Every Phase of a Guitar Player's Life

This video is dedicated to all of you who have supported me over the years and helped this channel reach 1 million subscribers. It's pretty mind-blowing from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much for making my dreams come true and instead. As a YouTube rewind for me, so to speak, I thought I'd go a little further and discuss the

phase

s each

guitar

ist goes through from when they first pick up the

guitar

to the end. top I think you'll be able to relate to many of these various

phase

s in the

life

of a guitarist, and while some of them will be a little tailored to my personal experiences, I'm sure there will be some commonalities. between all these phases and your own personal guitar playing journeys without further ado, let's start with you've never played a guitar before and it shows when your friend who actually plays the guitar tells you to put it down, you feel a little spark that spark is your first encounter with the guitar that spark leads to single-string riffs are your middle name you can play the double-oh-seven theme seven nations army and a host of other classic tunes don't twinkle, twinkle, little star for this guy ya you are a professional until you know yourself you will never be able to play like this kid is amazing he is amazing he is not that good you don't really realize it now but you will know when you are you have some guitar lessons either with the teacher or online or just with a more disciplined playing schedule, you're now progressing faster than ever and it's glorious and amazing until nothing sounds right, you can't remember any riffs you've ever learned, your fingers don't stretch out to play the chord shapes you thought you mastered any Trying to learn new songs is useless, you'll quit, it was fun while it lasted, but let's face it, you'll never be a rock star, you should give up, you should quit the guitar. in the corner you just give up and do it, but then maybe it was the chemical balance of your biological structure that day maybe it was a song you heard maybe it was that attractive individual you saw while you were out, whatever happened, it made you pick up and dust off the old six strings the floodgates opened again and that led to you have the low pentatonic scale, you can hold your own at any blues jam in town and all your friends think you're a virtuoso who can play Well , you might even be ready for a new guitar because that will really take your skills to the next level and so it begins: you buy a new guitar, you trade it in for another one, you buy a new amp, you trade it in for another one. one, you buy a new pedal, you trade it in for another, you're constantly looking for gear that makes you feel amazing, so much gear, so little time, that you're not good enough to know what different gear can do for you, but you don't know.

I know all you know is that Guitar Center is your home now and you'll never want to leave until you find musical nirvana, not the band that existed in your beginner days, now you have a guitar that makes you feel at home and you're practicing. during hours. a day and you're not just playing backing tracks, you have a real routine, we're talking scales, center positions and even arpeggio techniques like sweet picking and legato are no longer foreign words to you, your friends are listening to terrible pop music and rap while you study at the altar of Satriani you are an outcast but you accept it and then you joined a band maybe it's the metal band that plays at 11:30 at night at the local bar maybe you solo outside the wine bar busking downtown near the farmers market, whatever it is, you're getting some much-needed experience when you make altima tecum, you didn't want to play in a cover band, but you need the money, and this money is amazing compared to the pennies you made before we're talking three figures we're talking drink tickets we're talking pop country you realize that the divisions in this otherwise abysmal music genre are pretty impressive, plus the money is good , so good that you can start to enjoy it a little but that whim soon gets a little out of control and before you know it you have more guitars than you could ever need you have enough pedals to sink a canoe your amp collection is now incredibly large and the worst thing is that you don't like any of it you just need more you're sick and meanwhile you keep playing with that cover band and the concerts are becoming more and more unbearable you can't handle the idiots in the band the drunk assholes in the crowd the Confederate flags or the lyrics about cold beer, jeans and tractors, so you quit and convert, you get a job at your local music school, you're teaching 15 students a week and you keep growing because you're good at it, like the band of covers, but on steroids, you're making more money than ever paying the bills with your guitar skills,

every

thing's fine until little Timmy doesn't show up for his lesson and little Sally's mom can't pay the month's rent. lessons you have already given him.

Hi, ma'am. . Smith, your check was bounced for Timmy's lessons. He was asking me if hello, hello, an old man. Jimbo never practices and always stays about 30 minutes past the lesson time limit talking about old times. You're starting to hate teaching lessons, which you're not. well because you don't want to stain your relationship with music, but what other option is there? It's either this or get a real job and here is the fork in the road, some people get a real job while guitar just becomes a hobby that some people continue to teach, some people evolve into new phases like luthiers, session guitarists , manufacturers, engineers or anything else, whether big or small, the guitar is always a part of your

life

and can never be forgotten or replaced in any direction. is right or better than the other there is another path that some take, however, it is the path that I took, I started with the idea of ​​teaching a lesson once to thousands of people instead of the same lesson dozens of times to dozens of people so you pour your heart and soul into a curriculum, you post it online, it's perfect, but then you found a fatal flaw in your plan, no one knew who you were, you have no credibility, how are you going to reach anyone and then you realize that you do

every

thing that Steve Vai does.

It's playing a million notes a second, it has no scope, oh um, but have you heard Taylor Swift's blank space? One million subscribers may seem very far away right now, but you are closer than you think and we support you, congratulations sincerely. Susan Wojcicki CEO of YouTube