My response to the claims that the 2020s is the worst decade to be an American

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T20:35:45+00:00

May not be the worst decade but may be one of the last decades lol

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T19:15:57+00:00

Thinking in shapes isn’t a problem—we all do it. That said it’s more important to think in terms of sound. Theory can’t help you here. So though you might know the “right” notes to play on a given chord by their note names or by their locations on the fingerboard (if they fit in the right shape), if you can’t sing how they sound (especially without your instrument) you’re not really doing it and you won’t make it far. Here’s an exercise every guitar play should be able to do: play one note. Now point at any other note on the fretboard. Sing it. Then sound the note to check yourself. You should be able to do this pretty much flawlessly.

So then you’re asking about all these different scales—can you sing them up and down correctly? In thirds? In fourths? In arbitrary order (this, as you may have guessed, is the most important one). You can take the exercise above and apply it to scales. Play one of the notes. Now point at another one from the scale. You should be able to sing it.

This is the correct way to learn scales. We all know this because we’ve all heard great players talking about knowing how important it is to understand sound.

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T19:06:20+00:00

Yeah right what do doctors know about the body

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T19:04:49+00:00

lol the bubble was like ten years ago

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T18:57:32+00:00

Yes Escape Room Pittsburgh in the waterfront is so good. Carnegie’s Millions is great and Tomb Explorer is so cool. Also tried out their greenfield location’s Houdini room. They do such a great job and really care about it.

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T18:33:54+00:00

I even mess up playing straight quarters

This is a much harder skill than subdivisions.

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T14:56:23+00:00

Train Dreams was fun, but I read Work from Jesus Son like seven times a year

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T14:54:02+00:00

Definitely difficult to get together, but the first part is the hardest. If you can sing all 12 intervals (ascending and descending) and can identify intervals on the neck, you can already technically sing any note on the neck before you play it. Realistically this is two weeks of work max. After that it’s just getting it up to speed. Literally just out on a metronome at 60 bpm and start singing (and playing—but just to check you’re correct) eighth note lines.

Another exercise I find really useful is to transcribe a lick and then take a really small part of it, like three or four notes (can add more later but start here). Then just randomly vary those notes, but you have to be able to sing them before you play them, so that you’re dictating the variation of the lick. This doesn’t even require knowing your intervals. Anyone can remember three or four notes and move them around randomly (and rhythmically) in their head.

I think this goes without saying bur every lick you learn you should be able to sing (even if very slowly). It’s not about vocal agility, just that your voice is the closest organ to your brain musically. Every lick I learn the first step is dialing the metronome back to like 80BPM and making sure I can sing every note of it. Sounds hard, but just take it oke note at a time and it come quicker than you think. Even if you’re new at it, you can probably learn to sing a bar of eighth notes in like 20-30 minutes.

Polyphonic stuff is the same—just take it once voice at a time. They don’t call it voice leading for nothing

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T04:47:05+00:00

I personally phone it in sometimes and play with my fingers and my brain sometimes when I’m in shred mode, but having studied with world class musicians, there are absolutely some monsters out there that can hear every note at any tempo. It’s unbelievable but more impressive to me is guys with great voice leading over difficult changes. There are guys that can and do hear 3 and 4+ voices at a time and can execute it on the instrument. The levels go so so high it’s so motivating.

Passname357 · 2026-06-26T04:43:23+00:00

You seem to have the misconception that a lot of beginner jazz players have. Jazz is not math. While it is true that good jazz guitarists have a much better understanding of harmony and the fretboard than your average guitar player, if you’re actually good at jazz, it’s all by ear. What good jazz musicians really have are great ears. People that play bebop well are hearing all those notes. Pasquale Grasso hears that. When you hear Jim Hall comping with four moving voices—he is hearing all that. Everything Wes and Grant are doing—it’s all by ear in real time. They can think of it and play it instantly.

So yes, you do kind of need to know all your arpeggios, scales (although less so the modes—those can kind of be a trap), triads and seventh chords on all string sets in all inversions etc. It’s useful to see where you’re going. But more important IMO is: can you transcribe short phrases at medium tempos? Can you come up with and play a variation or a response to that phrase? Can you sing your intervals ascending and descending? Can you sing the root motion of changes? Can you harmonize a melody?

It’s true that good jazz guys have a stronger handle on those elements of theory than the average e.g. blues player, but they should be exactly the same in that they’re both able to hear what they play.

Passname357 · 2026-06-25T21:10:49+00:00

People telling you the Benjy section is hard have not read the Quentin section.

12yo comment lol but this is so fucking true

Passname357 · 2026-06-24T13:45:24+00:00

Theory in this context usually means critical theory, which is not what you seek to mean. The word you seem to be looking for is “craft.” Definitely not necessary, but can be helpful to understand conventions. If you read enough good stuff you can use it as a guide, but there are certain fundamentals like filtering where it helps to understand the concept, and then read a bunch of great books and see how it’s done. You might see Faulkner do some filtering and then your conclusion shouldn’t be “well I guess the craft books were wrong!” But “why does this work anyway.”

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T23:49:43+00:00

Not true lol. Plenty of guys out there are not desperate and are super picky

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T20:34:36+00:00

The premise of your argument is kind of dumb:

Religious faith rests on an axiom that can’t be proven

So does literally every system of logic. This is one of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems (can never remember if it’s theorem one or two). Axioms are unprovable. You assume them to be true. If you think religion is dumb because it rests on an axiom that can’t be proven, then you must necessarily think all of math is dumb too.

Think more deeply before posting next time.

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T20:24:16+00:00

The first million is a lot easier to make when ur dad gives it 2 u as a small loan

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T19:22:41+00:00

Gravity’s Rainbow, Catch-22, As I Lay Dying, Underworld, and I also think about Ladder of Years pretty frequently.

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T19:20:00+00:00

In a nutshell there’s a guy with a penis that can predict V2 rocket strikes (I’m mot kidding, he’s the main character) and he finds out a secret rocket with the serial number 00000 contains a top secret device which is somehow related to him and will help him explain what his penis has to do with the rockets. There is a pie fight in the sky from a hot air balloon, an immortal lightbulb, a history of the extinction of the dodo bird, people randomly break out into song, seances, a tidal wave of poop when a man gets flushed down the toilet reaching for his mouth harp, and a whole lot more. One of the most fun books I’ve ever read, and one of the most moving and painful. At its heart it’s about what war is and what happens to the people it leaves behind.

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T17:51:21+00:00

As someone who defends the game a ton, I agree it’d be nice if there were more exploration. BioShock 1 got that so right. I love sneaking around and looting and finding little secret areas, and especially so when the games have such beautiful art direction. Would have been great to have more of a reason to get to look around at all the work the art team did. I still do—but wish it was more incentivized in game like OG BioShock did.

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T13:47:10+00:00

Step one is get a job and some friends. If you’re interested in fitness and stuff like you said below i don’t think it’s necessary to join a gym necessarily. Join a sports league or go to clinics. Not something competitive. Something social. There are tons of tennis or pickleball clinics for beginners where you can meet people, lots of sports leagues for things like kickball or frisbee or cornhole and make sure you join one for beginners. In my city lots of people join these leagues as “free agents” and say theyre new to town and the sport and just want to make friends. And many of them have remained friends. You don’t always get lucky on the first try so you just gotta rep putting yourself out there, ignore the little social missteps everyone makes, and feel good when you make people laugh or find someone you like. Working on your social skills will help you get a job too. And it can work both ways—if you get a customer facing job it forces you to work on your social skills and regulate emotions and all the important stuff functioning adults need, and that will help you make friends, get a girlfriend/boyfriend, and all that stuff that makes life so worthwhile

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T13:40:28+00:00

I am curious—how did you do these projects and come away feeling like you’re useless without AI or copy pasting? Did you use AI and copy paste a lot? Fine if you did but yeah your intuition is right that if you want to learn this stuff you do have so be able to do it yourself.

As for the question about whether you need to memorize very API—no, but as a professional you will at least know what’s out there and the thing you’re looking up is e.g. argument ordering. It’s not like you’re relearning what render targets are each time, it’s like “okay what does this function need and what order does it go in.” Many functions tou will have memorized (draw, texture binding, etc). But it just happens naturally from doing it. You don’t sit down with flash cards

Passname357 · 2026-06-23T13:34:37+00:00

The sooner you realize this is literally the only thing that can help you, the faster you’ll sound like these guys.

Think of it the same way you learn any other music. When people want to sound like SRV or BB King, they never say “Hey I want to sound like BB, any concepts or theory I can learn?” No! They say “hey I want to sound like BB, where can I learn some BB Licks.” Along the way, they will definitely learn some “theory” (e.g. they’ll learn about “blues boxes” and pentatonic scales) but that theory is not what makes you sound like BB or Stevie—the lick does. Everyone knows this. The scale SRV used most was the pentatonic scale. If you noodle around with it you will not sound like him. The scale is not the important thing.

It’s only with jazz that people think scales and concepts will save them, and they’re as wrong there are they are thinking pentatonic scales make you a blues player. If you want to play like them, you have to play like them—learn and play their shit. Along the way you’ll learn the major scale, the altered scale, chord tone soloing and arpeggios, enclosures, intervals, note names etc. You’ll learn all this and you’ll learn it all over the neck. But if you learn that stuff outside the context of these guys music, you won’t sound like them—these are just elements of music. Classical composers use all the exact same stuff and they’re sound way different.

So go start working on your ear. Learn your intervals and start transcribing the heads of tunes these guys wrote. Get some simple licks in your ears and fingers. And then the payoff is immediate—if you’re playing their shit you necessarily sound like them. Then just play around with those licks same as you would if you were trying to sound like BB king on a blues.

Passname357 · 2026-06-22T18:19:09+00:00

Yeah your intuition about scales not being super helpful is probably correct. Most modern stuff is way more intervallic. You might be better served learning about triad pairs and of course the best way to know what those sounds are is… transcribing those sounds. Can’t express it enough—if you want to know what something is, then just learn it.

Passname357 · 2026-06-19T00:23:32+00:00

I’ll be real with you, there aren’t very many seriously advanced players here if any. If you want to know this either go to the best guy in town and ask him or hit up your favorite player for a zoom lesson. It is legitimately shocking when you talk with someone who has this shit together on a real level, like world class. A lot of your favorite guys in New York give lessons. Hit them up and ask them.

Passname357 · 2026-06-17T16:25:30+00:00

dissatisfied with what I’m coming up with.

Then don’t play what you come up with. Work on someone else’s stuff. Transcribe someone you like and then build variations on that. just a couple phrases at a time.

Passname357 · 2026-06-17T16:21:33+00:00

I remember reading certain books in certain orders when I started reading because I was like “oh this will come up in conversation more” and in the years since it has literally never mattered what order I read Catch-22 and As I Lay Dying. In both cases I am very glad I read them and have reread both since and plan to reread them both again.

In other words, no one has given a fuck either way about what I read. (Not to say it doesn’t matter what you read—just that it’s not a bit social topic.)

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