IT TURNS OUT THERE’S A LOT MORE TO THE GUY WHO MAKES THOSE “PRETENDING TO BE A BEGINNER, THEN SHREDDING” VIDEOS
By Joe Bosso
THE NAME JON Dretto might not ring any immediate bells, but chances are you’ve already seen his handiwork. Over the past year, the 24-year-old New York-based guitarist has racked up more than 100 million views online for his hilarious video series, “Pretending to Be a Beginner, Then Shredding.”
In each clip, Dretto strolls unassumingly into a music store, where he elicits smirks and chuckles from clerks and onlookers as he struggles to pick out a few notes on a (sometimes outrageously expensive) guitar. Then in a flash, he lets loose with a dizzying and immaculately played flurry of fretboard wizardry… leaving jaws agape.
“The whole thing’s been a lot of fun,” Dretto says. “I wanted people to laugh and think, ‘This kid is gonna get roasted.’ In the end, everybody is in on the joke. I’ve actually made some good friends at the stores.”
Dretto came up with the idea for such pranks after he paid a visit to a “big management company” in Nashville. “I thought my 20,000 online followers meant something,” he recalls, “but a rep said, ‘This conversation starts at a million.’” Dretto blew past that number in short order, and his most recent video series, “Begging for Guitar,” in which he solos vocal melody lines of famous songs by the likes of Adele
