I don't know what to call this thread.

[MichaelRobinson]

Sitting and listening to amateurs on YT. I quickly realize that I'm not going to fix that play so sentimental and with such a feeling in my lifetime.
Interest in playing has completely disappeared for me and it might be so for the rest of my life. I'm still not so on the play and would never have started playing.

Despairs as hell.......

[12bar]

Most of us have this feeling sometimes - you're trying hard to get a song/lick/run working, and then you see a YT video with someone (younger, better, ...) who plays circles around you. BUT it's not you, and only you can play like you do.
Be yourself!

[VikingBlues]

At the risk of dishing out advice I should often give myself .... it really shouldn't matter how good anyone else is!

So much of life on this planet seems to be based on making everything we do a competition - which causes huge amounts of misery, unhappiness and unnecessary self criticism. All that competition just turns the population into something not much more pretty than a horde of rats. Schools / the education system contribute a lot to that - there is little in education designed to turn us all into well adjusted happy people who can accept themselves for what they are. The media also keep shoving the competitive urge into us all the time too.

Anything you can do with your own skills is good - just because you have seen other people that are "better" doesn't stop it being good, because if you hadn't seen them you'd be OK with it all.

[MichaelRobinson]

I use the Google translator so there will certainly grammatical errors in this text.

Somewhere I read that the blues is a good human being bad mood.


I agree with you, VB, that most of it is out of race in this world. If you are not armed to the teeth and thick-skinned, so you can keep a distance and not see and listen to the views of others so you can make do poorly.
Have they lost their faith and their hope is nothing else to do but give up.

Life is cruel and has no status in society in general, it's over.
I have no status and are full-time sick and under constant medical care which I get tired of. In addition, I hear no place in society for I viewed as mentally ill. Prejudice and misery put great obstacles in the way and the guitar playing makes me not to distance myself from my situation and the misery I live in.Now amplifies the guitar playing my misery and I can no longer teach me new either. It gets boring playing the same licks over and over again. My enthusiasm has disappeared except for a few minutes now and then.

Blues is about misery when you see the text to music. The difficult part is to play the misery out of himself even though it's blues, it's all about.

[losaavedra]

There are estimated to be 7.1 billion people on the planet at the moment in amongst which it's been estimated there are 50 million 'guitar players'.

7.1 Billion minus 50 Million is still over 7 Billion so we 'guitar players' represent only a very small proportion of 'all people'.

However even the 50 million of which we form part will include those who have a guitar but can't be bothered to learn how to play anything on it (I know a few of them), similar people who display their guitars in their homes as a kind of art deco object so visitors will be impressed, loads of amateurs who get a real kick out of being able to play anything at all once they've got over the 'how to tune it' and 'hurting fingers' hurdle, prodigal kids like some of those that eventually turn up on YT, semi-pros and pros who likely make it into bands of one kind or another ... and of course the really genuine blues 'stars' who we'd all like to emulate from a playing point of view.

The point of all this so far is that you're already part of a fairly select group of individuals in this world who can actually do something pretty competently on a guitar!

This forum primarily supports and encourages a specific sub genre of 'all music' playable on a guitar, in this case 'the blues'. It's a musical form with a reasonably straightforward chord structure but beyond that things ain't so simple! I doubt there is a single member of this forum who can sit back and say they are completely happy with what they're doing with their blues playing at any particular moment, and that they've finally cracked it. Even on a 'good day', when everything sounds right, there's going to be another later day when we can't remember what notes we played back then that sounded so good at the time. In most respects I, and probably others here, prefer things that way, improvisation making up a large part in what we are each doing. The alternative, of taking a more 'classical' view i.e learning to read a score (not a lot of that about for the blues!) and just playing away woodenly without any of the inner excitement generated when exactly the right notes you've never done before emerge from an improv ... just isn't going to happen for any of us!!!

So stick at it Michael. Your progress, even during the short time I've been hanging around this forum has been really impressive. You're a good player. Do your own thing with the blues ... don't let anything put you off that!

[MichaelRobinson]

I use the Google translator so grammar becomes what it becomes.

All right. I do what I can. There is so much else that is problematic and consuming my energy in my life. What I have in me and around me are hard things. The most difficult thing is to confront and challenge yourself and work on yourself. It is said that there is no harder job than working with himself.
Around me, I have women who want very much and wants me to be someone I'm not. I will fight to get to be by myself for a while.

[12bar]

@Mike: you've put it all together, I couldn't have done it better!

@MR: play as much as possible, take a break when you need it.

Maybe we should start a really big collab with as much members as possible. Even if it's a 10 minute jam...