There Are Some Musical Geniuses On YouTube

Like most terrible amateur guitarists, I spend a lot of time on YouTube watching videos of better guitarists playing, hoping to maybe catch something I can incorporate into my terrible playing. Usually, if you can't find a video of the original artist, there's always a video of someone else playing any given song. There are some players who are nice enough to even show you, step by step, how to play a song (although this practice is starting to come under fire). It's a nice tool for all guitarists.

Most of the players on YouTube are pretty good, like the guy in the above video (but some are just really bad). I admire these guys, that they're not embarrassed to put their playing out there, regardless of how good they are. Guitarists everywhere should appreciate this.

But, like with everything, there are some buzzkillers. Most of the comments for these videos are of the "UR TONE IS AWESUM!!" or "U REALLY GOOD! :P" variety. But there is almost invariably some asshole whose knowledge of the guitar is so great that they must point out any error, no matter how small. You could watch a video, and a guy can play it exactly how it sounds on the record, and you think it sounds great, yet you'll read the comments, and someone will say something like, "That's TOTALLY not how Michael Schenker plays that" or "UR NOT EVEN IN THE RITE TOONING!!" Some will make statements that are astounding in their idiocy. Like, if there's a video of a guy playing "Bark at the Moon" with a Gibson Flying V, someone will chime in with something like, "Randy Rhoads didn't play that with a Gibson Flying V; he played a Sandoval Flying V," of course overlooking the fact that Randy Rhoads didn't play any kind of Flying V on "Bark at the Moon," as he was dead at the time.

Maybe these folks don't realize that any given note appears on the guitar neck several times. There's a lot of different ways to play things. You can have your guitar tuned completely wrong, and still have it sound the same as a guitar that's tuned correctly; it's all just in how you play it. I was in a guitar store a couple of months back, and there was a dude in there playing "Eruption." This guy had it down pat: the divebombs, finger tapping, everything sounded like the record, note for note; sounded like Van Halen to me. Yet, I'm sure if one of these YouTube morons was there, they'd say something like, "That was nice, but you missed the flat fourth in that B minor pentatonic scale." Some people are happy with nothing less than perfection.

Of course, most of these assholes are just stupid. I'm sure they can't even play the songs they're so critical of. They just read the sheet music (which is almost always wrong) and decided that if you're not playing it exactly that way that you're wrong, even though it sounds exactly like it's supposed to.

Me, I'm happy with anything. Actually, whatever is easiest is what I'm down with. I don't care if that's how Michael Schenker played it or not, if it keeps me from having to move my fingers any more than necessary, I'm all over that.