Amateur Hour...

Browsing for audio product demonstrations on the web and having to skim through dozens and dozens of home made videos, with unbearable sound quality, barely watchable video, and irrelevant observations... That's not mentioning all the well-intentionned amateurs who can barely play a power chord.
 
Sometimes, I'd pay for a pro version of the internet. (But then again, some pro reviewers have became relatively well-known and their reviews have become insufferably self-indulging.)
 
Incidentally, as of this week, my wife's show has become the first Cirque show where people are officially allowed to film and take pictures. Meaning that they're now playing to an audience consisting of an army of iPhones and iPads, making it hard to even see a face in the audience, even as they bow out at the end of the show...
 
With 2 shows a night, I can't imagine the phenomenal quantity of unwatchable/unlistenable lofi junk that will be uploaded on YouTube...
 
Seriously - who could even conceive that anyone would want to sit through 90 minutes of detestable quality footage filmed from a single hand-held device which is not in the least designed to handle the lighting on the stage? From a remote spot in the audience...
 
- That person needs counselling. 

On the other hand....

If you collect together all the iPhone footage from all over the audience and sync it together you could create a 3D holo deck with hundreds of audio channels to match and walk around it and see parts of the show you never saw before and and and.... And...

Pedro.... Beam me up...

That impression seemed to prevail all through the day, as later in the evening, I started putting together a list of songs my wife and I could potentially work on, be it just for live gigs.
 
Hoping to maybe save some time, in two cases, I tried to see if there were charts available. The songs were pretty jazzy, w/ interesting chord strictures, inversions and all, and I thought it'd save me some time and make sure I didn't miss a thing.
 
Man... For one song, the only thing I could find was a single note adaptation of the winds, and only for the intro - not even a chord in there. Worst is, there is an actual guitar track in that song! So I sat down with a piece of paper and wrote my own basic charts.
 
For the second, which was piano + orchestra, the only thing I found was an overly simplified adaptation, in the wrong key...
 
I must say I'm suspecting Bapu on this one because it had been transposed from G#m to Am. 

yorolpal
Could not agree more about most "demos" on YouTube. Barely competent players just noodling or playing loops of almost unlistenable dreck. But then I'm a certified curmudgeon and effete snob. But, hey, I can live with that.

You know, I have no illusions about my own abilities or lack thereof. I perfectly understand wanting to share stuff on YouTube. I do that too. But usually, I keep it unlisted and I am certainly not delusional enough to believe that I could be doing reviews and tutorials.