Little kids playing guitar, WTF?

[sammyg2]

This is when he was 11 years OLD



Now he's 12 and went pro a while ago, played with Jonny Lang live at The Fillmore on June 30, 2007.
http://www.ilike.com/artist/Cole+Citrenbaum/songs
Click on the link for "think it through".

[sammyg2]

[slodave]

Not bad, but he really needs to loose the "bowl cut".

[sammyg2]

This kid played on the ellen show when he was SIX!
He gets into a little blues riff at around 3:00

[sammyg2]

This one will freak you out, rainman guitar playing, Gets real good at around 1:00 and he goes into canon at around 2:00

[slodave]

Canon, is one of the easiest classical pieces to learn and then expand upon. I think it is the "new" Stairway to Heaven.

[sammyg2]

This kid is 7 and he's playing Santana?

[sammyg2]

Here's that same kid that was on the Ellen show, only a year later (8 years old) playing BB King really well. Amazing how fast he's improving.

[sammyg2]

Here he is again jamming in concert with BUDDY GUY and he takes over!

[nostatic]

there have always been good young players around. But frankly all these guys except for "rainman" were painful to listen to (at least to me).

Sad to see the result of baby-boomer dads who loved SRV and shoved it down their kids throat. At least let them listen to some Beethoven and bebop...

[the]

Which one was "rainman?" I assume the one right above your post?

That kid was awesome! I'll admit to being a very sucky musician with a tin ear, but that was totally fun to watch and listen to! I couldn't imagine finding that clip painful.

[Sonic dB]

Im kinda with nostatic on this one... whenever i hear something from a kid i have to wonder whether we are supposed to be amazed because it is from a kid...or amazed because it is great playing....

any dedicated kid can learn note for note renditions of just about anything if they practice and have good teaching....there are 7 year old cellists that can wow my socks off more than some kid playing regurgitated SRV licks...

even Johnnie Lang, Mayer, Los Lonely Boys etc... i really cant stand that style of playing....
because it is so F#king derivative... most blues is passe really....as a guitar player who has been at it for 20
years or so, i appreciate originality and mastery of the instrument, mastery of harmony and extended harmonic functions....over regurgitated SRV, etc. licks.... and when someone writes a great song, and plays well within the context....wow those rare occaisons really impress me...

but they are young give them a few years to develop as musicians and we will see and hear...

[nostatic]

my 11 year old blows me away sometimes on piano. He's been taking lessons for about 6 months now. Not because he can play Für Elise note for note (he can do that for the first part of it, picked up by ear) or because he can do clean scales at 240bpm. What amazes me is that he sits down and just starts noodling. Playing blue notes in his own derivations of what he's heard. I hear bits of Steely Dan, Miles Davis, Eric Clapton, Scott Joplin, and Beethoven. He's taking what he's heard since before birth and is synthesizing it into his own stuff. Without prompting from me or his teacher (his teacher prefers that he read the music, although she does put up with his ramblings).

I would be plenty happy to never hear some young kid playing Pachabel's Canon or another copped SRV lick. Now someone playing SVR licks on banjo...that might be interesting.

[Sonic dB]

because he can do clean scales at 240bpm

damn thats fast on any instrument...especially for his age!
quarter notes or eight or 16th notes?

I wish i would have studied piano at that age. My mom was/is a pianist and i tried but never had the
patience at that age to sit and practice....now 20+ years later, im finally studying piano daily...
if i could turn back time....

you are right about kids absorbing those sounds in his head, nostatic...and it coming out in his playing...

[nostatic]

no, he doesn't do 240bpm. Or maybe he does...haven't put a metronome on him. I don't really encourage that. But he does seem to like playing some songs at breakneck pace. The funniest thing was that he was swinging "The Entertainer". I told him that ragtime is actually pretty strict and that it doesn't really swing...unless he wanted it to.

I started taking piano at age 8 and was somewhat of a phenom. My teacher was this old jazz cat who played trumpet and piano is smokey bars in San Diego. After about 6 months I was playing boogie woogie stuff, heavy left hand, dipping into jazz. After about 9 months of lessons he died. I never found another teacher that I clicked with (had the traditional classical stuff with gold stars, etc) and I drifted away from piano soon thereafter, just keeping up with guitar that I also started at 8, shifting to banjo for a year or two at age 12, then back to guitar. Picked up piano again in college doing some composition but was too lazy to relearn stuff. Another one of those, "I wish I'd..." stories...

[targa911S]

They didn't have video cameras when I started playing.

[flashgordon13]

A freind of my daughter is a truely gifted player on the piano. He could play any peice of music without flaw by the time he was 14. His playing lacked any feeling at that young age, but now that he is 19, he has learned to play with emotion and it is without a doubt breathtaking. Many young players that I have heard share the same lack of true emotion in their playing, but once they learn how to play music and not just notes they become true musicians. It is great to hear these young kids and it is exciting to think of what they will be playing when they are older.

[Sonic dB]

This is Ethan Bortnick....he was on Jay Leno a few weeks ago.... he is 8 years old and is pretty good, plays a little sloppy at times and sometimes his tempo wavers but for his age he is probably considered 'prodigy'? his personality is great... maybe his parents are pushing him into this but he seems pretty happy, well adjusted kid.

[VINMAN]

Originally Posted by slodave

Canon, is one of the easiest classical pieces to learn and then expand upon. I think it is the "new" Stairway to Heaven.

Speaking of Stairway...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KuSihWz7LlQ

[Porsche]

The Asian kid is called Sungha Jung. He's well-known on YouTube - his channel with 76 songs:

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?p=r&user=jwcfree&page=1

He does some cool things on an acoustic:

Mission Impossible Theme:



Smells Like a Teen Spirit by Nirvana:



Africa, original by Toto: