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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/iwillchangeiwill on 2026-03-03 11:35:34+00:00.
I've been playing guitar for a bit over a decade and while I'm nowhere near Steve Vai I love my instrument very much and I've happily dedicated a huge part of my life to it. I play nearly every day and my main genre is old school heavy metal, so just like everybody and their mother my goal has always been to get fast and play those cool shreddy bits that Eddie Van Halen showed off with. For those who don't know much about guitar, a big part of training for that is practicing along to a metronome and speeding it up by a few beats every few measures.
Now onto the fuck up. For nearly the entire time I've been playing guitar, I have been plagued by a strange problem that I almost chalked up to phantoms because I couldn't find an explanation. When I got to the tempos that are faster than what I can comfortably play, I would start to get dizzy and my vision would sometimes go black. Sometimes I'd have to put my guitar away and lie down for a moment. I have had a bit of health problems in the past couple of years that could explain but I had the problem even before, when I was completely healthy. I thought it was my hands gripping the neck too tight, so obviously I dedicated hours to fixing that issue (and I don't regret it because it improved my technique, so if you're a guitarist procrastinating on that, stop and fix it NOW 🫵🏻) but I still kept near passing out when my speed was about to max out. Obviously it was impeding my progress and discouraging me a lot too.
And then, while jamming along to a really fun song that is not hard to play, I realized. The song is an absolute banger and super fun to improvise along to, the kind of song that carries you towards soloing by force and you can't really do anything about it. I started playing a little faster than my comfort zone here and there, and I noticed something. When I'd speed up, I'd hold my breath until I was done. And I just thought, oh fucking hell. I thought back to every time I'd had my vision go black while practicing to the metronome and just started giggling. I'm a little angry at myself for not realizing something SO OBVIOUS FOR SO LONG and I'm debating whether I should tell my boyfriend and my best friend, both the most talented guitarists I've ever known, because I don't know if they'll ever let me live this down. But in retrospect this was so funny that I'll probably keep it as a pub story or something. I am just happy I don't have a mysterious disease that gets triggered by the click of a metronome or rock n' roll-hating ghosts in my attic.
The song is Easy Lover by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins btw.
tl;dr: the entire time I've been playing guitar I've been holding my breath when playing fast, causing me to get dizzy and black out while practicing because I'm a fucking moron. All is well.