Fake Shredders

[NoodleFace]

My question is who is even paying attention to these dudes? Is it some Instagram fad or some shit?

Plenty of real guitarists out there I'd rather listen to

 

[Jonathan20022]

I think to call Instagram and even Zoomer haven Tik Tok a fad is doing them both a massive disservice. They're huge social media platforms and these musicians are the first ones in marketing and influencing younger demographics because a good amount of older folks aren't on either platform. Seriously look at the statistics and size of either platform, there's an insane amount of hidden talent out there and maybe there are more people moving to this doctored style of guitar writing and recording.

But to come back to it, I still strongly believe the "setting impossible standards" argument is a complete fucking cop-out. I think that's giving kids a reason to feel bummed out about their guitar playing over just being inspired about something they like, I don't have to perform every single thing I listen to because everyone's playing and techniques are different. I can't sweep pick for shit cleanly, I'm not going to listen to players who can and cry about it. But that's the argument some of these youtubers are hinging on once the doctoring argument falls apart because most people doctor at some point on the spectrum bordering from cleaning minor noise, to faking their playing. Technically Shawn Lane, Paul Gilbert, and Allan Holdsworth "set impossible standards" with their genetic benefits that lean them into guitar playing, but all listening to them does for me is inspire me to play guitar.

I think I've seen maybe a handful of kids start saying that players miming/doctoring their playing made them feel inadequate as a player, and to no surprise it's right after the garbage clickbaiting youtubers plant that seed in their head.

Live and let live, Manuel is actually a hilariously good example of something I mentioned earlier. If you get famous on social media for playing your instrument, eventually you're going to be thrust on a stage and have to perform it live, if you can't do it you will lose all your credibility and deservedly be humiliated. Manuel did the opposite, and performed several clips he got a staggering amount of negativity for proving people wrong that he can actually perform it.

Idk if people really want to fall on the fragility of the youth, you could even make the dumb argument that he might have felt pressured in a sea of "perfect" doctored musicians and felt inclined to speed up/doctor his own playing so he wouldn't get picked apart for the mistakes he would make. But again I don't buy that argument, and attest that to the overwhelming positivity that surrounds any player that we end up critiquing in this thread.

 

[c7spheres]

I'm going to be the greatest athlete anyone has ever seen. I will win gold in all events from now until the end of time, and if you don't accept my production methods when I run a marathon in 0.00000000000000000001 seconds, can lift a billion lbs with my pinky, and jump a thousand feet into the air, then you're all just haters. I will also be the best at everything else too, once I buy the right programs. Haters gonna hate! Just kidding.

 

[cip 123]

My question is who is even paying attention to these dudes? Is it some Instagram fad or some shit?

Plenty of real guitarists out there I'd rather listen to

Brands.

They're paying attention. 70K followers? Signature guitar. Have a sig Pick too. Oh btw would you like a pickup endorsement?

Lets put aside the ego and perfectionism, why play real guitar when you can fake it and a sig guitar?

 

[bostjan]

Which pickup makes my guitar sound like a cheap general midi guitar sped up 200%?

 

[Splinterhead]

But to come back to it, I still strongly believe the "setting impossible standards" argument is a complete fucking cop-out. I think that's giving kids a reason to feel bummed out about their guitar playing over just being inspired about something they like, I don't have to perform every single thing I listen to because everyone's playing and techniques are different. I can't sweep pick for shit cleanly, I'm not going to listen to players who can and cry about it. But that's the argument some of these youtubers are hinging on once the doctoring argument falls apart because most people doctor at some point on the spectrum bordering from cleaning minor noise, to faking their playing. Technically Shawn Lane, Paul Gilbert, and Allan Holdsworth "set impossible standards" with their genetic benefits that lean them into guitar playing, but all listening to them does for me is inspire me to play guitar.

my .02
I'm inspired by guys like Allan Holdsworth as well. But he was truthful with his playing, good or bad, and I've seen both. Being inspired by someone who fakes their playing and tries to pass it off as real doesn't send a good message.

Additionally what I'm concerned about is young kids seeing these "impossible standards" and figuring since they can't beat them...might as well join 'em. I just think it lowers the value of hard practice, sacrifice and dedication in becoming a good guitarist.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

Didn't see this posted yet, so here it is.



He's got a lot of good points.

 

[Necropitated]

This is what puzzles me and others the most. These guys are very accomplished players. Why do they feel the need to resort to such microscopic editing and studio tricks for so ...

I think there's a few reasons for it. I had a few mimed videos as well and since I record my videos live for a few years now I know the differences between both (mentally). When you upload a video you want to show the "perfect" side of your playing. Doing that live requires a lot of practice. My recent Beneath the massacre video took a whole morning and 200 takes for the final video and it's not even perfect. It has flaws. I did record my practice takes which is the reason it took a while to get clean but the message is the same. Playing songs tight from start to finish is a lost art since the beginning of punch ins. So, let's assume you just pre-record your audio. One reason that speaks for it is that it's way more comfortable. You don't have to care about being sloppy and you can just focus on getting a nice video. What I hated about that is you have to mime your slides and vibratos perfectly so no one notices that it might be just a playalong. But apparantly people don't even notice that lol.
What annoys me hard and what's probably the reason for this whole miming. The playing on records is not real anymore. So even if you punch in and punch in hard like beat for beat or even a half beat, it is still played for real. It still has the sound of real playing. But in the recent years note for note editing and speeding up has been a thing. And that's the problem. People think you can sound like that. No you can't. It is artificial. And now another problem which I noticed with this Manuel Gardner, The HAARP Machine and even Jason Richardson. Because of those recording techniques you have these days people write music that only works when recorded like that. It might not be impossible to play but it sounds way different when played for real. And that's what I noticed in Manuels fake video that Levi analysed. That riff is way too fast and intricate to have that sort of sound when played for real and thus it might even sound like shit when played for real, even when it's played really good.
Same with Jason Richardson in my opinion, even though he is one of the best if not the best fast shredder right now. But I still remember on some forum, someone asked for guitar players similiar to Jason on a technical level and someone recommended me. Then the person that wanted recommendations said I'm way too sloppy to be compared to him. And dude while this might be true, that he's cleaner, I still play for real and show my real playing with a direct recorded signal, not just some phone quality audio or audio drowned in backing tracks. Please don't compare people to studio records or pre-recorded videos. I'll probably get flak for talking about Jason because he's highly regarded but I transcribed enough solos by him to know that.
We're in an era in the guitar scene where we have the same problem as the beauty or sports industry. Selling fake things as the real deal, and instead of openly admitting to those helping techniques, people who are in the know just say nothing. And that way young people think it's normal. Same with steroids in the weightlifting industry.

 

[dreamspace]

I blame the ever-increasing production standards and demand / content output.

Basically, if you want to make it today on social media - which happens to be the main (if only) place of revenue for many of these guitarists, you pretty much need:

- Top notch production quality, both audio and video
- Relatively frequent release of content
- Follow the current musical trends, or push things to the next level.

It's basically the musicians version of IG beauty standards.

Any musician that's ever written and recorded anything, knows that it's really fucking hard to always be pushing out new fresh content.

So you begin taking short-cuts, with the first being to just mime over "play-through" vids, etc.

Some people will argue that miming over a video is no big deal, because after all, every artist under the sun does that for their music videos - I disagree, a bedroom guitar video is not a music video. (But I understand why people do it - I have myself spent probably 50 takes on recording 4 min live vids, from start to stop)

Then the next step is to get more cams / angles, so that things look more interesting, but also so that you don't need to spend many takes on getting things down perfect / well-enough for people not to notice.

And finally you start cutting up material into smaller pieces / sections, so that you can get more bang for the buck and filler material - and you'll be posting on IG anyway.

These days I vastly enjoy vids from (and in the style of) Stephen Taranto, Jon Björk, etc. It all just sounds and feels real.

 

[ArtHam]

That message from Miles made my stomach churn. The guy is a goddamn hypocrite since the sole reason he has a 'career' at all is his collaboration with THE main culprit of all this nonsense. He himself has even done this edit nonsense. Fuck that guy. And he singles out a guy who, while still an egregious example, is nowhere near as bad as his buddy Lucas. But not a single mention of that. Seriously, Miles.

And dude while this might be true, that he's cleaner, I still play for real and show my real playing with a direct recorded signal, not just some phone quality audio or audio drowned in backing tracks. Please don't compare people to studio records or pre-recorded videos. I'll probably get flak for talking about Jason because he's highly regarded but I transcribed enough solos by him to know that.
We're in an era in the guitar scene where we have the same problem as the beauty or sports industry. Selling fake things as the real deal, and instead of openly admitting to those helping techniques, people who are in the know just say nothing. And that way young people think it's normal. Same with steroids in the weightlifting industry.

The problem is though that because you don't write ANY of your own music, have no discernible style or voice of your own or are affiliated with ANY artist that carries weight nobody gives a damn. You're a great cover band guitarist, but since you look like you're doing your taxes while playing and only use one camera only the die-hardest of fans care. (Don't get me wrong, I admire your technique, but it doesn't seem to ever get you anywhere, except a very very embarrassing show with HAARP machine).

Almost everybody these days seems to only be able to LOOK at music. The better the production of your videos, the more people watch, the less production, the less people watch. Same with being awkward or 'funny' (Steve T). That's why a (by todays' standards certainly) sub par player like Ola Englund or Jared Dines gets millions of views. The production of their videos is great, they are funny and entertaining.
Another example is this Dragonforce 'cover video' on youtube by Cole Rolland. Almost 9 million views, not a single note played for real. From note 1 it's obvious. But it looks good, so it's popular and gets viewed like crazy.

People want to be ENTERTAINED. They want drama, high production or funny videos.
Example: Geldschlager. His playing videos get watched only a tiny bit compared to this soapbox threads or videos. What makes me nauseous is his whole approach. He openly admits to doing the SAME thing, but now he gets all high and mighty and calls people out. Nobody cares about his musical output (except for the comparatively tiny number of sycophants that agree with every single fart he rips), but anytime he creates drama people jump on it.

I think that, at a certain point, one has to decide what one wants to be. For now, there seems to be the same difference there used to be between tv actors and movie actors. If you acted in movies, you were almost never in tv series and vice versa. There's a definite difference between a 'youtube musician' and a 'real musician'. In general, most musicians who are 'on youtube' don't really tour or play live (Steve T has even copped to the fact he can't play live because of anxiety, which feels extra wrong because his most popular videos are when he makes fun of people who fucked something up live, something he can't even do) and most musicians out in 'the real world' might occasionally get something online, but the hugest number don't.

I KNOW this is a guitar forum, but come on, with keyboard players having been able to do this since the 80's and drummers doing this since the 90's (I GUARANTEE you that 90% of every metal album and 100% of every extreme metal album you heard this year had sampled drums and performances were beat detectived to hell. You're listening to a computer performing music) this is really not that big a deal anymore. Crying foul about it isn't going to change anything about production aesthetics. As soon as multi-tracking became a thing the whole 'performing music for real completely from start to finish' became something that is solely relegated to jazz and classical music. The end performances of every single popular music artist are rendered inhuman. Watch any movie of the last 10 years (Disney movies being the most obvious ones) and hear how computers perform every note. Every single vocal note is autotuned.

Everybody here has been listening to computers performing their music for years and don't pretend that's not true.

As for me, I'm on the fence. While I admire skill, the fact that almost nothing that gets released is 'real' kind of makes me jaded. Movies get edited to death and digitally enhanced, why shouldn't music?

The main thing here seems to be driven by jealousy. 'he gets a guitar for free but he doesn't deserve it', but the main problem seems to be: 'he thought of it first'.

Let's face it everybody, this is never going to go away.

 

[Charlie Foxtrot 3rd]

ArtHam. It’ll go the other way soon enough. It will swing the other way, everyone will be all about lowFi guitar and recording you know the “REAL” shit, the “fakers” will be shunned eventually. Trends come and go but emotive music will always be popular.

 

[ArtHam]

ArtHam. It’ll go the other way soon enough. It will swing the other way, everyone will be all about lowFi guitar and recording you know the “REAL” shit, the “fakers” will be shunned eventually. Trends come and go but emotive music will always be popular.

It won't because it would mean that all metal will go back to sounding like it did in the 1980's, when almost everything had to be performed for real and also had to be mixed that way.

 

[c7spheres]

It won't because it would mean that all metal will go back to sounding like it did in the 1980's, when almost everything had to be performed for real and also had to be mixed that way.

We can always have dreams. I would love for that to happen!

 

[ArtHam]

We can always have dreams. I would love for that to happen!

Me too, but an entire cult of 'nail the mix' disciples and modern 'mixing gurus' will never let that happen, because these days their 'vision and sound' matters too (if not more).

Of course in that scene you have the real mixers who have real skill and 'unskilled preset users', too.

Being a musician used to be entirely reserved for the ultra-talented. With technological advances even the most physically incapable (meaning people who don't play and instrument for 10000+ hours) can make music. It has its pros (almost every single electronic music artist) and its cons (people who can't actually play but pretend to be able to).

I'm a code programmer and this profession has the exact same problems. People copying code, people who aren't adept at all but scour the internet for templates. The 'real ones' and the 'fake ones'. Thankfully in this profession being really good has its actual financial rewards and our managers soon find out if you're 'real' or 'fake'. But you know what? In music there's no longer anyone who warrants that quality.

 

[Aumann]

The audio is sped up not the video. You can hear in the fast sections of his videos where audio has been recorded slower and sped up. When you speed up guitar it means the strings are vibrating twice as fast which gives it a really unusual sound, there’s no way around this but it can be disguised in a mix. A clear example is in the haarp machine Strandberg video. For an unaccompanied video you can’t hide the signs of it.

levi’s video above goes into detail. I’m not on my desktop so I won’t be able to post links but it’s evident in all the recent uploads on his IG, just have a look yourself.

Yes I’m aware of something I’ve posted about several times in this thread. That’s fine for music videos and general playthroughs but miming to super edited for every guitar video that is also serving as a technique and skill demonstration is where lots of guys draw the line. I want to hear your playing, not your computer playing back a guitar pro file.

This is what puzzles me and others the most. These guys are very accomplished players. Why do they feel the need to resort to such microscopic editing and studio tricks for so many of their videos, some guys it’s all their videos to the point it’s hard to find anything that’s actually raw audio. If you are putting so many hours into guitar why not let people hear you actually play it.

I’m guessing it’s something you start to do in the studio to get your musical idea across. That’s perfectly fine. Do whatever you have to do to get the sound you want for your music but then one of these guys decides to make a video, naturally it blows up. So they keep doing it and the result is now being called out. At that stage it must be very hard to own up and let people know they haven’t been listening to you actually play guitar.

I know it’s a big shock for people and a lot of guys just don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to be the “Santa isn’t real” guy but I’m just stating the facts here. The simple thing is guitars don’t sound like this and humans nor guitars aren’t physically capable of sounding like that.

It's not really that i don't want to believe it, i know a lot of shit happens. But yeah, i'm just baffled as to why they would do it if they were accomplished. I saw him live first, i guess that is also why i assumed he played everything for real even though it sounded weird in his clips. My brain just naturally thought: why the heck would he fake it, he's amazing live.

If i have to guess, i really think its the output of videos. Social media game needs to be consistent, you have to upload a lot. So in order to keep up, they do this to put out clips much faster instead of always having having to learn it perfectly in a short amount of time. As some mentioned before, it's all about clickbait now and playing the social media game. People eat that shit up anyway, fake or not. In the end i blame the viewers more than the guy himself.

I don't condone this though, i prefer worse playing but it being natural. I'm not a shreddy type of guy anyway. Never cared about it. I want to hear good songwriting, you can't fake that

 

[Necropitated]

The problem is though that because you don't write ANY of your own music, have no discernible style or voice of your own or are affiliated with ANY artist that carries weight nobody gives a damn. You're a great cover band guitarist, but since you look like you're doing your taxes while playing and only use one camera only the die-hardest of fans care. (Don't get me wrong, I admire your technique, but it doesn't seem to ever get you anywhere, except a very very embarrassing show with HAARP machine).

My "fame" or lack of that and that I have not released any original music has nothing to do with what I have said in that post. It was solely about playing and that's it, otherwise I wouldn't have said anything. It's that people shouldn't compare real or live playing with what you hear on studio records these days. That's what my post was about. It has nothing to do with my reputation or my lack of musical identity. But thank you for your kind words. I know exactly why I normally don't engage in these topics. I'll probably have to do taxes instead. And btw, getting asked by accomplished bands to fill-in definitely counts as "getting somewhere" for me and that's all I ever wanted.

 

[Necropitated]

It's an annoying topic but I wonder why some people have such strong words and opinions on other musicians. I love elitist metalheads

 

[Lorcan Ward]

Wow your playing really hits some nerves with that guy. How long has he been holding that rant in lol

 

[Necropitated]

Wow your playing really hits some nerves with that guy. How long has he been holding that rant in lol

What I find especially interesting is that one of his favourite bands Alkaloid asked me this year to fill-in for them. And yes, he can have his opinion on me having no style, no voice, no released original music which when you only know me from youtube is totally true, but saying I'm not affliated with bands that anyone gives a damn or that I'm not getting anywhere is just not true. And if he's talking about people not giving a damn about my youtube or my youtube being too small, well youtube has never been my focus up until now. It was just a platform to upload videos to to show bands that I can play their material. Nothing more. And that was always my goal, playing as a session guy for bigger bands. Considering that I had a music break of 3 years and just came back I feel pretty good how my career is going.

 

[GunpointMetal]

If metal goes back to sounding like the 80s I'm starting an electronic band. Fuck that shit.