The Importance Of: Youtube

In this edition of "The Importance Of" we are going to focus on the "new wave" of technology that has come into prominence....Youtube. Youtube is a site where you can see funny videos, movie trailers, music videos, most importantly people playing music and tons and tons of other things. Back in the long long ago, circa the 90's, if you wanted to learn some new licks, a new song, some new technique you had to seek out other musicians and pick their brain. While I still recommend doing this, Youtube has made it as easy as you can get. If you want any song to listen to and learn you type it in and it pops up. Along with your version is a ton of other versions of the song. If you want someone to show you how to play a song you just punch that it. You can even get musical instruction from everything on how to hold your instrument to how to make chords. This has gave any aspiring and seasoned musicians access to many ways to learn songs and about your instrument of choice. I even use it, as you already know, to post the videos used on this site. Your choices and education with the site are almost endless. As awesome and powerful as Youtube is it has its drawbacks too. While using the site to learn songs from other people, sometimes they are teaching you the wrong thing! As you develope as a musician you will be able to tell what is wrong and what is correct. Sometimes when you are learning something about your instrument it too can be wrong. Another drawback is when you put in a song to learn from an artist the pitch of the song can be altered. I have learned this the hard way by learning a song for a student on Youtube and then at lessons they brought in the original song and the pitch did not match. I have even had some people that you can tell really need instruction for an instrument say "I dont need lessons, I got youtube and the Internet for everything." While these are useful tools sometimes you still need instruction for the reasons, at a minimum, listed above for the drawbacks of Youtube. While there are some drawbacks of Youtube the benefits FAR OUTWEIGH the drawbacks. It is a way to access other musicians and get new ideas and learn a ton of new things. Go check out Youtube, most of you have for sure, and get some new ideas and songs. The best yet, Youtube is free!

here's some examples I find cool, usefull or a drawback.

learn some chords for beginners
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHNvUkeREKM

zakk wylde licks


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwBox7hJNgU

something wrong, if you were to learn this way you would end up a little off
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aodql0oOviU&feature=related