Ana Vidović: evaluation

Transcript context

…Given that YouTube is such a wonderful instructional medium, can you imagine America developing more of its own, like, house music tradition — Hausmusik, as the Germans said. Is that in the cards? How is YouTube going to change guitar playing and classical guitar instruction and performance? Well, I think it has changed it already a little bit. We just have to be careful not to have too much of it in our life. Sometimes I find myself even, personally, looking for videos and watching, and then I have to stop and say, “Oh, I still have to go back to what I do.” Of course, every influence is good, but if it’s too much, then it’s not so good. You still have to preserve what you’re doing and stay true to that. Sometimes I meet students that don’t have a teacher, so they learned from YouTube. Sometimes they learn in the wrong way, which is a mistake. If you learn in the wrong way, it’s very, very difficult to change it and fix the mistakes later. So you have to be careful what you search for in YouTube and from whom you learn because there are so many videos. For me, I think there is a little bit of danger in that because, in Europe, you usually had one teacher, and you would work with him for many, many years. There was no YouTube. We had live concerts that we would go to, and that’s how we learned, but we didn’t have outside influences. Sometimes it’s very difficult to even conceive that we live in a world that now everything is just there. You just type it in, and it’s there. It’s great. It’s wonderful, but again, we still have to be true to who we are and develop our own way. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I think it will be there for many, many years. YouTube is a very important part of our lives, and it’s wonderful. For me, personally, it has helped me a lot in my career. I just hope that people still would want to go out and visit live concerts and be there in the same room with the artists. László Polgár once said, “Geniuses are made, not born.” Now, if you think of yourself — your brother is an excellent guitarist, your father an electric guitarist. One of your brothers is a pianist. There’s yourself. All from the same family. How do you think about this? Is it common training, something in the water, genes? What’s your take?…

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