Hhe disadvantage of guitar shops is that you are increasingly confronted with guitar gods of 12. Timid boys and girls with braces, who reduce your playing to a pitiful slog with their astonishing licks and solos, perfectly copied from John Mayer, the last remaining guitar hero. What I then experience could be called ‘stringtimidation’.
Older guitar salespeople will tell you consolingly that it’s because of the tutorials. Where ‘we’ once had to listen to the same few notes a thousand times on cassettes or CDs, young people now have free videos in which good guitarists perform very slowly and in detail. pretend how to play difficult things. A viciously unfair lead.
In contrast to the problem of ‘gymtimidation’ in gyms, too little attention is paid to stringtimidation. The older guitarist whose dexterity rivals that of the youth should not feel unsafe just because he was born prematurely. Safe spaces for those who had to learn to play without tutorials, that seems the least to me.
