1 - Applause

You ever been to a posh concert of Beethoven, or Chopin or Mozart or something? There's always this thing that, between movements of a piece, you DON'T applaud. If you are the one caught out for applauding when the music stops, you are a PLEBIAN MORON and everybody around you is silently mocking your disgraced visage. You ONLY applaud at the end of the 3 or 4 movements!!!

Well, actually, it's pretty bullshit. Back in the day, it was pretty normal to applaud at the end of a movement. The composers loved this. I mean, it shows appreciation. Sometimes, like with composers such as Liszt (often considered the first rock star), he might have depended on it in order to invigorate his performances, in which he would supposedly play so roughly on the piano he would destroy it, and (having had this prepared in advance as part of the dazzle of the show) have a new one wheeled in.

Not only would people clap between movements, but they would do so mid-performance if it was suitable, and they weren't afraid to chit-chat and cheer and jeer throughout. If it was received well enough, a performance might even repeat the moovement before going on to the second one.

This whole 'SILENCE UNTIL COMPLETION WITH MAD RESPECT' thing is just a modern twist, as we have kind of separated such an activity to those who are elite (or those who can afford to act elite since concerts are not that expensive anymore), and those who are scum.

At least, that's the vibe I get. If I had the balls, I'd deliberately be the sole applauder between movements out of spite.

2 - Fingernails

Any guitarist who has delved even a few minutes into the realm of classical guitar knows that, in order to play it, you need long, carefully filed nails. This is often what puts people off guitar entirely. You need long nails on one hand, but short nails on the other? Absurd. Imagine what people would think. It's certainly a turn-off for any would-be female guitarists.

Turns out that's bullshit too. I always felt this way, to be honest. Nails didn't make sense to me on the picking hand. It felt uncomfortable, my fingernail shape felt too fat and wide even if I were to file them into shape, and frankly I just preferred the soft, fleshy sound of a finger.

As it happens, I'm not the only one, and it's actually common to not have long nails. There may be as many regular nailed classical guitarists as not.

_{Screenshot from Brandon Acker Youtube Channel}

As you can see, this isn't exactly new either. There's been no-nail guitarists for 400 years, or, pretty much the entire duration of the existence of guitars.

No nails on the guitar are, as I always felt, a softer, warmer tone. There is perhaps a place for both, but I have no intention of ever going the nail route. It makes tremolos a little harder maybe but practice makes perfect, and that's a pretty advanced technique anyway.

It just seems like another one of those artificial barriers put in place in recent years to separate the turd from the whey.

3 - Guitar Tab

Guitar Tabs are one of the most discriminated against forms of music notation. If you're a guitarist starting by yourself or just not classically, you learn guitar with tablature. Nothing wrong with it, although without professional tablature the information you can get is somewhat limited, so you often have to use your ears to figure out the rhythm and such.

A professional tab, however, has pretty much all you need, perhaps more than standard notation.

The elites have endless memes online of guitarists looking at music notation and sweating profusely with anxiety or running away or dying. And in a way, it's true. It's a kind of secret shame among guitarists that they can't do what 'real musicians' can do: sight read music.

But it turns out, Tablature has been the standard for guitar for centuries. Again, since pretty much the dawn of guitar, perhaps even earlier with the lute.

(Wikipedia) - From the year 1554!

This also makes a lot of sense. You just can't get all the information from standard notation. For example, there are up to SIX of the exact same E on a guitar (same octave). Every note has multiples of itself across the fretboard.

However, depending on the location up the string and which string will determine the tone of that note, the quality of the sound. Any guitar has two types of strings at least, the wound ones, and the non-wound ones, with differing materials.

Playing the same note on two strings makes a huge difference. But in standard notation, this nuance isn't written. You would have to simply write it above as an instruction if you specificallyant a position to be played or interpreted as such.

Not so with tab. You just see the exact location on the fretboard it is meant to be played.

Also, it is mighty difficult to sight read guitar because, unlike a piano or violin, you can have chords that have one note in the low register, 3 notes in the middle, and 2 in the high pitch register, all at once. You can have a note higher in pitch on a lower string, while a lower pitch note on the higher string is played.

Again, a nuance that can't easily be expressed in standard notation.

Tab simply makes sense as a form of music for guitar. Granted, there are also some benefits the other way around, but modern tab has done a fine job adapting by creating a very efficient blend of the two; including the note stems for rhythm, for example (although this particular example isn't new, either)

It's once more just one of those snobby, elitist barriers that people have come to terms with in the modern era of music.

This mindset is a pervasive disease in music. It's one of the last strongholds of the aristocratic mindset where people try to segregate themselves from the inferiors beneath them, under the guise of being refined. I suffered it plenty in University myself and clearly I never let it go.

To be clear, overall I still believe standard notation is the best on a purely functional level. Lord, people have tried alternatives but they're all pretty tacky, and notation has evolved itself to accomodate modern ideas such as microtones and electronics.

I just think we should let people play music, make music, do music, however the fuck they want without putting each other into in and out groups.