More guitar "how to play this song" type videos should be like this....

[baimun]

If you've grown up learning to play songs by ear, much of the tab is wildly incorrect and usually incomplete, many youtube videos are odiously paaaainful to watch when they spend the first two minutes talking about how to tune down a half step, and playing each open string.... WE FUCKIN GET IT!....

Or when they play a bit, and then slowly... painfully... play... one... note... at... a... time....

We know how to work the pause button. There's a thing in the little gear where you can speed up or slow down something by 25% 50%... I often listen to interviews or news at 125%.





No bullshit. If there's an explainer... or a tab... it's on the screen.

I stumbled across this page last night and cross checked a couple tunes and see where I often borrow from one guitar part to the other (walking bass note with my pinky or thumb in a chord) because I was just listening to the parts of the song, not thinking "oh that's one guitar player and that's the other..."

They don't have a ton of the kind of stuff I play... but wanted to make sure you guys knew about this content in case you are like me and tend to look for the live videos of the original artist and hope the cameraman wasn't zoomed in on someone in the crowd during a bridge or solo.

 

[Denverdave]

Most of my playing right now is stuff for church. One of the good things is that often there are tutorial videos for the songs, and some are put out by the guitar player who played the original parts so you know you are getting the real deal.

My biggest challenge is that many of the songs are recorded live, and the bands have a minimum of two and usually three electric players. And often they are all playing different parts. I need to figure out which parts I need to play live as the only electric guitarist to best reproduce the song live. We had a song I played last week where I did not play a single chord. It was all single note counter melodies, or doubling the lead vocal - but playing octaves on the guitar.

 

[baimun]

I need to figure out which parts I need to play live as the only electric guitarist to best reproduce the song live. We had a song I played last week where I did not play a single chord. It was all single note counter melodies, or doubling the lead vocal - but playing octaves on the guitar.

One thing you could try is sit down with the single note melodies, and the counter melodies.... move their octave if necessary to get them into a reachable chord shape, and then turn them into finger plucked diads.

I did that a few months ago figuring out, of all things believe it or not... chopsticks. It was for the keyboard part in the solo section of "Blinded by the Light" but I used that chopsticks method of one note going up and the other going down, and figured out how to play the entire keyboard portion on my guitar, and we played that song at an acoustic/electric trio gig with the bass player just holding down the roots.

(bookmarked for time)


I then used that same method to take some of the saxophone notes and counter point them with the guitar for the solo in "Overkill".

You'll hear the sax overlap at the end of the solo.... (also bookmarked)

 

[335clone]

Check out Michael Palmisanos videos if you want better content

 

[BlockInlay]

Mr. Tabs has an excellent YouTube channel. Highly recommended.

 

[baimun]

Check out Michael Palmisanos videos if you want better content

My favorite Youtube lessons/discussions are Michael, Tim Pierce, Paul Davids, and the discussions of production and techniques from the Scary Pockets guys on the channel "Dead Wax".

There are many MANY great resources out there for different learning styles. As stated above, I'm not down with the hand holding... but on the other hand, as much as I like listening to Rick Beato, half the time his discussions are either "here's something I like to listen to" or it swings hard the other way and his perfect pitch and being able to name every chord voicing of every chord under the sun comes forward and makes me feel like a noob who just picked up the guitar.

The ones I listed above are just diverse enough to reference music from many genres I like, aren't overwhelming, but also challenge me and make me want to grab a guitar and practice.



Of course... that doesn't include Charles Berthoud who often plays their bass examples.... that dude is a fucking mutant from another planet.... he's like the bass equivalent of Guthrie Govan where I don't know if there's a style he can't play.