Dont ya hate it when...

You think to yourself "Hmm, Im actually getting pretty good here!" and then you go to say, guitar center, and there is some dude there who just rips your face off!
I guess being good is a little bit of a subjective thing, but as far as musician vs. musician, I dont stack up like I thought I did.
Of course, thats not why a lot of people start playing, to be "better then" the next guy. But one can't help it after playing for the better part of a decade to begin to compare. But I can also really appreciate other musicians and learn from them.

But aint it a bitch getting those little "humbling" moments!

yeah it does suck.

Originally Posted by: TOXIC SHOCK TROOPER... But one can't help it after playing for the better part of a decade to begin to compare. But I can also really appreciate other musicians and learn from them...

[font=trebuchet ms]That's the essence of it. right there. When someone blows you away,sit back a bit and pay close attention, because this is where you can learn something.

I like to say that I've been playing since '68, but I've been learnin' since '67.[/font]

I'm a pretty humble guitar player and I love it when there's some dude in the music shop totally rockin' out. As long as they don't have the ego to match their skill. If it's a nice person, I get excited as it's an opportunity to ask some questions and get some pointers.

Leedogg, yea, your right actually. I get super stoked when there is someone ripping it up in a guitar shop and they are fun to watch, hell, thats basically how I learned the artificial Harmonic technique.
In this case, it seemed more like this guy felt an urge to kind of show me up. There were 50 amps he could have used and it was a big store, but he sits right next to me and cranks his amp up twice as loud (and twice as distorted) as mine. It diddn't bother me, I thought he was just checking it out for a few minutes, whatever, but then he sat there for a half hour just playing scales, aprs, whatever.
I've been in half a dozen guitar shops a number of times and I know how it is, that stuff happens all the time and of course if someone is looking at a guitar, they are going to want to spend time with it beforehand. And I could have just KRANKED up my $*** too, but whatever.

Not a big deal, and like you said, the dude was fun to watch!

I've never much liked the atmosphere of big guitar shops. It seems like some big chop fest, where people aren't even testing their guitars, they're just playing everything they know, and hope somebody else notices them.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to go and jam at a guitar store, I'd just rather seen it done at somewhere that is designed for a jam, not for a sale.

As for the whole people being better than other people, I've noticed that to. That's why I don't try to go everywhere and be like, "Hi, I'm a guitar player." I like friendly competition, but when people start to feel bad about their own playing it's no fun. If I see some dud who is 10x better than me, I just think back to myself, "Maybe that will be me in a couyple of years."