Guitar Peeve

Okay, so I have a pet peeve. First of all, I am a self-proclaimed musician. The first instrument that I endeavored to learn, or should I say, taught myself, was the guitar. After that I tried my hand at the cello, and most recently, I started playing brass instruments. The pet peeve I want to talk about has to do with my first love, the guitar. Now, I know a lot of people claim to play the guitar. For some it’s an understatement and for others, well…Anyway, when I taught myself how to play, I started out with a book that taught me the notes on the guitar—not just the string names but also all the notes on the fret board. From there I learned basic chords so that I could play them in songs. I had a vast set of key options in which I could choose to play any song I wanted. Once I matured in my ability, I moved on to learning how to do basic bar chords and power chords which opened up a new set of options for my playing. And finally, my last endeavor to date has been learning how to read and perform rifts and picking and such using tabs. My next project will be to master scales for soloing.
Anyway, moving on to my pet peeve. Over the last few years, I have noticed that many new, blooming guitarists are praised for their abilities, but when asked to play a simple chord, they are clueless. What do they play? Power chords and bar chords. That’s it. When asked to play a simple song, they can’t because they haven’t looked up the tabs—all they should have to do is pick a key and play simple chords so they can sing the song! I couldn’t believe it! These people who “seem” to be so “amazing” can only play the songs that they’ve memorized through tabs or that they can play down the whole fret board using one hand position. Bravo, you learned three hand positions and now you’ve arrived! What ever happened to being able to switch between chords? Actually knowing chords? I’m sorry, but in my opinion, unless you know the basic chords too, I’m not impressed. I can memorize tabs, but can you reproduce it on the spot? Can you stand up in front of people with chords and lyrics and lead out in a song service? Can you change the key to a different one and be all right? Then I’ll think you’ve gotten somewhere.