like wanting to do something with it and get it into the world so I know I think whatever it is you're doing I know for me um there have been times like well YouTube is clearly an outlet so if I'm working on something I know that it's going to get out in the world somehow uh and it doesn't necessarily need to even be like a big thing just like getting whatever you're doing out there somehow yeah it can be just you you're practicing so you can play with the band go to a jam session uh post something on SoundCloud A SoundCloud still a thing yeah yeah post something on Soundcloud but something on Instagram yeah like just yeah put it out there there's a lot of things to unpack from the idea of putting it out there but to tag on to that like guitar stopped being an outlet for me when it became my job like once I went to music school and decided that I was going to be a musician and start earning an income from Guitar it no longer was an outlet it was my job and it's a cool job I like my job but your relationship with music and your relationship with guitar shifts when it goes from being your I feel like we're moving on to another good point is like be aware of how your relationship changes yes and don't expect it to always stay the same right they can't stay the same so we're going to say be aware and unafraid of change okay great this is a big one man and this one took me a long time to learn because I used to feel really guilty like about the practicing thing like I thought for a long time to be a good musician you had to like spend hours and hours a day in the shed and work on things that you might not necessarily like to play or be interested in but it's what good musicians do it's like eating your vegetables so to speak and it took me years to learn that no like being technically proficient or being you know a virtuoso or knowing all of your theory or your modes or whatever does not make a good musician and um yeah it took me took me a while to be aware of that like change like yeah in my head of going from like this is what good musicianship is to now like letting go of that I think a lot like if I'm trying to dive deeper into this the root of it is like not even be aware of just specifically change be aware of yourself and what you're thinking why you're thinking of these things like mental um and being in tuned with why you're making your decisions so like yeah you're being aware of the change what are you feeling with that change why do you feel that way uh I think is like hugely important so there's like overall Wellness of guitar and just like life in general understanding why you do things if those things are going in the right place and you need to embrace the change so there's been there's been several big moments in my career as a guitar player where a new opportunity came up that was outside of my comfort zone and that pushed me to become a better musician and a better guitarist it made me scared but then I took those opportunities and I did them and then I got what I needed out of them whether it was a gig or or being in a band or whatever and there was a few times where I held on to that opportunity too long and I should have let go and taken the next opportunity like gone through that next door a little sooner yeah embrace the change Grace change um I got a bit of a different one and I think this is one that we all struggle with is it's I'm not going to say don't compare yourself because it's important to compare yourself healthy comparisons and that kind of thing to other guitar players are extremely important because that can go off the rails real fast if you're not again mentally aware of like how you're thinking about this while you're doing this but uh healthy comparisons what would you say is a healthy comparison and whether it's a negative well comparison I mean a negative comparison is probably what I do most of the time which is yeah me too you watch someone play or you hear someone play and you think like can I cast on this yep I can't play that or I would have never written that or I couldn't have come up with that video idea or like look at where what gig they're on and and social media is a big part of this Instagram subsists on the idea of like putting your best foot forward and trying to kind of show off and with musicians it feeds into that like Spirit of comparison and jealousy and saying like oh man look at what what he's doing I I didn't get that opportunity I didn't get that gig I can't play that way so that's unhealthy comparison yeah it's worth noting like we're not like The Shining examples of people who are just completely mentally well with all of this no but I think we've gone around the block enough times to have some at least like valuable advice for this because I wouldn't say I only have healthy comparisons no I think there are such things as healthy comparisons and I think it's very important to kind of figure out where you stand amongst other people who've put in a similar effort because with with the root motivation there being like okay well how can I uh do something if I can't do it how can I use that as motivation so if if all your peers have been playing guitar for the same amount of time and you think that you're way behind them you don't want to just turn a blind eye to that you want to think about okay well what am I doing different am I truly behind them or have I developed in different ways but you want to be having those thoughts looking at what's around you so that you can use as motivation but without letting that get you down too much and it's a very tough balance there's there's two sides to this though that will help keep you out of the the depths of like anxiety and depression if I need to go quit my guitar because that guy's so good and I'll never be that good what am I doing with myself yeah dude you sound like my internal monologue but um first thing is you have to realize that nobody especially in the music industry the guitar industry whatever it is no one has the same path not even close everyone's path is completely different from where they started in music what their influences were their access to instruments in education and music like did their parents play did they take lessons all the stuff to Where Were You Who do you know like no one you can't look at someone who's got the gig that you want or has the chops that you want or whatever and say like well they got this and I didn't so therefore like it's just not that simple because everyone's path is different and the second part of this is you have to define success and you also have to go back to the first point to find success for yourself and then embrace the fact that that definition of success will change and should change over time this one like when I started playing guitar I got out of Music School my definition of success was touring with a band playing shows all over the world and playing like Arenas and stuff like that and it didn't take very long for me to realize like I got close enough to that goal to sort of see like oh this isn't actually what I thought it was going to be be willing to adapt yeah is that a point in itself yes be a willing to adapt that's a big one so okay well this is all just success in general like to find success you gotta do this and often success is tied in with happiness so right because especially when you're young and you're getting into this your idea of success you more than likely like if you're working at this consistently and you're you're dedicated to this more than likely you're going to reach that level of success earlier than you think you will yeah I got an extension so keep keep chatting right and you'll you'll be kind of the dog that caught the car in a way which is like okay I got here now what but if you're constantly growing and learning to adapt and embracing that change and what your definition of success is you need to be open and willing to accept the fact that like you might not get where you thought you were gonna go but if you keep following that Rabbit Trail it's probably going to be a bigger and better place than you could have imagined when you were like 18 and getting into music I got a big one here this one that has taken me a while to learn success whatever that's defined as when you hit those goals it doesn't necessarily correlate with happiness true long-term happiness at all it can be it can be intertwined in there but a lot of like through my life I've said oh if I could just play guitar like that I'm gonna be happy if I can just make a living playing guitar I'm gonna be happy if I can get a million YouTube subscribers I'm going to be happy and so a lot of these things I've checked them off felt pride in them but I didn't necessarily feel a whole lot different when they happened and even if they did happen whatever happiness dopamine hit came with those it wasn't sustained so I think and this kind of ties into an even bigger thing is like finding happiness through everything not placing it all on music or your guitar is so extremely crucial yep it's a tough balance though because you kind of have to have a single-minded focus to like get to that next level but I think it's so important to have other things in your life that bring you happiness and joy and fulfillment is a big one too besides not just guitar besides music yep so that can be family that can be relationships you have it can be a dog it can be uh cooking steak and feeling pretty good about what you cut yeah but like having other interests outside of music and I think one of the things that we see a lot in our industry is like a lot of people who are fully devoted to that like the stories are like Steve Vai practicing for 30 hours a day that's not sustainable for any period of time for someone who wants to be well yeah yeah and and again going back to the spirit of comparison just because someone like Steve Vai does that doesn't mean that you should also do that because you and Steve Vai are different people with different experiences and different brain chemistry and different personalities and you know maybe there's periods of life where you can do that but you got to know that that will not always be the case exactly there I just can't imagine there's a lot of people out there who aren't wired completely differently who practice guitar 30 hours or whatever it is yeah five hours a day for their entire life who have prolonged happiness I I can't I can't unless that thing unless them practicing guitar for five hours a day is their escape and it's like what keeps them centered yeah sure is their thing maybe oh let's say eight hours like all they do is guitar they don't have anything out of that yes besides that I can't imagine that that person could have a prolonged joy and wellness in their life yeah because the thing is like when we're out there and cook a steak too we're talking about music here which is Art which is expression which is having a voice which is having a would you play with your dog having experiences to pull from and to share yeah you know like it's not just the technical Proficiency in your instrument like yes you should get to the point where you have technical proficiency and you have an understanding of the instrument and understanding of sound in your gear and everything but at the end of the day that's just another tool in your toolbox to be able to say something because we are musicians we are artists we are trying to say something or we should be trying to say something and you can't say anything if you haven't experienced life life love the pursuit of happiness and freedom yeah okay so here's I think that's worthwhile understanding about practice and guitar in general so you have fun there's a lot of stuff that's really fun you have work and then you have work fun well I guess that's implied by the Venn diagram that's the cross over there I'd have to write that so this is how it works I think you need all of this in order to make this whole thing work and be happy so you need to have the things that are just purely fun that are just pure intrinsic inherent fun it could be playing a show it could be whatever that is you need to have that most of it I think is in here where it's working fun and sometimes you're you're balancing those two things but they're they're both of them however you also do need a little bit of this time too to really get anywhere I think where you're just you're doing the hard work the stuff that isn't actually fun and I think this feeds into this because if you are if you can set yourself up to be in a place where you're working towards something that you enjoy yeah like I love making videos I don't always love the process of making a video there's a lot of tedious work that goes into it but there's also a lot of satisfaction that goes into it because at the end of the day like you're leaving with having created something that didn't exist before you went in there so maybe this whole thing represents satisfaction yeah it can't all be fun no and if you want to grow the whole thing you got to be doing all of it yeah but even at times just work the whole time either yeah most of it's going to be this weird gray area don't expect it to only be this yeah don't expect it to only be this and if it's only this you're probably doing it wrong it's only this you're probably not growing the whole thing yeah and the growth of the whole thing the satisfaction ties in to uh happiness okay I have another one too nice realize this is for the younger players out there there's no rush you are patients probably going to be doing this in some way shape or form by this I mean playing guitar for the rest of your life so this was one I really struggled with especially in my early to mid 20s I felt like I had to become like the best guitarist I was ever going to be by the time I was 25 and that I had to be making huge strides in my playing and my business because all you hear is about Derek Trucks who was a slide God at 13. Joe Bonamassa who was this Prodigy at this age and you're like wow if I can't do that and I'm already like 25 I'm screwed yeah the thing is like I'm 33. I am in a completely different place as a guitar player than I thought I wanted to be at 23. like the musician I thought I wanted to be at 23 is nowhere near where I want to be now as a musician yeah so and it's going to be different by the time I'm 43 and 53 but I'm gonna play guitar and make music as long as I can physically hold the instrument and play the thing and I think this is a the bigger idea here is embrace the Journey yeah because it kind of ties into that thing where success doesn't equal happiness and that's one of the things I realize is that it's actually the journey that needs to be fun because if it's not then it's all not worthwhile and it's a hard thing to do to embrace a journey it's a really hard thing to do yeah because all we picture is the Finish Line like getting there but there is no Finish Line in this you're never gonna stop learning guitar or music you shouldn't you can't you're just gonna keep going and the more you learn the more you realize you don't know yeah and so whatever your goal was five years ago it's like you get to the top of the hill and you realize there's a mountain so you climb up that one you realize there's another one and at some point you've got to just accept the fact that you're never going to get to the top of these things but you better enjoy climbing mountains and if you don't get a pair of skis and go the other way the real guitar is the friends we made along the way uh side note who do you like more rush or Journey uh Journey Jenny hates journey I like I like Journey more too I'm not a big rush guy I can't I can't do rush I just can't sorry sorry I know you're Canadian and that's like oh yeah I'm not a huge rush guy either big Neil Young fan though oh yeah Die Hard Neil Young I mean isn't that legally required by all Canadians like yeah if not it should be yeah yeah come on okay let's do another one that was a good one um how the hell am I going to edit this down to 10 minutes we're just spewing out pure gold oh you don't need to edit down maybe I'll make this an hour one okay gear is fun but at the end of the day it's just a tool for a job yeah so a healthy relationship with gear Acquisitions because like it's a dopamine head yeah getting a new guitar makes you feel really good buying a guitar it's a rush like accumulating things it's like wired into our brain to tell us I got a new thing good keep doing that but it's a it's a short-term satisfaction yeah and you shouldn't spend all your time watching YouTube videos and gear reviews and gear demos that would be like a carpenter spending all their time looking at hammers instead of actually building something at the end of the day you got to pick up your hammer and you got to build something a guitar is a hammer a a pedal is a saw an amp is a something else some other tool do you uh have you figured this one out healthy relationship with gear I think I have recently yeah I think when I was younger I was much more like enthralled with gear and especially like the idea of vintage gear but because of this job I've had the opportunity to play a lot of vintage stuff and I've realized that a lot of it just kind of sucks like a lot of vintage guitars just suck now there's some truly great instruments out there that I've played and connected with but the idea of something being vintage being better is not necessarily the case and oftentimes it's actually worse and at the end of the day it goes back to this idea of like what are you trying to say like does does Jason Isbell need red eye that 59 burst to write the songs that he does no but understanding that that tool is part of what inspires him and gets him excited to get up and write those songs and play that music I mean I think everyone knows this though but what's so hard is that the tangible quick Rush of getting that pressing that buy now button getting that thing in the mail opening it like that's it's hard to override that uh that dopamine yeah I don't get a ton of those quick fast ones like that music everything that's got to work for the gear ones you don't have to work for really well I guess you you literally have to work well the way I look at it is like I think of it more as like a journey like so it took me a few years to find my Les Paul right and I tried a bunch of them and but when I found mine that was like it was more than just a quick dopamine hit like there's a story there and there's a little bit more than just yeah exactly there's something of value there Beyond just the guitar but at the end of the day it's like it the gear does matter because that guitar does a thing we're here at Sweetwater looking at a catalog that says Pro gear selects right now here's here's the thing though like the gear matters in the context of when I when I pick up that guitar and I play it through a specific amp through a specific fuzz pedal or whatever I'm inspired to play a certain way and that inspires me to have a certain voices so it matters in that context but like the the fact does it have nitrocellulose or polyurethane finish on it does it have 42 gauge plus enamel copper wire in the pickups or is that nickel or chrome plating on the pickup covers like that side of it the long term doesn't matter it just doesn't you know I've got I don't know how many guitars I have over 50 probably the one that I've been playing the most lately and it's the one that I save up for and bought when I was 15. yeah my Telecaster reissue which it by no means is the most valuable one no means is the most impressive one but I just go back to that and I like I look at that and I see like oh I can see all the wear that I put into it every single thing on that is from like all that time that I spent playing it was with me at like every stage of the musical journey and that's the one I care about it's not the the most expensive thing I have or that new thing that came in and I think like I'm really happy that I have that kind of guitar because it means a lot more to me and it ties in that whole thing of just like yeah deeper satisfaction with all of this stuff comes from relationships and things and experiences experiences mean more than a lot of all of this like the experiences music and guitar provide you are to me more important than the music and the guitar itself 100 cool that's a good one that's what what did we just stumble across here what'd I just say the experiences in a blackout zone of pure inspiration hmm the experiences my best friends in the world like people that I'm closest with have come through music and the my favorite experiences that I've had been some way shape or form tied to music whether that was being on my gig or coming to things like this like genuinely one of my favorite things to do every single year is to go to Nam not because of the trade show or because of the gear or any of that or because like I'm here like I'm going there to listen to this and listen to this and listen no it's because I get to hang out with you and Paul and and Mary and who's not going to make this list I want to find out okay I gotta stop it there but no or Tim like okay like there's a couple more that haven't made it yet so don't draw attention to it now I'm gonna be thinking I'm gonna wake up tonight like oh I didn't say um but then I totally agree with you it's like what's like the best musical things at least at this stage in my life like it is really fun to play in front of people and I have a lot of Pride with some of the things that I've made but the things you make don't matter as much as like the experience of making it and the people you meet and the things you do with them yeah that's that's the reason to do this man yeah it really is you you meet so many great people if I didn't like I never would have thought that starting to make YouTube videos would have led to the friendships and the relationships with so many amazing people that that I have now and it's my favorite part yeah straight up it's my friend I think if I if you told yourself that at 16 you wouldn't believe it well me that 16 wouldn't matter it would have been just like no I want to be Led Zeppelin I want to be Jimmy Page I want to conquer the world with my guitar but you look at like a lot of these guys like man I don't know how happy they were um extremely successful some of my favorite musicians of all time but at least I guarantee you they struggled with this exact same concept there's a reason why like they get off the road and you take the music and the rush of the playing uh for people away from those guys and like there's a lot of substance issues and struggles like that and I think in realizing that it's made me realize to look for some of those those deeper things meaningful things yeah in this journey I have one more uh yeah and it's inspired by my friend Philip Conrad who's walking up yep embrace the limitation did we do this one and Brace limitations I don't think we did this we've embraced something we can Embrace many many things so yes I I think here at least in my experience your best creative output comes from working within limitation and that can be a lot of things it can be working with what you have access to gear wise if it's one guitar and a one pedal and not like always wanting more right the desire for more and this is something that's very hard to overcome and I'm like I'm not great at this no we always want more all of us want more we want more followers we want more views we want more gear we want more everything but embracing what you have yeah and use it in embracing that limitation and making what you can with what you have will probably be a better end product than trying to get more stuff to be more inspired because yes gear inspires me the ability to to use these tools does inspire but getting that new guitar that new pedal is not going to make you a more inspired musician or a better player or a better writer or just generally happier no which is kind of like the root of all this and I think I got like I got a thing coming to me I got distracted I lost it okay I think this is what I was trying to come up with before actively wanting to be a happy guitar player it doesn't just happen no you gotta want it seek Joy so like if you don't actively like think about I think just like thinking about this stuff is a huge part of it too because I know like it took me a while to be aware of a lot of this I would just in ways just just do just go just go go go go go without even being conscious of like how I'm feeling about it what I'm how my life is looking it was always just get better at guitar build a career without Nothing Else Matters besides that yeah and as that happened uh this ties into my success one but as that happened I realized it felt like a hollow Pursuit and so that instead of necessarily seeking and single-mindedly going towards your goal throughout that process also seek joy and know that that thing that's going to provide that is not just you're going to get it you're going to be good it's a weird ambiguous concept that you just always kind of have to be working on yep that's that's what I'm really struggling with right now like it's it's constantly just like gotta get on to the next thing gotta build the next like gotta make the next course gotta get more subscribers gotta make the next album gotta do all these things and I'm really bad about stopping and what happens when you hit that and it doesn't matter dude I I it's not that it doesn't matter it doesn't satiate the way you want it to like when I was starting off on YouTube I was obsessed with the idea of a hundred thousand subscribers and it works it was so hard it took two and a half years I think something like that to get to a hundred thousand and the day I hit it it felt exactly the same yeah I was like oh I saw the number tick over and it felt good for a moment and I was like oh well it's not a million I got to I hit the million yeah and that's the exact same thing I went there was like this is really cool that I finally hit this but like I feel the same way that I felt yesterday yeah what now yeah now what and then the Brand's like well 10 million but I I've just made an effort to maybe try to catch myself sometimes and again like I'm not great at a lot of this stuff yeah but I think part of it is just like actively working on it you don't get better guitar if you don't practice you don't get better at feeling happy if you don't work on it just take a second to just be aware of it practice than done practice gratitude practice gratitude on that note ladies and gentlemen that's how you can be a happy guitarist according to Rhett and myself uh thanks for joining thanks for having me find Rhett at the link that's probably in the description if you want to check another video like this one there's a link somewhere if you haven't subscribed to me there's a link somewhere thank you all for watching until next time welcome to yourselves look after each other look after the planet I'm Samurai guitarist oh I'm Rachel I'll see you again soon a little really good sign off take care of the planet yeah man [Applause]

Channel: samuraiguitarist

Views: 24,940

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Id: gFWdabKzWzQ

Length: 30min 10sec (1810 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023