Music enthusiasts and musicians, clear something up for me..

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I've been told by a young fellow that I will never be able to make good music because I can't "feel it."
What exactly does this entail? Could this opinion be because of my lack of expertise and "rustiness," or something else?
I consider myself to be well out of practice (and lazy when it comes to writing down notes), but I wouldn't call myself musically challenged.

Maybe a little vague of a remark, but I'm tired and distracted.

that's absurd...that was just someone trying to get you down. Don't listen to people like that..

To me "feeling it" is just that instinct when it comes to music. You know how you play a piece for the first time and you don't know it but you can just kind of "feel' where the changes are? Unless they meant playing the music with emotion. I don't know.

Yeah, whoever told you that was full of crap. Absolutely no inherent talent is required in order to become a skilled musician. All you need to do is put in the appropriate amount of practice (as long as it is effective, deliberate practice) and you will gain skill as a musician.

I'm not sure what was meant by the young fellow. Do you feel it? I am aspie and I feel the music. I consider myself a fair musician. And I am no spring chicken.

In a similar vein to QuelOround, I enjoy playing music that I describe as intuitive. It is where I instinctively know where it is going. Not so long ago, (OK! a few years back) I used to do a lot of depping, sometimes with original bands. I have been asked how I knew some of the original material: I didn’t know it, it was intuitive and I could do a good job at busking/adlibbing. I don’t find all music intuitive though and I have not been able to put my finger on what makes some music more intuitive than others.

Anyway, take no notice of the young fellow. If you enjoy your music keep at it and dust off those cobwebs. The rustiness will soon get cleaned up.

It means smoke a bunch of pot, get a good buzz going, notice details that are usually filtered by your brains standard operating procedure. See where the music takes your mind, or where your mind takes the music. Meant the same thing for nearly a century, or 250,000 years IMO. You don't even have to become a pothead, just once, or better, a few weeks of smoking will leave a lasting and positive influence.

When I started playing guitar in my late teens, and for the first few years I played, more than once I was told I sounded like a robot playing guitar, that I didn't "feel it." It hurt to hear that of course, but I didn't give up. Music has been my main passion the past thirty-three years, and the more I played the better I could play. The past ten years especially it has gotten to the point where the music comes out spontaneously.

I play rock and roll, but when improvising and letting my fingers flow sometimes I come up with stuff that sounds really good without consciously knowing how I do it: it just happens. The exact chords or riffs of a particular jam may never be played again in some cases but I can come up with something similar or better. With practice I am now pretty dang good at figuring out songs and playing along pretty closely to them, sometimes figuring them out even the first time I hear and play to them. I can do this jamming with other people live too, even for the first time together. It takes practice yes, maybe lots of practice, but in the end the most important thing is wanting to do it to where the music flows from your heart without conscious effort.

If you want to make music, if you really want to make music, keep playing. My first few years I spent a lot of time tuning my guitar to train my ear to match sounds on different strings, playing along to albums and tapes (this was before CD's were invented), and attending as many jam sessions as possible with other musicians. The larger sessions would sometimes last many hours, sometimes spanning days. Usually there would be a drum set with one or two drummers plus some posers, maybe a keyboard, if lucky a bass or two, three or four people who thought they could sing, and about a dozen guitarists (most of them posers). Sometimes it seemed that whoever had the loudest amp "won." Still, I learned a lot from these jam sessions, although most of the time I've spent playing guitar (about 99.999%) has been by myself.

As others have said, keep playing. If you really really like playing, you will find a way to do it. I have carried my guitar most places the past thirty-three years. Once your fingers and ears get more practice, the fingers will automatically go to the right place on the guitar to get the sounds your ears want to hear. You will get callouses to where it won't hurt your fingertips to press down on the strings. It might take time to build them up, but your body will adapt to what you are doing as if by magic. Good luck and have fun.