I'll say it: I dig YouTube. Like any other posting site, there's a fair amount of crapola, but there's also some useful stuff and some things that are just plain hilarious. Most of the use that I've gotten from YouTube has been in relation to music. You see, when my son was born I started digging around for relaxing music to play in his room at night to help him sleep, and I came across a CD at YPL called "Lute Music for Witches and Alchemists" by lutenist Lutz Kirchhof. Well, I've always had a long-standing interest in alchemy, primarily via Jung, so I was intrigued; we tried it, and it became our staple bedtime music. Being a guitarist, I became enamored of the lute, especially renaissance lute music, and learned a couple of pieces on guitar. I eventually bought an actual lute; however, technique for lute is somewhat different than for guitar, and since there are no lute instructors anywhere near here (or anywhere in Ohio, for that matter), I had a need to actually see people playing the instrument so I could get an idea of how it's done. Lemme tell ya, there ain't a whole lot of resources for lute; so I did a search on YouTube for "lute" and it brought up a bunch of videos of lute players! Yahoo! Just what I needed! I'm still working on my technique, but being able to watch pros doing it has really helped- and YouTube is great for guitar stuff, too. Considering how it's helped me, I could conceive of YouTube being useful as a reference tool for some things.
Anyway, the clip I'm posting is of Ronn McFarlane, one of the premier lutenists on the planet, playing some original pieces:
Nice stuff. Incidentally, my son loves YouTube as well. For a glimpse into his viewing choices, click HERE, HERE and HERE.
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