Q: What is the reason that many Baby Boomers are obsessed with the music of their youth instead of new artists? What's wrong with today's music?

A: Every generation prefers the music that was popular when they were 12–24 years old. That’s just human nature. That’s the years when our brains are forming neural pathways about how we think and what we prefer, while we are forming our identity and having new life experiences as we come of age.

But right now, there’s also something else going on: Today’s music is absolute, unmitigated garbage, and people who are used to hearing quality music can’t stand it, no matter when they grew up. Almost all the new music is produced with fake drums and keyboard samples. There are no real instruments. There are no true musicians involved. Nothing is real, it’s all fake.

Even the vocals are fake. Almost every vocal you hear now is autotuned. If you don’t know what autotune is, it’s computerized cheating for singers. Whenever you sing a note off pitch a computer fixes it. Nobody needs musical talent plus 10,000 hours of practice to become a famous music star anymore. Anybody with a tin ear and no musical training at all, who couldn’t sing on pitch even if they had 100 takes in a studio, can still be a star with autotune. But autotune makes the vocal sound weird and unnatural. So music quality goes out the window.

The mixes are so heavily compressed that there is no dynamic range at all, and you can’t even make out the words. And the songs are boring! Many songs feature the just one chord or two chords for the whole song including the intro, verse, and chorus. If there even is a chorus.  In many songs that feature three or four chords, there is a single note that keeps repeating through the entire song over all the chords. There is no bridge. There is no guitar solo. The lyrics are not poetic, they have no meter. They have different numbers of syllables in every line of the song. The lyrics are usually filthy and vulgar, and the only good news is much of the time the singing is such low quality and the mix is so compressed that you can’t even understand the words unless you look at them on your phone.  All the songs sound the same.  In the words of Joe Walsh, “There's no mojo. There's nobody testifying.  There's not the magic of a human performance.”  It sounds awful, it is very amateurish, and very very boring. There is no musicality at all. There is no tonal quality. There is no variety. There is no creativity. There is no expression. There is no art.  The song doesn’t take you anywhere. I would go so far as to say that the very worst contemporary songs of the 60s-80s were more musical than are the very best songs in the last 10 years.

Live performances are no better than the recordings.  The vocals are auto-tuned live.  Can you believe it?  You’re not even hearing what comes out of the singer’s mouth.  You're hearing a computer.  Half the time the “musicians” on stage are just actors.  They are not even plugged into the PA system.  Watch and you’ll see the bass player stop or slide their left hand on the strings and you still hear the bass note continuing.  Some of this isn’t new; bands from way back (for example ABBA) performed concerts with a “backing track” recording of the instruments, like karaoke.  But it’s worse now, because even the singing is fake.

It’s sad, because there are some really good musicians out there making fantastic music. But you’ll seldom hear them on your music subscription service. That’s for a very simple reason: There’s no money in making recordings anymore. Nobody buys albums. They don’t even buy singles. Even if they do buy a single they only pay a buck. Everything is free on YouTube, or you can pay a few bucks a month and hear as much music as you want without ads. Since the record companies hardly make any money, they can’t afford to take a risk on a new artist and spend a bunch of money helping them get started with quality studio time with real musicians. That's too risky, so instead, the few recording companies still in business make cookie cutter songs the cheapest way they can, then they team up with music subscription services to promote that garbage with brainwashing techniques where the songs you hear next are picked by a computer that has been programmed to play what they want you to hear.  That makes you think you like it because you hear it everywhere you go. Instead of the other way around. Real musicians and real songwriters don’t stand a chance in that environment.

Case in point: I watched this year's i-Heart Radio Jingle Ball.  I tried to like it.  I really did.  I had an open mind and looked for the good.  But there wasn't much good to see.  The songs were universally pathetic.  Almost all the "live" vocals were autotuned, most of the bands were a joke, and I have students who have barely started vocal lessons who are already better singers than most of those "stars."

Contrast that with the top seven performances on Season 24 of The Voice.  Every single one of those seven contestants is a better singer, BY FAR, than ANY of the following: Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo, SZA, Sabrina Carpenter, Lizzo, Selena Gomez, Nicki Minaj, Ellie Goulding, Halsey, Julia Michaels, Doja Cat, Bebe Rexha, Kesha, etc etc etc.  To begin with, The Voice Band is a better band than ANY of the instrumentals on the current Top 10.  They learn a dozen songs in a week, by ear, and perform them flawlessly and with amazing musicianship and excellent mix, on live international TV, better than the original recordings.  And all seven contestants sang beautifully, on pitch, and nearly all of them sounded better than the original artists, live, without autotune.  Take for example Mara Justine, who has been a better singer since she was a kid than most of today's famous pop stars.  She was in the finals of America's Got Talent at age 12, the top 14 of American Idol at age 15, and the finals of The Voice at age 20, and over those years has worked hard and improved to the point where she can now blow away nearly all of today's most famous singers.  There's something very, very wrong with a world where Billie Eilish can become famous with a pathetic whispery unsupported air-wasting amateurish vocal technique on songs that sound like they were recorded in her living room with an out-of-tune piano, while most people reading this have no idea who Mara Justine is.  If the music industry were driven by music quality, instead of greed, Mara Justine would be a successful artist with several albums by now, and you would never have even heard of Billie Eilish and the rest of her ilk.

Q:  What is the most important instrument in a rock band: drums, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, or bass?

A:  In one sense, all of the above. The band will sound like crap if ANY of those is not top notch. A band isn’t about one instrument. It is about the sound of the whole. One instrument being great does not make up for another instrument being mediocre.

In another sense, none of the above. The most important “instrument” is the vocalist. That is what the audience notices most, and it is the only person on the stage that tells them the story of the song. More eyes are on the vocalist than on all the other people put together. More ears are paying attention to the melody than to any other instrument. Most kids trying to start a band miss this point: if you don’t have an awesome singer, your band will suck, no matter how fast your guitar player can shred or how many fills your drummer can do or whatever.

Q: Do you think piano is the best instrument to teach music theory on?

A: Yes. Without a doubt. By far. Keyboard is the only instrument that provides a visual representation of many aspects of music theory. You can see the relationship between the notes. You can see why F# and Gb are the same note, and that it is an actual note between F and G, and why Cb isn’t really a separate note, it’s just another name for B. You can see what all the intervals are. You can see how a major triad is a major third and a major fifth from the root, consisting of a major third and then a minor third up from there. You can see how a minor triad just reverses those intervals. You can see these things with your eyes, not just hearing it with your ears (either from a teacher’s words or from listening to the music.) With any other instrument, you just memorize where to put your fingers for a certain note. With a piano, you can see WHY. Any musician who does not have a rudimentary understanding of the keyboard is at a disadvantage for comprehending notes, scales, intervals, chords, key signatures, transposition, and many other aspects of music theory.

Q: Are suspended chords (or sus chords) major or minor?

A:  A triad chord has a 1, 3, and 5.  The 1 is the root note.  The 5 is usually a major fifth up from the root.  (A major fifth is seven notes/seven half steps/seven semitones/seven frets up from the root.)  Major and minor chords both have the same 1 and the same 5.  The difference is the 3.  The definition of a major chord is that the 3 is a major third (interval) up from the root. (A major third is four notes/four half steps/four semitones/four frets up from the root.)  The definition of a minor chord is that the 3 is a minor third up from the root. (A minor third is three notes/three half steps/three semitones/three frets up from the root.)  The definition of a suspended 4 chord is that the 3 is suspended (temporarily) up onto the 4. (The 4 is five notes/five half steps/five semitones/five frets up from the first note.)  Thus, a suspended chord has a 1, 4, and 5.  There is no three.  Because a sus4 chord has neither a major 3 nor a minor 3 in it, the chord is neither major nor minor.  When the suspension is terminated (“resolved”), the non-suspended chord it reverts back to can be either a major or minor chord, depending on the song.

Another way of saying this is you can suspend either a major or minor chord by raising the 3 up to the 4, and in either case the suspended chord is the same.  But the suspended chord itself is neither major nor minor because it has no 3.

Incidentally, this is off the subject, but interesting: The same thing is true of a “Power Chord.”  It is also neither major nor minor, for the same reason: A power chord has only a 1 and a 5, and so—similarly to a sus chord—there is no 3.

Q: Should I practice with only the things my music teacher assigns me or other songs as well to progress faster?

A: It depends entirely on you. If your teacher is pushing you to a high standard and the work assigned requires all the practice time you can give to meet that standard, and if you love the music that is assigned, then probably no. On the other hand, if what you are given comes easily and you want more of a challenge, or if you can give more practice time than is needed to meet your teacher’s expectations, or if your musical interests extend beyond the genre the teacher specializes in, then by all means learn other songs in addition!!! You choose.

Personally, when I was taking lessons I was often playing songs that were not assigned, some by ear and some with music, in addition to what was assigned. My teacher didn’t like it, but I’d have gone nuts just playing what she assigned. Or I would have quit in frustration. Hopefully you have a more flexible teacher than I had, who will be pleased when you play a song he or she has not assigned, and give feedback on it and help you with it. Either way, play songs and pieces you love, but also learn all you can from your teacher. There is value in both.

Some wise teachers are happy when students take initiative and learn a song on their own. Other more traditional teachers aren’t. That’s okay. Just do what’s best for you.

Q: Why do you not like the new country music style?

A: Because it isn’t country music. It’s pop and rock, sung with a southern accent. There are no acoustic guitars, or slide guitars, or fiddles.  It's all electric guitars (tuned to Eb for some strange reason) and electronic keyboards.  There is no country flavor or beat.  The phenomenon is not limited to the music itself.  Instead of boots and a cowboy hat and awesome cowboy shirt, these guys come onto the stage in tennis shoes and a baseball cap and T-shirt.  To a large degree, there no longer is a country genre; the artists have abandoned it.

Q: Who do guitar/piano/bass teachers feel are the most difficult students to teach?

Answer by Harry Roberts (Irv agrees):  The kids who refuse to practice tops the list. They come in thinking that there MUST be a “hack” or “Shortcut” - when I’ve explained that it’s hours of work every single day, they roll their eyes like I’m a stupid old man and THEY know better. So they come in every week, their parents pay and they sit and never make progress.

Answer by Dennis Aguilar (Irv agrees):
Those who are not eager and earnest.
Those who are unwilling to put in the work.
Those who lose interest easily.

Q: How can sounds of the same frequency and intensity differ from each other? For example, the same note can be heard differently on guitar and piano.

Answer by Bob Lang (Irv agrees):

Instruments have different sounds due to a number of factors:

•    Harmonics. The note A above middle C has a fundamental frequency of 440 Hz, however we know from analysis that a note will also have components at 880Hz (2x440), 1320Hz (3x440), 1760Hz (4x440) and so on. These additional frequencies are called harmonics or overtones and they change the sound or timbre of a note. Harmonics will be present in different amounts for different instruments, and furthermore the amount of each harmonic may change as the note continues. Typically, the higher harmonic decay faster over time.

•    Non-harmonic frequencies. In addition to the harmonic frequencies, which are integer multipliers of the fundamental frequency, there may be additional non-harmonic frequencies present. These will also have an effect on the sound. Typically, a note will have a lot of non-harmonic high frequencies at the start of a note which quickly die away. There may also be constant low frequencies present giving the note vibrato.

•    Envelope. The envelope of a note is the way its volume or intensity increases and decreases over time. The initial rise in amplitude at the start of a note is called that attack and the way it dies away over time is called the decay. In between there may be a period of reasonably constant amplitude called the sustain. Changing the envelope of a note can radically change how we hear the note. For instance, a recording of a piano note played backwards sounds like a gradually increasing organ note, that suddenly dies away.

•    Other factors, such as the selective amplification of certain frequencies by the instrument’s body, resonance, reflections, and others also change the nature of the sound.

Irv's Response to Bob Lang's Answer:

Bob Lang’s answer is exactly correct. I will only add one small contribution: HOW harmonics happen on stringed instruments.

If you were to video a string, closeup, while it is vibrating, in slow motion, you would see that it does not just vibrate back and forth in a uniform way, with the widest motion at the center of the string. It also moves in many other ways, and these motions are very fast. Think of it as “shimmers.” Those shimmers add brilliance (which is technically called harmonics but we can think of as high pitched treble frequencies that increase the pleasant definition of the note.) The amount and type of brilliance added depends on many things, including but not limited to: where on the string it is plucked, hit, or bowed (pluck a guitar at the 12th fret and it will have less brilliance than when plucked over the sound hole, which will have less brilliance than down by the bridge); what it is plucked or hit with (a thin pick vs a hard pick vs a finger vs a thumb; or in a piano a hammer vs a hammer with a thumbtack on the end); the thickness/mass and tension of the string (try playing the same note on 3 different strings on a guitar by using different frets, and the thicker strings always have less brilliance); the type of material used to make the string (nylon strings vibrate very differently from steel strings; and 80/20 brass vibrates differently than phosphor bronze); and many other factors.

Additionally, different construction and materials used in one instrument versus another will cause the soundboard — which creates the sound waves in the air — to vibrate differently in response to the string’s vibration. Think of a banjo vs a steel string guitar: the difference isn’t so much in the strings, it’s in the body and soundboard of the instrument. This is also true to a smaller degree with two instruments of the same type. Even if two guitar’s (or two piano’s or harp’s) strings vibrate identically on a certain note, the soundboards will translate that vibration into motion that creates sound waves very differently from each other because of different species of wood, body shapes, and bracing.

You can see all this in a diagram of the wave form. The big sine wave shape is the fundamental note. All the smaller jiggles on the line as it moves up and down are the harmonics, non harmonics, resonance, etc. that Bob is talking about.

Q: How can a speaker create all of the sounds in a song (for example, guitar notes, drums, and vocals) simultaneously?

A:  The reason a speaker can create all the sounds simultaneously is the same reason why your ears can hear all the sounds simultaneously. And why a microphone can hear them all simultaneously. That reason is: all the sounds mix together into one very complex sound wave. The sound of each instrument does not travel through a tube separately from the other sounds. Its waves interact and mix with the others because all the air molecules interact with all the waves. A speaker merely reproduces the same vibrating motions as your ears experience when you hear a band live.

Q:  If sound is caused by changes in air pressure, then why doesn't my guitar create currents in the air when I strum it?

A:  Because air “currents” are one way. Sound waves are two way. Sound waves are not movements of air going in a direction. They are vibrations. The air molecules do not migrate from one place to another like wind. They move back and forth a very tiny distance, very rapidly (between 40 times per second and 16,000 times per second.) This creates areas of high and low pressure, and it is those areas of differences in pressure that move at the speed of sound. A 600 mph wind would do a lot of damage! Sound waves move that fast but the air molecules move only a microscopic distance, back and forth, staying on average in the same place! A rough analogy might help: Sound waves are not like a stream of water, where the water moves down the stream bed. They are more like ripples in a pond, where the water stays in one place, but it jiggles back and forth.

Q:  Can you become an expert like really good at piano and guitar in 4 to 6 years of lessons twice a week for 1 hour for each?

A:  The short answer is yes, it CAN be done. Several of my students have become VERY good at both piano and guitar in 4–6 years with once-a-week lessons of 1 hour each. (One of them made it to the finals of America's Got Talent after 4 years of lessons, playing both guitar and piano in that competition, at age 15.)

But whether it actually happens for a specific person depends upon several factors. Prior musical experience, innate musical talent, fine muscle coordination, and quality of instruction all make a difference. But by far the biggest determinant — nothing else comes close — is determination, commitment, and PRACTICE TIME. If you have musical talent, are HIGHLY motivated, and practice an hour a day or more (preferably two hours), chances are decent that you’ll succeed. (My student who was on AGT practiced about 4 hours a day for 4 years.)

Q: How long should a beginner spend on learning the guitar or playing the piano each day?

A: That depends on how fast you want to progress. It is up to you, ultimately. If you are taking lessons from a good teacher, the more you practice, the faster you will progress and the better you will ultimately become.

If you are asking what guitar and piano teachers think, most would recommend the weekly lesson length every day. For a 1/2 hour lesson, you should practice at least 1/2 hour each day, at least 5 days per week. For a 45-minute lesson practice at least 45 minutes per day, for an hour lesson make it an hour. That’s the minimum. But if you want to really progress, go longer. Teachers LOVE students who practice more than the minimum. (With guitar, for the first couple of weeks take it easy so you don’t get blisters on your left fingers while you build up callouses, then gradually increase.)

If you are asking how long to practice if you are not taking lessons and are instead learning from books or Youtube or DVDs or streaming or Skype or group classes/lessons, I hate to say it, but it doesn’t matter how long you practice. Most beginners will never get correct technique unless they take one-on-one lessons from a competent teacher who knows what he or she is doing and is actually physically in the room with you. In fact, in many cases the more you practice the worse it is for you, because once you learn bad habits, it is really hard to unlearn them later and replace them with correct technique. Don’t believe the online ads for secret ways to learn a musical instrument in less time for less money with some kind of a special shortcut method if you just sign up for their program. Utter nonsense.