The WORST musical advice ever given 

You are the 1%. You are lucky. Other than the professor thing.

Congrats on your success!

hey friend, you are something special. I love that you followed your dreams. You aren't ever without love and support. Keep being you buddy, you are the best at it. 💜

It's not luck Its hard work You create you're luck by working hard and practicing

@@AB-ci6jj zzzzzzz

Haha, such a dad joke!

I don't get the joke. Can someone please explain?

@@renew44 You can't grow up if you're a musician, meaning that you'll always be a child if you're a musician

@@scrobble8127 Oh, I see. Couldn't have figured it out on my own. Thanks!

Why is everything stupid or bad or gross a “dad” thing now? Too many dads and not enough fathers I guess.

god bless your mom, that's some wonderful wise words. liberating indeed.

Oh I like that!

Best advise/inspiration ever!👍 My regards for the great Mom. ❤️

Learn English.

That was awesome advice. That's a great mom!!

I too will never be the next Hendrix, but you are absolutely right. Playing music never gets old and has been one of the most reliably joyous and fulfilling things I've done.

This. 100%

Yeah, eff that. My mother started playing the Celtic harp at 68. She loves playing. You are never too old to start. Are you less likely to make a living out of it? Maybe. It depends on what are are expecting out of it and how much you're willing to put into it.

Agree! Van Gogh didn't start painting until he was 30... never too late

So true

Man you're such an influence, both in music and with lifestyle. You seem like a cool guy to have beer with

Such a lovely surprise seeing you there! You are insane man.

@@szymondudzinski6661 wow! Thanks ever so much!

@@jacekjmazur that's very kind of you!

@@mahakali7086 creativity is king!

I needed to hear this.

@InterPRO how did theory bring you freedom ?

@@loxng6801 theory is the language and structure of music. Get onstage and hear, we are doing a quick change blues in Am with a b6 in the change. You will know and not have a deer in the headlights look.

Daring to sound horrible (and be heard doing it) was the first hurdle I had to overcome to start learning to make music in the first place. And it took me a damn long time, all the way into my twenties!

I liked this perspective. And I will weigh in on the subject of noise as a nuisance…there are about 6 dogs on our street…when one of them starts up, they all get going if it’s lusty enough. This, is without doubt, nuisance, because there’s no armed robber, nor burglar, at 10pm, they are going at…I rattled my shed padlock, that started them…our neighbour now gone, demonstrated the psychological aspect of nuisance noise: they made the mistake of training their dog to hate me just like they did. As a result, with its uncanny hearing, when I slowly slid my key in the latch of my back door, the ‘clik, clik, clik…’ of tumblers was all it took…and it took only three tumbler clicks, for their dog to launch into an absolute tirade. Now here’s what’s funny - they blame me for their dog making that racket. They complained to people I was ‘up all hours’ and ‘not normal’ and so on. Dogs are smart, they latch on devotedly to their masters’ attitudes, it would only take one miserable comment as I moved my wheelie bin and the poor mutt’s attitude was defined. From then on, I could simply slip my key in at any odd hour I got up, and the dog would satisfyingly respond, awakening their entire household…I mean, that’s funny. But what I really wanted to say was, if you like the person making the noise, it’s not half as bad. If you don’t like them, anything, even a terribly small and normal amount of anything, is magnified. Then there’s children, for some people, inescapable and normal racket…but is it?! It’s the decent thing to give way, and compromise, but not ALL the time. That’s meek, not decent. Take care all anyway, just press on with music however you decide, that’s the important thing. Do you.

Also a software engineer. Not sad that I chose to spend my life making software, but there’s no reason I shouldn’t have also been playing guitar every night and been in a band. I wish I could go back and tell myself to go ahead and try it.

I'm a Civil Engineer that had a professional career working in the music industry for 25 years. I also enjoyed a successful career in construction , mechanical and electrical engineering. Not at the same time though! I discovered that both the Arts and Science were as equally creative. For me life is not about accomplishments or 'what if's' its about no regrets. You did OK so cheers to you!

This is incredibly relatable

@@circlemover Thanks! I agree that creativity comes in many forms and I used mine mostly to create software for the past 40 years. Coincidentally, some of that software was for the construction industry. ;) I just wish that I hadn't lied to myself at such a young age. I might have done more with music, photography, or video along with building apps. Cheers!

@@kevinhoctor62 sounds like you accomplished a great deal to me!! And now you are rockin' in the free world again! As l have recently retired from engineering guess what? Yep... Presently building a pretty cool home studio with all them lovely audio toys... Cheers again!

The only problem is that’s how a lot of great old guitarist got their style , they didn’t learn from theory or how others have done it they created their own technique by listening to songs and trying to play it . I think that’s partly why I find modern guitarists so boring, they sound very similar .

Yeah sure, take some time to learn intervals and solmisation as tools. But the important thing is to not noodle around. Listen to the phrase you want to learn 10 or 20 times or however often. (Ideally at full speed, if to hard: slower) Try to sing along in your head, but dont sing out loud until you have it. Then stop the recording. Try to sing it again in your head until youve got it. Then sing it out loud. If there is still something unclear: listen again. And then you start figuring out the notes- in the beginning if you are unsure about the intervals you can sing it multiple times out loud, but eventually figure it out in your head. Imagine how you play it on your instrument and then do it properly immediately. 1. Listen 2. Audiate 3. Sing (to prove your audiation was right and clear enough) 4. Figure out the notes without touching any instrument 5. Play it Eventually you want to play melodies back you heard once. You cant noodle around to figure out the notes on stage.. so do it in your head.. once you can do it in your head its just a matter of doing it faster and the progress for that is pretty quick in my experience.

A better version of the @just feel it” advice is “practice practice practice amd when it’s time to play, just play.”

Dude. Yessss same here. My dude and I would always be jamming and he would bust out this ridiculous solo and I would ask him how to even begin learning how to do that, and he would always say “just gotta feel it”. Same as you, I thought that something was wrong with me since I couldn’t play like that. Feeling is definitely part of jamming but you gotta develop your ear first and learn some scales.

Yea but also some people are just better at things others aren’t and some people have to practice more than others .

Thanks, as a beginner guitarist I have had trouble figuring out what things to learn and especially whether or not I should learn theory. I am going to try to learn these things. Thanks again for your comment.

When it comes to art, you either have it or you don't. Having a music theory degree won't save you from not being able to create anything.

@@ashleyjohansson230 But not having the tools and having to stumble around in the dark every single time is going to result in a lot of ideas forgotten before they can be performed or written down.

@@ashleyjohansson230 bullshit on the first statement - humans are creative and everyone can improve. talent is a platform, but studying/practicing with intent will help you get better at anything.

i'm a very verbal person and i found that having names for the things i was hearing helped improve my ear.

Damn I hope you will succeed! Good luck and have fun! 🍀😊

To thine own self be true. Follow your heart!! Your passion!! You'll sleep much better at night. ; )

I hope you succeed living your dream. In the end, I believe it's all about the journey itself. While you follow your dreams and your happy, it's worth it!

Do what makes you happy. Society and it's expectations are well overrated.

Heya! Im in that same boat.... doing music, dont really need much else

Brilliant. Thanks.

I resonated with this so much. Never force yourself to do something you love. Such a good quote!

Similar story for me, lefty and all. I started at 20 for a bit but I didn't commit till around 45. I see my improvement over the past couple years. It's all like therapy for me. Paul is great at helping me get out of ruts.

You are an inspiration for people like me... Keep going...

Right? Who cares if you don't develop as quickly or efficiently as possible. No one has that foresight. If you don't think you'll ever want to strum chords, why should you learn them? If you don't care about going fast, you don't need to.

100% I think the upper echelons of Guitarists (in terms of technique/skill) and especially ones who "Almost made it" are bitter about the sonic capabilities of those less technical but having fun. You need to believe in the music before you believe in yourself. The idea of validating yourself first through being able to 'hang' is an elitist myth, as old as time. If you are reading this while thinking 'ah that guitarist is shit' check your bitterness VU meter.

That is hardly a worst advice ever, actually is a pretty good advice. If that the worst you have ever gotten, shit, you have been adviced by the Olympus gods of music your whole life

@@rmv9194 Some people like the systematic approach, however, so it might not be the worst advice for everyone. I had plenty of good advice when I was a kid, being taught by a very good trombone teacher. But the approach of "basics first" made it a bore for me, so I quit. An advice that made me quit. That's bad. Then I took up music again as an adult, and have spent thousands of hours practicing, jamming, and performing. I could play seriously difficult things before I knew the basics. When the next difficult thing required me to learn another basic skill, I learned that basic skill.

I've found classical is better off learned and listened to later on as you see and feel the root connections to it. Follow down the rabbit hole, don't start at the bottom of the hole or it isn't as fun.

Garbage on a piece of bread is really the only food. Trust me I eat it all the time

I also feel like that’s the wrong order, you can’t know jazz just by learning classical…more the other way around

I think a lot of traditional music teaching is terrible. Too much focus on sight reading to pass certain grades but zero explanation of music theory. So even some good students who can play very well from a sheet of music cannot improvise or transpose easily or pick things out by ear. Self taught musicians, especially guitar players (e.g. me), have the opposite problem.

Here, I was one! Thanks to this archaic top-down approach to music, I never paid attention to music class in school. I didn't care to learn something that seemed to only be good for impressing some arrogant, boring old snobs. And then I thought I was completely unmusical because I had no freaking clue what the class was talking about when analyzing classical pieces (forgetting that I just didn't know because I refused to learn it earlier) and that discouraged me from learning an instrument (because you totally need to understand how Beethoven's 9th Symphony is composed to play Foo Fighters' The Pretender on Guitar, lol). Before I received music education in school, I would often play around on the keyboard in our basement or use old baby toys and other random junk to recreate the soundtracks of my favorite games from my parents' NES console. But then I learned I can't do music, cause I don't know the circle of fifths, can't read notation and have my worst grades in music. Now I sing in a band, learn guitar and am still searching for a good/quick way to learn theory...

Ewww he sounds like a real loser. What kinda self respecting musician would call another instrument not a real instrument. Anything that can make music is a real instrument. Hell if you can make a recorder sound good then it’s a real instrument haha

I hate that attitude so much. Just because you don't like guitar doesn't mean it's not "real". Neither does the fact that it needs electricity and an amp

The actual bad advice you reference: "ignore the technical side", "just practice by yourself and you will get better". The opposite of these is not "pay attention only to the technical side" and "always play with other people exclusively". It is "make sure you pay attention to the technical side" and "make sure you play with or for others often"... neither of which oppose each other.

@@PaulSpeed42 Yes, I agree with you. However, Adam Neely explicitly said "the worst advice I've ever been given is: if you practice long hours you will become good at music. I don't believe that". He explicitly said that practicing long hours will not make you good. I do believe that statement does contradict the statement "make sure to practice and study". Of course, practicing and learning music theory does not at all contradict playing with and for others. However, I do not believe that these were the statements made in the video, hence my clarification in the comment. But thanks for pointing it out, it is a very important point. One should of course do both!

i love your music. once i get a guitar, i will eat your channel alive. and pauls' to

Would love to hear what happened to the record label producer that gave you a reason. Keep being you! Even the percussion you use in your songs is a direct expression that you convey in your music. You’re gifted in music dynamics. Still can’t understand their logic!

You really knocked it out of the park on Under the Bridge!

Jesus Christ loves you!

Thank you for not listening to that music exec! We love your music!

I learned classical guitar first and I gotta say I struggle with jazz, its a completely different animal. Your teacher's advice was just wrong.

Your entry here was so validating @Philip Conrad, since I received similar advice (I posted the whole thing in the comments above it you're interested in the original). In my case, trying to follow it almost ruined my career in music. My biggest regret is that I didn't have your reaction, to just brush it off as pretentious and move on. Brilliant, mate!

I’d like to hear an example… but it makes sense in a way

Some of the best things I've ever played were originally discovered by making a mistake. Just do it again, and it sounds like you meant it all along.

If you play it wrong once it's a mistake, if you play it wrong twice it's jazz!

Use all the techniques - that's what they're there for! The most musically liberating skill is not necessarily to master dozens of different techniques, but to learn as many as you can well enough and then master transitioning between them without breaking the musical flow.

Fretting with the thumb is the best advice

I've tried to but I still can't lol. I do pick with my pinky though

Thumbing the fret is the best technique , which dummy said that

@@greyarea1004 A classical guitarist. I understand if it is unorthodox in classical guitar but I wouldn't call it a bad technique for sure.

Nobody really discouraged me like that, but now that I put in some practice my family thinks I am naturally talented, lol. I assure you I'm not. I have gained so much pleasure from guitar over the years and 0 talent was required. Talent is overrated.

@@laurelrunlaurelrun talent is nonexistent. People use the word talent to justify their own inherit lack of skill in a field, attributing anybody who is able to learn efficiently or who is good as naturally gifted and that they could never be that because they arent naturally gifted. It just surves to downplay my achievements and my hard work, I hate when people attribute shit I have practiced painfully and forced myself to do slogging through clinically diagnosed depression as some kind of genetic fluke. Never listen to that shit because that stuff rubs off, those words become ingrained and soon you start to believe that you arent as lucky as the gilmours and hendrixes out there and it just makes you want to give up like all the small people that belittle anything you make of yourself

Hello Vance. How are you doing?

The guy who sold me my 1st guitar told me: Volume pot always 100% up. I guess he was wrong.

Actually, no. Very few guitar players play with their fingers, use low output pickups, or turn down and vary their guitar volume! Congrats for figuring this out. Jimmy Page definitely did this ALOT!

No, most guitarists and bassists I know play with their volume on 10 all the time because they think turning their volume down causes tone suck(when it's really the opposite). I have been playing slightly longer than you at 46 years, but I had the advantage that my first guitar hero was my Uncle Bil, he showed me all his secrets; turn the guitar volume down, amp volume up, use dynamics in playing, how to induce feedback, finger tapping(2 years before Van Halen 1)playing slide, alternate tunings, etc... I forgot about my volume control on the guitar after so many years playing channel switching master volume amps(they didn't exist when I started playing) until I started playing Blues in the 1990's, THEN I remembered his advice!

I get that one all the time too. Such a stupid advert.

Yeah this is one that's not exactly bad info. It's jsut in the begging its better practice because what you're trying to train your hand to do. Then later on it's engrand in you to have good hand posture and you can start manoeuvring your hand and thumb to places when you need to move it. Like you'll get people who will say they were told to look at the fret board and not the picking hand and vice versa. The teachers most likely are picking up on a bad habit but they've not explained look. This is jsut for now. Eventually I want you to not look at it but right now you need to do xyz. But you ditched that teacher so probs never got the day when he goes right. Remember that thumb thing? Well we're going to try this riff out and in order to do it proficiently your going to have to wrap your thumb round the neck. OR even use your thumb on the E string :|

Like David Gilmour. His thumb is up there.

He must be a classical guitarist

Saying someone is a "bad" guitar teacher for teaching technique in the same way Segovia taught it doesn't make your point very well. It would seem you had a teacher who was classically trained (or at least classically informed) when you needed (or at least wanted) was one who was not. "Not a good fit" is a long way from "not a good teacher".

You guys all make great points, thank you. I wish the teacher would have explained it.

It’s superrrrrr cliche. Yeah go homeless, lose your house. It part of the “success” story

Unless you have a super supportive family and friends, being homeless and hungry with no insurance is a truly bad experience. Also, if the bandmates are not serious about being at practice or gigs, you never get off the ground. And location matters.

@@ewokwarrior2656 Even if the other band members are extremely serious, you can still get trapped in some bad situations by going all in. Captain Beefheart's Magic Band would be a prime example.

Definitely second this, the tuning scheme of the fretboard and the fact that none of the frets reveal which notes they contain without you memorizing them, makes guitar incredibly mysterious for most people because it's logic isn't intuitive, even though it can be picked up and strummed by anyone and felt out intuitively. Piano really helps you build skills that let you tackle the guitar how you want to because it's note layout is linear and transparent.

omg so much this. I sort of woodshedded for a winter focusing on my right hand, and it massively improved my technique. There's so much you can do!

Argghh... too slow she cried..

Voltaire said: 'perfect' is the enemy of good. You're a musician. No more over-thinking - just do it.

I see everything, including music, as riding my bike, just get on it and freakin ride it. Focus on the wind and not get hit by a car, how u do it, how beautiful u do it, it matters not, just go and have some fun on the bike.

I would put the second one down to a matter of context. In your case, wanting to spend a little extra for a Cort guitar would have definitely been worth it just for the difference in craftsmanship alone. Where I would consider stepping in is when someone turns their noses up at the Corts and Squiers of the world and insist on buying a $4,000+ brand name instrument as their "starter" guitar. That's why I prefer to say "High end gear does not replace practice."

Both of those are great. For the second, I delayed purchasing a high-quality instrument for over 10 years, during which my enthusiasm for playing never waned, but I felt like I needed to get to the point where I was limited by the guitar before moving on, even though I could afford it. It's not terrible advice for a total novice, but upgrading has shifted my desire to play into an even higher gear. Sounding good, feeling good, looking good with style, perfect action, intonation, level frets, good controls, proper adjustability, great sounding tone from quality pickups and materials. The sense of pride and positive reinforcement from those 'extras' added up to what has probably been my single most productive year as a musician in terms of ability. Don't be a decadent gearhead dad that just collects expensive toys that sit in the case, but if you love to play, if your cheap guitar just continues to spark joy and you keep coming back to it instinctively over a couple years, and you can afford it, don't be intimidated to step up. It might take you to the next level.

See and I'm a self-taught guitarist who also spent considerable time learning to pick out specific instruments in a mix so I could learn songs by ear. It took me probably 3 guitar tabs to determine that I have 0 trust in the guitar community to tab anything correctly (have since come the the same conclusion about piano scores, since trying to learn a song or two on piano), and thus I gave up on tab and try to learn everything by ear. With that I also started writing, very much with a process of play notes and keep the ones that sound good. But recently I have been trying to think more about theory and scales and the like, not really from books or anything, just thinking about what notes or scales I'm playing when I play, and it has improved my ability to freestyle and the like. In regard to guitars... I learned on my brother's guitar, but when he moved out, I immediately bought my own guitar that was such trash it really motivated me to buy something nicer. Because my parents weren't exactly well off, I knew I was going to be paying for it myself, so I went in to the local guitar store one day to try some guitars and decide what I was saving up for. I told the guy I was thinking PRS, and he showed me one that had been traded in not long before. I played it, loved the sound, loved the look, and it cost less than I had in savings, so I pulled the trigger and bought it. It spent several years as my only guitar before I went on something of a frenzy and bought something like 4 guitars in 3 years. Nowadays it's the cheapest electric guitar I own, but it has a special place in my heart due to those years where it was my only one. I'll probably never sell it.

I struggled under terrible music teachers of all kinds for years and then one day a good friend of mine posted that he had been hired as a guitar instructor; I knew from a distance that he was extremely good, and until then had basically just resolved to never bother him about music, because I had assumed that electric guitarists who are actually good have to regularly fight off fawning amateurs nerding out and trying to weasel into their bands..... 🤷‍♀️ However, when I saw his post, I decided to just start browsing inexpensive used guitars and IF the right instrument presented itself, I'd sign up for his class. Well..... Within 15 minutes at the first place I looked, it did. I've always been a visual artist, creative in a whole different field, and incredibly opinionated about how things are made-just meaning that the odds of liking what I found so quickly were extremely low. Finding the right starter instrument, practically just via an intuitive connection, something that made me excited just by picking it up, was critical to how I made my decision to even begin studying guitar at all. Since then.... I've watched a lot of videos about how other musicians guitar-shop: the features they require, how guitars are manufactured, tonewood voodoo, etc.... And my conclusion is that it's really NO different from simply picking out a pair of shoes. 😆 You just gotta try a bunch on, see what's comfortable enough to walk a figurative journey of 10,000 miles in, and certainly self-image has a lot to do with it too, no matter what the snooty purist academic musicians say. I've had that guitar for eight years now, and even though I'm still crazy hard on myself musically (sad story about my instructor friend.... RIP 😭) at least I still love my instrument. I ended up putting metallic steampunk decals all over it, including quality false-inlay stickers on the fretboard..... As a convert from the visual arts, I practically couldn't help it. 😄 I've tried a few other guitars just to learn what the differences are, and still can't believe my luck. I even got a bass at one point, and so far my particular bass is the only one in the world that I actually like and connect with...and that too was a used cheapie. 🤷‍♀️ Personal selection really does count for a LOT-otherwise, it's like walking that figurative 10,000-mile journey in shoes that somebody else picked out for you!! 😟