Guitar Star 2016, Sky Arts

CHRISB50

EricTheWeary said:

Dominic;1113866" said:

I appreciate @Bucket's point that for some people guitar playing reached a climax in 1979 - yes there are some people with a very narrow minded perception BUT I really find a lot of that acoustic tapping / drone playing quite uncomfortable and not especially pleasant to listen to - I was ,by chance,in a pub restaurant Sunday lunchtime where a guitarist was doing a solo acoustic guitar/vocal set; as it happens it was @Jimmyguitar from this forum......He played a very appropriate set of laid back standards and relaxing music with lovely chord voiceings,looper and some superbly sweet and very well phrased noodling melody -he sings well too .  I could have relaxed and listened all afternoon .....lovely playing............but I just can't imagine I could have sat and listened to that tapping type thing in that environment for more than 5 minutes before becoming irritated by it . I am sure it is highly skilled and very clever but it's a kind of Novelty playing to me and in a normal audience environment would actually drive the customers away. 

I saw Erik Mongrain live a few years ago. He is blessed with staggering guitar technique and an incredibly dull speaking voice and it was so boring. Unfortunately where I was sat it felt embarrassing to leave so I had to watch the whole show.

Haha, he's my favourite guitarist! I'd really love to see him live. Each to their own!

I'd imagine having a boring speaking voice doesn't affect him much as an instrumental guitarist, but yes, he does sound a bit dull when talking.

Across his 3 albums (4th coming out around Christmas), his stuff is actually quite varied. And he's quite different to a lot of the other guys who play in this style. Like Antoine Dufour (my other favourite guitarist) they come from a classical background. You can see it come through in some of his technique. I guess though, if you don't like it, you don't like it.

Clarky

EricTheWeary said:

I think it depends if you are seeing it as a guitar competition or as television. X Factor or The Voice are not singing competitions, they are TV that uses a singing competition as a vehicle. Assuming that the majority of Sky Arts viewers are not guitarists or know significant amounts about the mechanics of playing one then it's the asides and the back stories and the minor celeb inputs that are going to make it watchable TV. That the vehicle is people playing guitars makes it relevant to this forum but I think it still needs judging for what it is ( I appreciate I'm probably contradicting myself again somewhere) and not for what earnest guitarists would like it to be.

I thought that X Factor and The Voice [and all similar things] were methods of making money via a popularity contest the public to phone-in..

in that sense, they have more in common with Big Brother [which don't involve being good at singing either.. lol..]

EricTheWeary

CHRISB50 said:

EricTheWeary said:

Dominic;1113866" said:

I appreciate @Bucket's point that for some people guitar playing reached a climax in 1979 - yes there are some people with a very narrow minded perception BUT I really find a lot of that acoustic tapping / drone playing quite uncomfortable and not especially pleasant to listen to - I was ,by chance,in a pub restaurant Sunday lunchtime where a guitarist was doing a solo acoustic guitar/vocal set; as it happens it was @Jimmyguitar from this forum......He played a very appropriate set of laid back standards and relaxing music with lovely chord voiceings,looper and some superbly sweet and very well phrased noodling melody -he sings well too .  I could have relaxed and listened all afternoon .....lovely playing............but I just can't imagine I could have sat and listened to that tapping type thing in that environment for more than 5 minutes before becoming irritated by it . I am sure it is highly skilled and very clever but it's a kind of Novelty playing to me and in a normal audience environment would actually drive the customers away. 

I saw Erik Mongrain live a few years ago. He is blessed with staggering guitar technique and an incredibly dull speaking voice and it was so boring. Unfortunately where I was sat it felt embarrassing to leave so I had to watch the whole show.

Haha, he's my favourite guitarist! I'd really love to see him live. Each to their own!

I'd imagine having a boring speaking voice doesn't affect him much as an instrumental guitarist, but yes, he does sound a bit dull when talking.

Across his 3 albums (4th coming out around Christmas), his stuff is actually quite varied. And he's quite different to a lot of the other guys who play in this style. Like Antoine Dufour (my other favourite guitarist) they come from a classical background. You can see it come through in some of his technique. I guess though, if you don't like it, you don't like it.

He spoke quite a lot but didn't really seem to have anything to say. I guess he'd been busy practising the guitar twelve hours a day for ten years or something and didn't have any stories but somehow felt he should give it a go. I can't argue with his ability but he wasn't Mr Showbiz. 

Bucket

Chalky said:

Take pity on the lad. He's still at the age when he thinks "...try new ideas because you never know, some of them might work". Which of course is true. But the childish arrogance is hidden in the word "new". As if the things he's talked about haven't ever been tried before - they have, but they were rejected then because they are crap, just as they are still crap today.

@Bucket - Just because something is new to you doesn't mean its new to everyone. As the wise man said, get a piano... )

Take pity on the lad. He's reached the age where he thinks "... they were rejected because they were crap". Which may or may not be true. But the jaded defeatism is hidden in the word "crap", as if music is objective and an idea can never be ahead of its time. They can be, but they get rejected by patronising, jaded people who have seemingly lost any sense of hope, inventiveness or idealism in their music, the one place where hope, inventiveness and idealism should always get a look in.

@Chalky - just because something is crap to you doesn't mean it's crap to everyone. As the wise man might have said, get a piano and then try to find a new way of using it, because it might end up sounding cool.

Teetonetal

BigLicks67;1113925" said:

Acoustic tapping or whatever you want to call it, when done well is as valid as any other style.That's why I consider Michael Hedges the Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar, I can't think of a more influential or inspirational guitarist of the last 30 or so years, judging by the amount of people doing it now. Look at Andy McKee's first video on YouTube it got over 2 million hits, apart from uber famous electric guitarists or marquee classical guitarists I can't think of many unknown (at the time) guitarists generating that sort of interest.



.

I went to see Andy Mckee a couple of weeks ago. He is very good and a nice guy to chat to.

Bucket

I've seen and met Andy McKee, he came and did a masterclass at my uni. Lovely chap and what an amazing player.

I defy any of the percussive acoustic haters to listen to this and tell me it isn't just beautiful.

thomasross20

What pickup is he using? 

thomasross20

That goes for Hedges and Andy...

Chalky

Bucket;1114596" said:

Chalky said:Take pity on the lad. He's still at the age when he thinks "...try new ideas because you never know, some of them might work". Which of course is true. But the childish arrogance is hidden in the word "new". As if the things he's talked about haven't ever been tried before - they have, but they were rejected then because they are crap, just as they are still crap today.

@Bucket - Just because something is new to you doesn't mean its new to everyone. As the wise man said, get a piano... )

Take pity on the lad. He's reached the age where he thinks "... they were rejected because they were crap". Which may or may not be true. But the jaded defeatism is hidden in the word "crap", as if music is objective and an idea can never be ahead of its time. They can be, but they get rejected by patronising, jaded people who have seemingly lost any sense of hope, inventiveness or idealism in their music, the one place where hope, inventiveness and idealism should always get a look in.

@Chalky - just because something is crap to you doesn't mean it's crap to everyone. As the wise man might have said, get a piano and then try to find a new way of using it, because it might end up sounding cool.

But the overwhelming odds on an instrument like the guitar is that it HAS already been tried and proved to be crap. You want to pretend that innovation has equal probability of being the outcome as crap being the outcome but that simply isn't true.

BigLicks67

thomasross20 said:

That goes for Hedges and Andy...

Hedges used a Sunrise pickup - not sure about Mr McKee, looks like a fishman.

10thumbs

I thought the Bohemian Rhapsody kid was good , but the busker guy sounded , well , like a busker.

I'm also a bit tired of the acoustic tapping thing , its all gone a bit gimmicky like the two handed ,widdley guitar stuff back in the 80s/90s .

I agree 8 isn't enough ,and there should be more places for rock , simply because the vast majority of players play rock , 2 places isn't enough .

One girl there played something a bit ethereal , that sounded an awful lot like the "Future music" from Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure , I'm just saying.

Nunogilberto

I just watched it for the first time.

A few observations:

1. If the prize is a festival slot, and not a recording contract etc, what's the point in having a producer like Visconti as a judge? Surely a big name guitarist like Slash or Jimmy Page would be better? God knows it could do with a rock heavyweight on the panel, with the amount of rock entrants. Plus, Visconti saying that the fella who took on The Kinks' YRGM, "brought a 60s song up to date" must have meant he missed the Van Halen version which did exactly that and was better...

2. The percussive acoustic players are getting a bit long in the tooth now, as everybody has said.

3. The shredders were no better than most Saturday morning guitar shop players; plus that Orange stack made them sound bloody terrible.

jeztone2

I think an American version would be awesome. But in Britain, we have a journalistic/tastemaker culture that's never gotten over punk. We are very anti technique in the UK. Most of our recent pop records have the guitar mixed down. Our radio & TV don't like Rock Music in general.

I'm 47 this year ffs & I can give most 22 year olds a run for their money, which is mad really. Outside of Metal, the avg indie guitarist is soul crushingly conservative.

digitalscream

OK, so I watched it. Well..."watched" is a bit of an overstatement. I probably watched about 20s of each guitarist (except for one) and ended skipping a lot of the chat because...it just made me want to punch people. Took less than 10 minutes to get through the whole show.

My takes on it...

1 - It's so heavily weighted against "proper" rock guitarists, not just in that rock guitar isn't a solo instrument, but also in that the players they've chosen are caricatures and stereotypes. I don't understand how they think they're going to get good players if their mandate for the genre is long hair and running around pulling faces at the camera.

2 - Jacqueline Mannering discovered that YouTube fame doesn't equal real-world success.

3 - They were fawning over another 14 year old this time, the classical little dude who did Bohemian Rhapsody. Aside from having massive balls to do that in the first place...in my opinion, if you're going to adapt a piece like that then it has to add something. Close your eyes and forget that he's 14, and suddenly it's a lot less interesting.

4 - The blues dude with the slide and the Tele with an Evertune bridge (I think)...he was absolutely brilliant. Listened to his twice, I just wish they hadn't cut to the judges talking half way through because he was just about the only one worth listening to.

Vibetronic

digitalscream said:

OK, so I watched it. Well..."watched" is a bit of an overstatement. I probably watched about 20s of each guitarist (except for one) and ended skipping a lot of the chat because...it just made me want to punch people. Took less than 10 minutes to get through the whole show.

My takes on it...

1 - It's so heavily weighted against "proper" rock guitarists, not just in that rock guitar isn't a solo instrument, but also in that the players they've chosen are caricatures and stereotypes. I don't understand how they think they're going to get good players if their mandate for the genre is long hair and running around pulling faces at the camera.

2 - Jacqueline Mannering discovered that YouTube fame doesn't equal real-world success.

3 - They were fawning over another 14 year old this time, the classical little dude who did Bohemian Rhapsody. Aside from having massive balls to do that in the first place...in my opinion, if you're going to adapt a piece like that then it has to add something. Close your eyes and forget that he's 14, and suddenly it's a lot less interesting.

4 - The blues dude with the slide and the Tele with an Evertune bridge (I think)...he was absolutely brilliant. Listened to his twice, I just wish they hadn't cut to the judges talking half way through because he was just about the only one worth listening to.

definitely agree on the last one, he was the most interesting one there. There must have been some better rock players though !!

scrumhalf

Vibetronic said:

There must have been some better rock players though !!

The kid with the pointy headstock guitar who was flailing around was the best argument I've heard for playing acoustics. In the entire guitar-playing community of the UK I find it hard to believe that he was worth broadcasting.

Vibetronic

scrumhalf said:

Vibetronic said:

There must have been some better rock players though !!

The kid with the pointy headstock guitar who was flailing around was the best argument I've heard for playing acoustics. In the entire guitar-playing community of the UK I find it hard to believe that he was worth broadcasting.

yeah, it was a bit of a mess ! Fair play for giving it a go though. 

digitalscream

scrumhalf said:

Vibetronic said:

There must have been some better rock players though !!

The kid with the pointy headstock guitar who was flailing around was the best argument I've heard for playing acoustics. In the entire guitar-playing community of the UK I find it hard to believe that he was worth broadcasting.

That's just it, though - I can't believe that they didn't get any good, melodic, listenable rock players apply. However, they only chose the clown-on-stage types, because they think it makes good TV.

earwighoney

Clarky said:

I've set my Sky box with a reminder to make sure that I miss it

Best thing I have read on a guitar forum ever. 

Bravo good sir. 

scrumhalf

Second episode seemed to feature George Benson more than the competitors.

I can't wait for Milos next week (he said something along the lines of "they may not like me, I will tell them the truth") when confronted with the acoustic slappers.