This Isn’t Music… It’s Marketing

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]Wow. So, it looks like I have seemingly made the most unpopular video I've ever created on this channel. Literally, look at this like to dislike ratio. 53% likes to dislikes is insanity. Look at how many subscribers I lost in like the first three hours of this video being up. Mindblowing. I definitely did not expect to get uh those kinds of analytics back on my video. Uh which is kind of funny, you know, but at the same time, I feel no shame sharing my opinion on YouTube, as much as I'm sure some of you want me to. I have no apology for you in this video. I think there's a couple things to note about this ban that I can't pronounce her name that I'm not even going to try to a second time in the follow-up to the first video. But I want to read you an email sent to me by a subscriber. And of course, I'm going to keep this anonymous cuz I'm not going to I'm not going to put my subscriber on blast, you know, but I think this really sums up everything I wanted to say and did say in my first video almost better than how I said it.

[00:01:07]So, this says from this person, "Hey man, like the last video you did, don't listen to the haters on that one. I've been very frustrated that no one has said anything like this. And anytime I voiced that kind of criticism of them in the comments, people went after me like you wouldn't believe. I believe it.

[00:01:26]Also, I agree with your underlying premise. I think a guitar culture is in a lot of trouble and I do not believe bands like are the solution. Good songwriting is the solution in my opinion. I 100% agree. I see a band like this and it looks like novelty and technique with nothing structural really surrounding it. I love good technique and surprising experimentation if it does in the context of adding it to a song, but the stuff for its own sake doesn't really do much. I think there is a big divide in the guitar community right now. Not sure how best to express it, but it's like some people want guitar to go into space and never touch Earth at all, which to me feels like a recipe for increasing irrelevance of the instrument. I don't have any particular issue with this band doing what they do. They seem like they they seem like something that a few years ago would have been something you might see as an interesting street performance. I agree. My issue is with no one allowing valid criticism of their music and people not listening about and people not listening about some of the pitfalls ahead. If this becomes the next big thing microonal guitar is fine but if it starts supplanting regular guitars it is basically a new instrument. We are no longer playing the instrument bands like Led Zeppelin or Chuck Barry pioneered. I agree. My sense is people think the problem is all the old notes are just played out and this will open up new fields of exploration.

[00:03:19]But I think it just comes down to people not writing good songs that connect to people. And if they are going to go the microonal direction, plenty of real microonal music to draw on. System of a Down basically took Armanian and Middle Eastern microonal music and used it for metal. And they weren't the first. I definitely agree. I mean, Miseroo is not truly microonal. He's talking about Dick Dale uh the song Miseroo, I believe. Uh probably the one you hear in Pulp Fiction. If they were playing stuff like that on a microonal guitar, I would be a lot less concerned. Well, I think this is a great point. Uh thank you for the email from anonymous subscriber there.

[00:04:02]And um I think that really sums up basically the whole issue I've had with this band from the beginning and where I feel like this is not music but rather marketing. Now of course this band very suspiciously has blown up overnight to a point where they are now signed to the same record label uh for distribution rather. So, they're not technically on the roster of the label, but they do have a distribution deal with Dave Matthews owned label. That is the same label King Gizzard is on, which is ironic. Obviously, they've quite literally become an overnight sensation band. I do find it incredibly suspicious that when I Google this band, a bunch of polka dots pop up on the screen. Like, what is that? I don't know. There is also a chance I feel that you know what I stated in the first video about this band only playing riffs a bunch of times in a repetitive fashion. It could also be for the sole reason that it is possible that maybe they purchased microonal instruments with the infatuation of creating something different sounding but never actually took the time to learn about the instrument and how it works. There might be a factor here that they don't actually know what keys they're playing in, which is why they might be limited to just playing riffs. And if they maybe were able to take the time to learn about the fretboard on the instrument and where their key centers are and how the western scales can be converted into microonal scales, then you might actually hear a lot more melodic stuff coming out of this band rather than just pure riffs for every song. Of course, it could be a completely artistic motive to just play riffs on a micro tonal guitar, but I have found that a lot of uh YouTube tutorials about microonal instruments when there's not really a lot of foresight are just showing you how to play riffs that sound weirder than they normally would on a regular guitar. Of course, like I said, this could just be an artistic direction the band wants to take or they only write riffs. But I do find that when every song is surrounding a riff that there maybe is just a potential for a lack of musical knowledge surrounding the types of instruments they chose to play. But now let's talk about some bands that had very similar overnight success that we have not heard from today. Let's talk about um years ago now. The band Foster the People, they had a very, very huge song called Pumped Up Kicks. This song, I mean, I remember I was there for it.

[00:06:35]It was literally everywhere you went.

[00:06:38]Every commercial it was in. Every single radio station was playing it. Every YouTube ad had it at the time. This was like I thought actually the direction uh that alternative rock music was going because of how big this band got overnight. Where are they now? I have not heard a single thing from this band since that happened. They probably had max popularity for like one year when they put out this album. And honestly, that was a good song. Fun. Another band that not only got mainstream success overnight, actually had multiple hits in a row, at least on one album, even did uh their biggest song with another artist, that being Pink. another uh band that was probably one of the most famous bands for like one year and we've never heard from them since. Uh one more artist that I think is probably the most famous one that is worth mentioning into this criteria is Goautier. Uh so popular that Prince said it was his favorite song.

[00:07:43]And he had kind of a gimmick going. He had the weird music video where he painted himself a bunch of crazy colors and that was a super super catchy song.

[00:07:53]and he was literally probably the most popular artist for like one year of his life. And that song was so huge that I'm pretty sure he made millions and just retired. I think his was probably more of a purposeful retirement from reading about his bio that he just made so much money off the song that he decided, you know, I'm done with the music industry.

[00:08:12]I don't need to do any more of this. In looking at these artists, a very common denominator between all of them that this band does not have is they all had actual songs. Can you name a single song from this band? I can't and I don't know anyone else that can. All I hear about is their crazy costumes and their microonal instruments, but I don't know of anybody actually talking about their actual songs. They don't have any songs.

[00:08:40]All their songs are uh literally just a jam track of a riff that's repeating over and over and over again. That's not to say that maybe this band can't develop their sound and take it somewhere further, but I think right now it's being way overhyped than it should be if we're just looking at it from a musical perspective. I do realize that them having such an insane looking gimmick uh makes it so that the hype around them is built even more. I think King Gizzard is a great example of a band that has already achieved this style of music as they literally did an entire microonal album. They don't necessarily have the same hype around them because they have only leaned into the music rather than relying on a gimmick to get them there. So, I truly do believe that if you took away the crazy costumes that no one would really be putting their eyes on this band at all. If they would have done that YouTube performance and they just looked like some regular guys, I don't really think anyone would have thought twice about it to be honest with you. Um, and that's not saying that uh every single artist that wears a gimmick is not good, although I do feel like in my opinion the majority of them I don't like.

[00:09:53]There's Buckethead.

[00:09:55]I think he's good. I think in looking at this band, it kind of exposes more of a deeper issue going on right now. And I think the issue more so is just that we've been kind of lost in this musical world that is starting to lack a direction on which way everyone wants to go. Um, we've been completely taken over by digital everything, including, you know, to where we got to a point where people's voices sound like robots on a record. I feel like every album I've heard in the last 10 years, I can literally hear the autotune on someone's voice. And it's like, are we listening to a real person or are we listening to a robot? And then now we have AI that can recreate, you know, that same sound.

[00:10:41]Obviously, here's the deficit where everybody I think lies with the AI thing is that AI is only creating stuff that we've already created, right? So, in a sense, us as humans created our own downfall musically by overproducing everything by making everything perfect, wanting it to sound inhuman, and then you have artificial intelligence that is not a human that can create your inhuman sound, and then we're mad at it. But in a way, we already trained everything to do that. We trained AI to do it. We trained our ears to hear it. I think really what's going on here is people are hearing and seeing actual musicians playing their music. That's what has everybody excited being that, you know, there was no backing tracks with this band. The guitar player literally looped everything on a looper pedal live, which is is hard to do. I I will give credit where it is due because using a looper with a drummer takes a lot of practice.

[00:11:43]At the same time, if I'm going to be a harsh critic and just talk from a musical standpoint, there is nothing musically here that makes this band interesting to the point where they don't even have any songs that are memorable that I could name off the top of my head. I sent this band to uh many of my friends uh without even uh you know giving them context. Almost every single one of them said they couldn't listen to 15 seconds of it without turning it off. Obviously, there is a there is a place for microonal music, although I do feel like there's many artists that have done it much better than this band. Um, and I do feel like this band right now is a product of our own musical deficit that we're facing in the year 2026. I do feel like if it was any other time that this would not be as popular as it is. I think obviously at the end of the day we will all find out if this band is long lasting. Maybe they go and uh you know craft their sound and actually create songs and maybe we'll actually hear a song from this band or they're just going to fade out and we'll never hear of them again and everyone's going to forget about this band a year from now. You never know. So somebody's going to be right. Maybe I'll stand corrected. Maybe I'll be right. I don't know. It's not really about that in a sense. It's more about understanding the scope of our music culture. I think my uh subscriber that sent me the email there is absolutely 100% correct. And right now we're fa just facing a simple deficit of good songwriting and good musicianship. And if we can all try to do that, I think we'll be sitting in a much better music culture and music economy as a whole. If you want to study with me and become a better musician and a better guitar player, email me directly. My email is in the link in the description below as well as a pin comment and state your case if it's a good fit. I'd love to work with you.

[00:13:33]Don't forget to sign up for my free monthly newsletter where you get access to all of my tabs and I will see you on the next video. Thanks for watching.