Are a lot of guitarists just out to impress each other

stratman3142

If I'm 100% honest, I suppose part of me does want to impress other guitarists. Which is why I don't shred so much now, because it doesn't impress other guitarists

Loobs

Barney said:

Just saw another post and made me think about this....all this fancy guitar stuff...is the general public really bothered, you get the guitarists that play melodic and musical and the public love them ...a few that spring to mind are Gilmour ..clapton ..BB king ..

Thers a lot of guitarists now with unbelievable technique ... that the public dont really seem interested in ..the only type of audience that they seem to appeal  are other guitarists .. and even then a lot of it is getting very stale sounding ...i suppose what im trying to say is sometimes do you think we are barking up the wrong tree..in the 80s ..loads of people loved the flashy guitar stuff now nobody seems bothered apart from other guitar players ....and then only some really care....just thinking out loud here..

hardly anything new, is it? 

Barney

Loobs said:

Barney said:

Just saw another post and made me think about this....all this fancy guitar stuff...is the general public really bothered, you get the guitarists that play melodic and musical and the public love them ...a few that spring to mind are Gilmour ..clapton ..BB king ..

Thers a lot of guitarists now with unbelievable technique ... that the public dont really seem interested in ..the only type of audience that they seem to appeal  are other guitarists .. and even then a lot of it is getting very stale sounding ...i suppose what im trying to say is sometimes do you think we are barking up the wrong tree..in the 80s ..loads of people loved the flashy guitar stuff now nobody seems bothered apart from other guitar players ....and then only some really care....just thinking out loud here..

hardly anything new, is it? 

No probably not ...

jimification

This is the great irony of much of modern guitar playing - so much time spent to learn impressive techniques and nobody but another guitarist cares! (and especially not girls!) Of the small number of guitarists who might be impressed, most of them are thinking one of two things: "I could do better" or "what a knob". It takes a long time to learn that the ear is much more important than the fingers

To compound it all I saw a world class concert pianist play a recital at the weekend and her level of technique and (above all) musical expression was so far above what I've ever seen from a guitar player it made all of the "technical" rock guitarists seem like a joke.

SonicScythe

......................

phrenicz

Me and my bandmates came across a prime example of this exact topic just the other day.. We decided to visit a local guitar show, mainly just to get out of the studio! So, we rock up to this show and spend about half an hour looking at the various offerings (very poor by the way, squire/harley benton etc...).. Anyway, all of a sudden we were drawn towards the the patrick eggle stand, where a guitarist was making some seriously nice, slow, meaningful, beautiful, ethereal and extremely musical sounds, using a delay...

As we approached the guitarist, we looked down at his pedal and asked him what it was and how he was achieving such an effect... He said 'hey guys, yeah it's this'... Then as if from nowhere, this guy started going insanely fast up and down his fretboard (poorly I might add) to show us this delay?!?! A delay set at very slow intervals I might added... Needless to say, the result was an untimely wash of utter nonsense, but he kept on going, faster and faster... The final straw was when he started tapping....

After 30 seconds of utter disbelief, the 3 of us just looked at each other, shook our heads and walked away... We didn't really find out about the delay pedal, just what a complete knob the user was!.. The irony is, before he was aware of our presence, he was actually impressing us? He lost all credibility in a nano second, purely as a result of his ego!!! One day maybe he will realise it's more about the gaps inbetween what he plays that creates music? Although, in this day and age of 'bullets per second' who can fit the most notes in an eighth of a bar.... Maybe not?

Sassafras

You could've told me I was making an idiot of myself instead of letting me carry on shredding and tapping. I wondered why you were all laughing.

jimification

Sassafras said:

You could've told me I was making an idiot of myself instead of letting me carry on shredding and tapping. I wondered why you were all laughing.

Don't worry about it, mate. Any delay can repeat a couple of slow blues notes - Sounds like a really good pedal if it could remember all those scales and stuff what you played.

mellowsun

A great guitar solo is an integral part of the song. Who can forget the first time they heard Wanted Dead or Alive when the solo kicks in? The build up to a great solo sends chills down your spine in anticipation.

Yet I'm glad the age of the solo is over, because it was overdone. There's still so much to accomplish on guitar - we are at a bit of a lull in terms of guitar based music, but it's time will come again, hopefully with something new to offer.

dindude

mellowsun said:

A great guitar solo is an integral part of the song. Who can forget the first time they heard Wanted Dead or Alive when the solo kicks in? The build up to a great solo sends chills down your spine in anticipation.

Yet I'm glad the age of the solo is over, because it was overdone. There's still so much to accomplish on guitar - we are at a bit of a lull in terms of guitar based music, but it's time will come again, hopefully with something new to offer.

That surely must be the only time in the history of the English language that someone has written the combination of words that result in:

"who can forget the time they first heard wanted dead or alive"

fretfinder

mellowsun said: I'm glad the age of the solo is over. 

Over my dead body!