Hi guys, well even here you have you've not got the mic on yes just about if I stick here Hi guys, I put the mic on Dave now because me and Dave were just having a bit of a talk like How long he's been playing guitar for and he brought up a couple of good points that I think you guys will find useful So how long have you been playing guitar for it if I've been playing since I was about 16 mm-hmm So quite a while now 10 years plus um, so 16 for some people will see that and think that's really young to start I started when I was about 12. I hope you can hear me so I put the mic on Dave because I'm kind of interviewing I started when I was about 12 and There was many of my friends that had started learning a lot younger than that and you may be starting in much later Like you know 50 60 plus and that's that's really common It shouldn't be an alienating thing to start playing later on. It's absolutely fine Doesn't stop you from getting better But you mentioned something interesting about well, can you can you tell me what you told me a second ago? Well, I was talking about I learned most of the things that I know in the first year or so but Only after a while did they start to sound good at first? I could play a lot of different things and different chords, but it wouldn't sound good Mm-hmm, and it was the simple it this often the simplest kind of riffs that that would sound really good when you get a lot more experience mm-hmm So that's something that I Well a question I get asked a lot is how long does it take to get good and it just entirely depends on your What you define good to be I Define good as Maybe not the fastest plane or the flashiest plane, but it just making something really simple sound professional I guess that's the same in in any kind of walk of life really it doesn't have to be hard for it to be really Really kind of professional, but that idea of you learn everything in quite a short space of time And I guess that was a lot to do with you still at school. You do have the free time to practice at 16 years of age But you don't have in your 20s or 30s or beyond that But it wasn't actually until later on Would you would you say can you remember any specific Examples or points from them? It wasn't until I probably started playing a lot of songs Like when I started to play with bands that I had to make yeah, yeah, playing with other people it had to make it sound A lot better and it had to be a lot tighter than just you had to up your game Yeah, rather than just playing in my room He didn't matter if I messed up I had to get everything right and everything all the little subtleties to try and make it sound like the track And that's where you get a lot of progression from Cool and And it also forces you to learn material that you wouldn't yeah, you wouldn't always you wouldn't otherwise play you'd maybe I think some people when they're Self-learning either using YouTube videos such as this one or using my channel people just go for the songs that they like Yeah, and they skip all other ones that they don't like but there's maybe some crucial things in there that you would have I learned a lot of stuff playing songs not that I didn't like but that I would never play if it wasn't for just Banders playing them just did not think of them. Yeah, yeah And often it's that's that's a you know something that crops up a lot in my lesson to how I'm teaching people I do say to people you know suggest songs to me Tell me tell me what songs you'd love to be able to play and I'm often met with I don't know You know, it's it's hard to choose them sometimes but when you force to because your friend knows it or You're in a band or just just You've got someone at some kind of group musical situation which puts you maybe not even with other guitarists Maybe with a pianist or another singer or someone who plays the drums if you're looking up to have a drummer You can play with and it just makes you think about things in a totally different way Yeah, really useful stuff. What sort of bands will you in? When you first started and then when you Played over in Canada, right? Yeah, I played in the cover band in Canada and that was kind of all kind of Probably a lot of the stuff you teach all the kind of classic rock stuff and all the modern day pop stuff and just a bit of everything And but I also played in kind of a pop punky band as well did a bit of a the older Oh How are you? I like how I like to Know the kind of little bad things like that So yeah, I mean that was really big when we were yeah And there's also the acoustic stuff I've done a lot of as well which got me a lot better at the all What would you say about you know acoustic versus electric did you start on one? I started on electric actually yeah, I wanted to learn Brian Adam's summer of 69 Yeah And I finally learned it 10 years later Yeah, and and that was the song that I wanted to learn to play when I was 16 I was like I have to learn this song This is what's gonna make me really cool. I'll learn this song But I learned it On electric and it sounded good. It just it was still kind of didn't sound like the record right and It takes a while of playing a lot of different types of things to get the kind of assortes that you're getting In a lot of records like the little mutants and the little in the cleanness because at first you just play it like this And it doesn't sound like the track without just take all you have to do is just keep playing different types of things All different kinds of things and that just comes from nowhere And would you say was it hard to play the things you'd learned on electric on an acoustic? Or was it hard to play acoustic things on electric? It's one easier. Do you think? No, I mean I love playing both the the good thing the reason why I play a lot of acoustic now is just because You don't have to switch it on. I'm just it's just there. I leave it in my in my living room I leave in my bedroom I just pick it up and then I'm going to don't have to put the leads in and get everything ready At the point I found by teaching a lot of people Electric guitar can be better for late night practice because they are silent because you don't that is true Yeah, that's where the acoustic they are quite loud and put us nine o'clock You're gonna wake the kids up or you're gonna know your housemates if you get an electric You can get headphones for headphones and they're really cheap and or you can just practice on them normally And you're not gonna wake anyone up for annoy the neighbors. That's what I used to do when I was 16 For me electric into headphones and just be playing I Used to still stick it in the amp, but I had quite a good neighbors all my life But yeah, a couple of good points there. I hope maybe some of that you can relate to maybe some of it You know doesn't quite make sense. So you can't quite see it from but maybe you will one day I just felt that hopefully that was useful To to some of you and yes, so check out some more free lessons But that was just a bit of an interview getting to know Dave he's been teaching you guitar So this is my friend ding can we get one of those things that shans off my teeth in post No, I can't do that. Oh, you can you did a degree in this stuff. I didn't do the the fancy I didn't do fancy ding stuff. I don't know what you think this kind of high-titated grewa's but we learn how to make films So anyway, thank you for that Dave. I think I think you'll find that very useful and yeah, yes glad to help