YouTube 'this one trick' videos

MartinBush

As someone who is not too concerned with my theoretical knowledge, but is always happy to learn more, I see a lot of these "unlock the fretboard with this one simple trick" type videos pop up on my suggested video lists. I have even started to get adverts for them that tell you nothing except to click on a link.

My question is, are any of these videos worth watching?

I tend to look up things I want to know so, for instance, I might look up "simple jazz chords" or something, but never "unlock the fretboard", so I think that's why they appear for me. 

digitalkettle

Same rules apply...that phrase is bullshit wherever you see it

Even looking up 'simple jazz chords' could land you in Bullshitsville, TN.

I always recommend posting on this very forum: you get multiple valid responses and we're all generally positive and keep each other in check.

theatreanchor

 Clickbait. Like one trick to lose weight or get a girl or a bigger penis. Don’t click. There are no shortcuts. 

digitalkettle

theatreanchor said:

 Clickbait. Like one trick to lose weight or get a girl or a bigger penis. Don’t click. There are no shortcuts. 

Surely if you lost weight and got a bigger penis you could weigh the same?

BillDL

Every person is different in what becomes their "eureka!" moment and certain things about fretboard visualisation or navigation is "unlocked".  With some people it is realising that the 6th string roots of the I, IV, V barre chords form an L shape, and that this is transferrable as a chess board move to other chord movements.  For others it is being able to visualise intervals as shapes.  For others it is realising that the "wrong" scale they just played over a chord progression is actually modal playing.  There are hundreds of videos where presenters try to make understanding of modes simple, but they end up overcomplicating the concept.  I don't watch any of those "with this one simple trick" videos and I wouldn't encourage anybody trying to learn guitar to watch them either.  They do the same to me as videos that tell me in the title or caption that I didn't already know something, and it makes me wonder whether the presenters have actually just discovered something themselves and are keen to disseminate their new found knowledge under the assumption that nobody else had already twigged a long time before them.  Donald Trump always comes out with "Not a lot of people know this", when in fact most people already did but he had just found out.

hollywoodrox

They’re as bad as those “be a trader like me , I’ll show you how to make money in your spare time “ 

MartinBush

Cheers chaps. I thought as much.

I am pretty resistant to nonsense, but I did wonder if I was missing a trick somewhere.

I agree about modes - I have watched a few videos that seek to explain them and learnt nothing. 

CaseOfAce

I've always assumed they were to do with CAGED ?
In that you can play the same chord at different positions around the neck based on shapes used for open position chords. 
Hence the whole "unlocking the fretboard" phrase you mention above.

There's also the trick of moving the position box 1 minor pentatonic down 3 frets and you suddenly have the major pentatonic scale using the same shape.

allen

theatreanchor said:

 Clickbait. Like one trick to lose weight or get a girl or a bigger penis. Don’t click. There are no shortcuts. 

Gutted

allen

MartinBush said:

Cheers chaps. I thought as much.

I am pretty resistant to nonsense, but I did wonder if I was missing a trick somewhere.

I agree about modes - I have watched a few videos that seek to explain them and learnt nothing. 

Regarding modes. If it explains it by saying move the C major scale up 2 frets... or something similar then ignore it. You can't understand it like that.

Danny1969

Most of these videos are trying to make something incredibly simple seem difficult and in need of a shortcut, when in fact the guitar fretboard is so simple a child can learn it within a few lessons. It can taught as simple as this. 

All notes have sharps except B and E, bacon and eggs is a good way to remember that. 

You know the note names of the open strings, so ascending upwards the next fret is either the sharp of the previous note or if following a B or E the next letter in the alphabet. 

You know the 12th fret is the octave so from then on you can treat the frets like a small street with 12 houses on it. You don't go looking for house no.10 near no.1   ... you know it's gonna be the other end of the street so you know the D note on an E string is going to be near the 12th fret. 
Apply that logic to the notes nearer the open string note and in the middle. Now you have learnt half you need to and can fill in the missing bits quite easy. Use the fret markers as handy tools to help you. That's what they are there for. 

Now, when it comes to learning theory put down the guitar. Music Theory is just maths and very easy to understand with just a pen a piece of paper. Because you want to understand music, not just the guitar. It's better to be able to see in your mind how this stuff works without the guitar. 

So you learn to build a major scale

Then a minor. 

Then you learn to build chords using the root, third and 5th notes of a scale
Then you learn to build more advanced chords with added 9th or diminished 5th for example. 

Then you look at the modes and realise they are just slight adjustments of the major and minor scales you already know.   

That's about all you really need to know theory wise although learning more is interesting. Then you apply that theory to the guitar or a keyboard or a banjo. 

What you don't want to do is watch a load of YT videos teaching licks by tab, leaving their viewers with no clue about what notes they are playing or even what key they are in. 

This is how I have been teaching anyway, as I find it's the fastest way for students to learn. It teaches them to see the notes they are playing in their head rather than relying on tired old pentatonic licks. 

Roland

There is only one quick fix to improve your guitar playing in seconds: trim your finger nails. Everything else needs working on.

wizbit81

Ask yourself this.....if those methods actually work....why are the people promoting them so absolutely, unbelievably turd at guitar, and why don't they have any qualifications or a decent resume of people they have played with? If you think they are good because you can't tell that they aren't, then that's what they prey on right there. People who can't recognise how appallingly terrible they are. 9/10 times they have just progressed to using the CAGED system to move around and think they've discovered the fire of the Gods. Limited, tuneless pentatonic playing, out of tune bends, appalling vibrato, a basic checklist of 'this guy isn't serious, this guy can't play' items. What's disgusting is that many of these frauds are millionaires from it just by sheer volume of people who throw money at them because of internet advertising. There are some exceptions.....that bass guy who always pops up in my Youtube ads with the Michael Jackson gloves for instance. He's a great player, really good teacher, and insightful when interviewing other players. If I was a bass player I would happily use his site.

Tannin

wizbit81 said:

Ask yourself this.....if those methods actually work....why are the people promoting them so absolutely, unbelievably turd at guitar, and why don't they have any qualifications or a decent resume of people they have played with? If you think they are good because you can't tell that they aren't, then that's what they prey on right there. People who can't recognise how appallingly terrible they are. 9/10 times they have just progressed to using the CAGED system to move around and think they've discovered the fire of the Gods. Limited, tuneless pentatonic playing, out of tune bends, appalling vibrato, a basic checklist of 'this guy isn't serious, this guy can't play' items. What's disgusting is that many of these frauds are millionaires from it just by sheer volume of people who throw money at them because of internet advertising. There are some exceptions.....that bass guy who always pops up in my Youtube ads with the Michael Jackson gloves for instance. He's a great player, really good teacher, and insightful when interviewing other players. If I was a bass player I would happily use his site.

^ Rubbish. 

There are a few bad ones but the vast majority are pretty fair and some are very good (whether you look at them as players or teachers). 

The "one simple trick" thing is You-tube marketing bullshit at its worst and the really good teachers don't resort to it, but plenty of half-decent ones do. It's a harsh world on You-tube and getting enough clicks to make a quid is very difficult. 

The worst part of the "one simple trick" videos is that they nearly always take 10 minutes to show you something which actually needs no more than 30 seconds. They are massive time-wasters, as a rule. Oh, and the "simple trick" is usually something you already know, but you have to sit through 5 minutes of yammer-yammer to discover that.

I make a habit of ignoring the teachers who advertise "one simple trick" as they mostly aren't from the top drawer. There are plenty of really, really good ones after all, so why watch second and third-best? But fair is fair: most do have something useful to impart (once you sit through all the bullshit) and most of them can play a bit. 

wizbit81

@Tannin I love how you just say 'rubbish' to everything I said and provide no evidence to the contrary other than you think they are decent players. Back at you mate....you're talking rubbish.
Who does that type of marketing shit and has a decent resume, education, and can really play? I'll wait.... from your statement of 'most of them can play a bit' I'm expecting a raft of quality recommendations to come from you, there's a whole world out there so I'm expecting at least, say 20 names.
I also don't think it's an ok way to make to living unless you really are good and have actually good material to sell, otherwise it's just snake oil salesmen punting into the void because they aren't good enough to actually do anything with music, either in local teaching or via gigs. It's bordering on fraudulent in 100% of the cases I've seen, and as I said, preys on beginners who can't recognise how poor these guys are as well as diluting the pool of students for actual professional teachers who do things properly and are at an excellent level, such as Martin Goulding.

Tannin

^ Still rubbish. Elitist nonsense. Most people aren't complete fools and it is a huge free market out there. Even complete beginners have the opportunity to sample many different "how to" video providers - if the You-tube algorithm is really good at just one thing, it is offering you ten more videos very similar to the one you just watched. And the algo loves success: if you don't get repeat visitors, your channel drops down the rankings and people stop seeing it.

And I am not going to waste half my evening trawling back through years of You-tube history looking for examples of half-decent click-bait tuition clips. You are the one making outrageous claims that they can't play. You make te claim, you back it up. Don't expect me to do your work for you.

Now I could easily tell you my four or five favourite channels - players who even you would have to admit are good as it happens, and brilliant teachers  - but th realy good ones don't need to do click-bait to get noticed. Well, not much.  

It is a free market. Deal with it.

wizbit81

People like you are the reason I barely post around here. You post something and immediately some utter clown piles in aggressively and has a go at you. It's actually worse than Twitter and it's a really bad disease that seems 10x worse among guitar players. There's no way you would talk to someone in person the way you just steam in on the internet, it's just ridiculous, so I'll go back to reading but not posting again as I cba with the hassle. 
Just before I do I'll address your post becauase I can't resist.....
You're the one who challenged me you berk, so you provide evidence to back it up or piss off. You've already said you won't, not even one, because you don't want to waste time actually doing any research to actually find anything to back up what you said, and also because your fave top channels who are all really good don't do the thing we're talking about....that's literally what I'm saying....that the good ones don't do that.

This is what you did:

Me: All those 'one amazing trick' guys are shit and can't play and I've seen tonnes of them, they are a disgrace.
You: No they aren't loads are good and you can learn loads from them.
Me: Ok, prove it, send me some.
You: No (insert multiple excuses)

It's also not elitest to say that people who actually know what they are doing should be teaching, not clowns who just run an advertising enterprise and have never done a gig in their lives. Do you think I should be teaching Chemistry at school to kids because I once put some potassium in water and it whizzed around? 
You're espousing the recent 'we don't need experts' nonsense that's been around since Gove coined it, but it's vapid nonsense, of course we need experts. There's also a place for people who aren't very good, but it's not becoming a millionaire on the internet selling bullshit to people who don't know any better. 

As for most people not being complete fools, no they aren't, but you don't know what you don't know, and beginners can't distinguish the level of difference between Mr. I've been playing 5 years watch me play pentatonics really fast with terrible vibrato, copletely disrespecting the chord changes, vs Mr. 20 years veteran carefully outlining the changes and playing nice melodic, musical, lines. They may realise there is SOME difference, but not what that is and how it's a gulf as wide as the ocean.

Jazz legend Mike Walker said this on this topic...

"There's a vast musical ocean and I've spent my life getting across it to the other side. You're on the original side waving at me asking me how to get to you.....you don't know all the shit I had to go through to get here, you don't know how deep it is, the sharks and shit that are in the way. You don't know how to navigate to get to me, you're clueless about that entire ocean, so shutup and listen to me guide you because I've gone through it all already."

^^ That came about because some guy was challenging Mike on the best way to do something. It's illustrating nicely my point that people don't know what they don't know. The problem is that most of these internet 'one amazing trick' clowns aren't on Mike's side of the ocean, they are just past paddling point on the beginner side but attracting beach goers attention with big noises and arm waving while yelling about how great they are at swimming.

"It is a free market. Deal with it." << Jeez. How old are you....late teens? 

Last point....many of these guys charge like 70-200 dollars for a 121 lesson with them. I've seen one notable guy who charges 10k for a private lesson with him and he's f*cking terrible as a player, he has no clue at all. I still take lessons and I pay 55 dollars for an hour with an absolutely top guy in his area. I mean I've had lessons with Greg Howe that cost less than what some of these tossers charge! 

End of debate, not bothering to return to the thread. You're not providing any evidence and I'm not reading any replies so we're done here. Please consider your interactions with people going forwards.

BillDL

Why does everything have to end up being a competitive argument?

guitarjack66

allen said:

theatreanchor said:

 Clickbait. Like one trick to lose weight or get a girl or a bigger penis. Don’t click. There are no shortcuts. 

Gutted

So that's the secret to losing weight!

roberty

theatreanchor said:

 Clickbait. Like one trick to lose weight or get a girl or a bigger penis. Don’t click. There are no shortcuts. 

Incidentally, "shortcut to a bigger penis" was the name of my second album

roberty

wizbit81 said:

There are some exceptions.....that bass guy who always pops up in my Youtube ads with the Michael Jackson gloves for instance. He's a great player, really good teacher, and insightful when interviewing other players. If I was a bass player I would happily use his site.

That Scott bass guy is good. But I still say you should never trust a man with one glove (this includes baseball catchers)

I agree, there are a lot of hacks out there. I went through a few tutors before settling on a tutor who's playing I genuinely admired. I think that's important to look for because it gives a sense of purpose and direction. You could practice for years to sound like someone you don't like listening to, but why would you