The Worst Musical Advice in My Life – Part 3

As a kid, I was obsessed with AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and Jimi Hendrix.

Big riffs. Wild solos. Energy. Attitude.
All I wanted was to learn how to play like that.

So I went to my first guitar teacher.
He asked me what kind of music I wanted to play.

I said:

“I’d like to learn stuff like Jimi Hendrix.”

He looked at me and said:

“I can’t teach you Jimi Hendrix. It’s blues rock, and you can’t learn the blues.
You just have to feel the blues.”

And then he rejected me as a guitar student.

That sentence stayed in my head for years.

“You can’t learn the blues” is pure nonsense

Let’s rip this apart.

“You can’t learn the blues. You just have to feel it.”

Imagine saying this in any other serious discipline:

“You can’t learn classical piano, you just have to feel it.”
“You can’t learn jazz harmony, you just have to feel it.”
“You can’t learn surgery, you just have to feel it.”

It’s absurd.

Yes, emotion is a huge part of music.
But emotion without language, vocabulary and skills is just noise.

The blues is not some vague mystical fog.
It’s a real musical language with:

forms (12-bar, 8-bar, turnarounds)
harmony (I–IV–V, dominant 7th chords, substitutions)
phrasing ideas
rhythmic concepts
melodic vocabulary

You don’t “just feel” that out of nowhere.
You study it. You listen, you copy, you analyze, you practice.

Blues is advanced, not “just three chords”

There’s another myth:

“Blues is easy, it’s just three chords.”

Wrong again.

Yes, the surface of the blues can look simple:
I–IV–V in a 12-bar form.

But playing blues well means:

phrasing behind or ahead of the beat
bending in tune
using tension and release
call-and-response between phrases
dynamics and touch
interacting with the band
telling a story in your solo instead of dumping licks

That’s not “just feeling it”.
That’s years of listening + copying + experimenting + refining.

Blues is one of the most unforgiving styles of music.
If your timing, tone, touch or phrasing are off, everybody hears it immediately.

Why this advice is so destructive for beginners

Telling a beginner:

“You can’t learn the blues. You just have to feel it.”

does a few very damaging things:

It makes the style unreachable
Blues becomes some kind of magical secret club you’re either born into or excluded from.
It kills motivation
If you can’t learn it… why bother trying?
Why practice, why study, why listen deeply?
It hides the teacher’s limitations
Very often, “you can’t learn this” actually means:
“I don’t know how to teach this.”
It pushes beginners into confusion
A beginner doesn’t need mysticism. They need:

- clear steps
- simple examples
- concrete exercises
- feedback on phrasing and feel

You don’t tell a beginner:

“Just pick up a guitar and feel the blues.”

You give them:

a 12-bar form to play
a few chord shapes
a simple minor pentatonic pattern
one or two classic licks
and you teach them how to breathe between phrases

That’s how you start.

Do you have to feel the blues?

So, do you have to “feel the blues”?

Yes.
But not in the way that teacher meant.

You have to feel any kind of music you want to play:

you have to feel groove in funk
you have to feel tension and release in rock
you have to feel space and silence in ballads
you have to feel storytelling in solos

Feel is essential.
But feel grows out of understanding and repetition.

You listen.
You learn the language.
You imitate.
You experiment.
You internalize.

And one day, you’re not “trying to sound bluesy” anymore.
You’re just playing, and it’s there.

What I wish that teacher had said

Instead of:

“I can’t teach you Hendrix. You can’t learn the blues.”

He could have said:

“Great, Hendrix is blues-based.
Let’s start by learning the blues language step by step.
Then you’ll understand what he’s doing.”

He could have:

shown me a 12-bar blues in E
taught me one minor pentatonic box
given me a couple of Hendrix-style double-stops
made me copy one or two short licks from a solo
put on a backing track and said:
“Now we’re going to play very simple phrases and leave space.”

That would have changed everything.

Never tell a beginner “you just have to feel it”

“Just feel it” is not instruction.
It’s not guidance.
It’s a cop-out.

If you’re a teacher:

Don’t hide behind magic words.
Don’t turn your own limitations into philosophy.
Don’t tell beginners that certain styles can’t be learned.

If you’re a student:

Don’t let anyone convince you that you “don’t have what it takes” because you’re not born with a style.
Find people who can actually break things down and help you grow.

Blues, rock, jazz, metal, whatever you love:

You can learn it.
You should study it.
And yes, you absolutely have to feel it.

But feeling comes after you’ve spent time living with the language –
not as a mystical shortcut that replaces the work.

Transcript

The worst musical advice in my life, Part 3.
As a kid I was into AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, and Jimi Hendrix.

I had an interview with my first guitar teacher.
He asked me what kind of music I wanted to play.
I said I would like to learn stuff like Jimi Hendrix.
He said, “I can’t teach you Jimi Hendrix.
It’s blues rock and you can’t learn the blues.
You just have to feel the blues.”

And he rejected me as a guitar student.
Blues music is a very advanced style of music.
You have to learn it, you have to study it.

So do you have to feel the blues?
Sure you do. You have to feel any kind of music you want to play.
Never tell a beginner guitarist, “You just have to pick up a guitar and feel the blues.”

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