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I started taking lessons on guitar the beginning of last year. I have no idea how hard it must’ve been to learn pre-internet. God bless Justin Sandercoe and most especially Ivor Sorefingers and all the others who put up such great YouTube tutorials.

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RIP, Randy Rhoads. :bows head:

Playing the guitar always intimidated me. It seemed so foreign to me as a flautist, and then there's the whole left-handed thing too. Do you think some needed skills were better served learning to play by ear, viz., trying to figure out a solo by playing and replaying pieces and putting them together versus all the tools you mentioned?

(Are you familiar with the Professor of Rock YouTube channel?)

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Somebody not long ago was disappointed that their son opted to learn the flute. They were worried that it wasn't a "cool" instrument, so I sent them some videos of Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull and then they realized that the flute can be a kick-ass rock instrument. 👍

I haven't seen the professor of rock channel but I will look it up.

One thing that I do is to support several female rock guitar players on Patreon. I love that the instrument is becoming more acceptable to women. Look up Alexandra Zerner for a taste of progressive hard rock led by a woman. I support her album efforts eagerly.

I think the ear can be trained, but I just am not good at figuring things out. My wife plays violin and piano. She can't improvise at all, if it isn't black dots on staves she can't play it.

Early in my journey, I spent a LOT of time to get the solo for Crazy Train note for note. Of course it never sounded like Randy, because he played the guitar parts three times identically, one panned hard left, one panned hard right, and one int he center channel. That was his signature chorus sound. He was leagues ahead of anyone else at that time.

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The flute is a kick-ass instrument all around. I submit into evidence Henry Mancini's corpus, which includes jazzy stuff, a lot of great pop songs, and movie scores. I'm sure YouTube has "Baby Elephant Walk." I'm glad you helped set that person straight.

I will look up Alexandra Zerner; thank you for the recommendation!

My biggest weakness is sight reading; I just can't do it. I doubt that I could have improvised even at the height of my skill, either.

My kids and I used to play Rock Band a lot, and Crazy Train was a unanimous favorite among us (not an easy feat, as we have pretty different musical tastes).

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