If this vid is real...

... then I think he's got it made. Wonder if he needs a manager?

 

This one is better



mentalist

 

Great fun, thanks for posting that Issac

All us guitar players this end are pretty damn impressed, much better than any of us lot anyway, technique looks 99% right, so were pretty convinced it's him.

As for having it made, well, someone needs to enter him into a competition against Steve Vai and Joe Satriani as it's those guys that he will have to beat, they are the current masters of “noodling†– now that would be a shred-fest

 

Bloody brilliant......and he looks so cool, calm and composed. Wonder what would happen if he let himself go.

 

The thing is there are probably hundreds of kids who can play guitar like that. There was a kid at school with me who played at least as well but ended up nowhere.

It's impressive, but you need more than technical ability to succeed.

Michael.

 

Indeed!

Technically impressive.... but a bit w@nky.

Now this is MOre like it!

 

He wouldn't play as well

 

Ukuleles are where it's at...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1352016870638076087

 

Exactly. That's damn impressive.

Just wish I'd not knackered my left wrist (RSI and two falls) otherwise I'd be practicing my bass right now

 

Very true. Having been to a good few instrument manufacturer shows in my time I can vouch for the fact that kids of his age with his level of ability (on guitar at least) aren't particulary rare. You'll see at least 2 or 3 at each "show". Ask them to do some Rythm guitar though and it's a different matter altogether a lot of the time.

GTM

 

he has video'd his party piece.

many many many many many bedroom hours means he now has an exact duplicate of the original 100% down to pat.

 

Probably but how many people can say they had really reached a musical maturity by that age (I'd guess he's around 15 ish?). It is in the literature for music exams that they don't recommend people under the age of 16 attempt grade 6 or 7+ as it requires a much higher degree of musical maturity to complete- i.e. you have to really think for your self when improvising. If he has the technique now, sticks with it, and if his music teacher can guide him into listening to some good artists then he should be pretty good. Course it may not happen but who knows? From the looks of it he should listen to some artists with restraint but then again thats all based on one video which doesn't tell anyone that much.

 

I think thats just it Anex, I don't think he has reached musical maturity at all.

I think if you asked him to play along with any other piece of music (other than perhaps a handful of songs) he wouldn't have a clue.

These days its very easy to get full tablature on guitar music that you need no training to understand. Learning by numbers, you can duplicate an original.

I suspect this chap has had lessons however, but again I'm convinced his skill is very limited to a very small number of tracks.

Joe Satriani's level on a couple of tracks, ba ba black sheep on everything else.

 

Well of course he doesn't have musical maturity. That only comes with experience. Usually over 10 years worth at least. But I disagree with your comment of ba ba black sheep . He has at least learned some techniques to a fairly high level. Technique is the key to musical maturity. You will never be able to express yourself musically unless you have a broad spectrum of technique under your belt and it comes as second nature. Music is no good to anyone if it's locked in your head and your fingers aren't able to recreate it on the fretboard. I'm sure that he will be able to pick up most musical peices which require similar techniques to those he has shown in that video pretty quickly. Other musical peices (such as rythm peices as I mentioned earlier) will require him to learn new techniques first and so of course will mean he will need a lot more practice to learn them.

Not quite sure why people feel the need to put him down, everyone has to learn an instrument. No one can just pick up a guitar for the first time and knock off everything from Bach to Zappa note perfect. At least he's doing something constructive with his time not haning around street corners drinking, taking drugs and mugging old ladies which is what a lot of kids his age do.

GTM

 

I am being a trifle harsh on the young lad.

As far as duplicating somebody elses track he has done it exceptionally well. His party piece is impressive, and good for him for copying it to the nth degree.. better than many could.

And yes, I'm sure he can do better than ba ba black sheep, but I'm pretty sure he'd not just be in trouble with some difficult rhythm, but ask him to play lead over a backing track and he'd be struggling for ideas within minutes...or in fact anything out of a very limited repertoire.

Learning other pieces of music by rote is fun and a great hobby, but is likely to lead to no more than being in a covers band playing in the dog and duck on a Friday night....


(all conjecture on my part, but I've seen the like a hundred times)

 

Which can lead on to being in a cover band playing the MEN arena two nights before BB king and a month before clapton.

But your point is quite correct that there's no imagination in playing as a cover band (and in fact, the fans (australian pink floyd show) would riot if you did it any other way).

 

I was being too hard on him though - he could play that piece very very well. I'm not sure I could play it that well, even with a lot of practice.

As a point of question, taking a piece of music and playing it again and again and again until you've got it 100% right.. isn't that what classical musicians do, and they don't get the same criticism..

time to hide for cover!

 

No. Of course classical music is written down and as a musician you have to practise over and over again until you can play all the notes correctly and at the right speed etc. However, once you've got there that's when the real music starts as the musician can put their own interpretation on the piece. As GTM mentioned above, it's only when you've got technical mastery of a piece so that it's completely second nature and you no longer have to worry about hitting the right notes that you can begin to bring the music out.

Different interpretations of the same piece of classical music can vary hugely even if the notes being played are all the same. You also get the technically brilliant whizzkid prodigies that can 'play' the most difficult stuff but you might aswell listen to a robot playing, there's simply no music there.

I know from my own classical piano playing that whilst I can technically play Bach I simply don't understand the music well enough to be able to make it sound right. On the other hand, when I play Rachmaninov or Liszt it's obvious what the music means to me.

It's the same way that an actor can recite Hamlet's soliloquy and move you to tears whereas if I were to read it you'd be nodding off by the end...even though all the words are identical.

Michael.

 

As one celebrated classical pianist put it: 'It is not that difficult to play the right notes in the right order, but the silences between the notes - that is where the artistry lies'.

 

In that case Joe, I have true artistry in all instruments!