favorite guitarist?

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Originally posted by Zeppelin:


That is where you get it wrong:
stairway to heaven's solo is a perfect harmony altough it is a 3 chords song, while in grunge (and mainly in metal and funk metal) the main idea is just to turn the distortion on and make noise... pearl jam, nirvana, limp bizkit , korn - i know all this are different styles but to me it's the same - bunch of guitarists without even good technique and knowledge in theory turns on the distortion and plays something....[/B]

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Don't get on your high horse man, that poor technique poor theory knowledge distortion playing applies as well to page as it does to anybody else. I like his music, I'm not insulting him, all I'm saying is that you shouldn't look at music like its a competition. There's no music olympics, let guitar chick listen to what she likes to. You'd be pissed off at me if I told you that you should quit listening to that kid's music and listen to bebop instead because its more complex and its better music, and I would be completely out of line if I said that. Likewise it isn't fair to oversimplify and generalize about entire genres just because you don't like them, and you shouldn't get on her case for liking cobain just because you don't like his stuff (hey, I dont either, but that's just my personal taste.)

ofcourse it's only my opinion... music is not made of true and false...
ouh by the way when i said harmony i meant melody... harmony to me is how notes in music connect to each other.. at least in other languages i speak it called harmony, but never mind
so what i was trying to say is that you cant say "this is right" or "this is wrong" in music, but you can sure tell if someone is good player/ composer or not....
the fact that milions admire cobain doesnt make him better musician...it's not a fact it's just my opinion... but i know that cobain couldnt ever reach page or blackmore level, which are to me the best guitarists ever... this is not a fact just my opinion, supported by the fact that lots of people i know that started their passion to music with nirvana/ metallica/ any othe ****
are now listening to deep purple or led zeppelin...

Ok, now we're in agreement zeppelin, I never personally liked Cobains music, its just that I know a lot of zeppelin die hards, ok just a few, who are unwilling to accept other music, but I see now that you're not one of those guys. Btw, check out guys like Pat Metheny, John Mclauhglin, Allan Holdsworth, it may broaden your definition of what a great guitarrist sounds like.

it's not really into the topic but even now when i'm a guitarist i still prefer listening to bands with not instrumental song... you know bands where the guitar is the leading instrument but not the only thing you hear..
does anyone here agree with me??
cause i tryed to listen to solo guitarists like malmsteen and santana and i just dont get it... maybe i'm sick or something??

Well most of the music i listen to doesn't have guitar as a leading instrument, but its all instrumental. I listen more to music where instruments like trumpet and sax, sometimes keyboards, are prominent. Malmsteen I can't dig, cause to me it feels like he's just missing the point of music. Santana is cool, I like his less popular stuff the most, the stuff he did with John Mclaughlin, his more fusiony stuff. It's all preference though, I also like listening to some vocal music. Check out Ella Fitzgerald, she blows me away.

Ouh i guess you are rythm and blues guy
yeah.. i guess you can show malmsteen in a circus cause he has a great technique, but guitar is not only about speed and technique... listen to old song of status quo, like rock'n'roll all around the world and you will see that they got great sound, even if they are not as good as others

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Originally posted by Zeppelin:
Ouh i guess you are rythm and blues guy

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Yeah I'm a blues fan. Mostly I like jazz though, well at least I can listen to jazz all day long, but often if I listen to too much traditional 12 bar blues straight, I just get bored, because there's no denying that every song has the same chord structure and that after a lot of continous listening you need something else to break up the predictability.
I like to think that my tastes are pretty wide. While the music I'm most into now is jazz, I know a lot of rock gutiarrists and can dig a lot of them, I listen to a good deal of classical (I'm not just saying that, at this point I listen to way more classical than rock,) I've recently been getting into celtic music, and indian music, but I don't know a lot about these yet.
Still, for now my bread and butter is jazz, so if you ever want a recomendation as to good jazzbos to listen to, I'm always here.

My favorite guitarist?Me.Guitarist you guy's would have heard of?Eddie VanHalen

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Life is a banquet,so eat me.

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I'd rather listen to a good piece of music (I'm not specifying style) than a piece that requires a lot of speed and technique but really doesn't have much content in terms of melody. It's the equivalent of speaking very fast because you don't really have anything meaningful to say.

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Right on! If anything, i would call cobain a poet speaking for the masses who were sick of hearing garbage music from the awful eighties.

People will flame me for what they'll inevitably consider elevating cobain above what he actually was, but the truth remains, his impact is still felt to this day, almost a decade later, and will most assuredly continue on into the future. do you really think 'nsync or bsb or aguilera will have the same impact?

Whether you appreciate his music or not (or, for that matter, anyone else's music) should not dictate whether they were or are a "good" musician or make "good" music. Like the critic who told mozart his music would never fly, because he used "too many notes".

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ok, i'm not really the eggman

[This message has been edited by iamthe_eggman (edited 10-12-2000).]

[This message has been edited by iamthe_eggman (edited 10-12-2000).]

[This message has been edited by iamthe_eggman (edited 10-12-2000).]

You guys seem to be repeating the same guys over and over again. Listen to a Kravitz album, Craig Ross his guitarist is amazing (Are You Gonna Go My Way).

Spread your horizons!
Superfly

I've been following this topic since the beginning and I've heard tons of great points made.

As for my opinion on shred, well, as Luigi so eloquently put it, it should be a means to an end (where the end is a great peice of music). If it is just an end, like Yngwie hitting as many notes as he can in a second, then it seems the musical process has been slightly distorted. Can anyone honestly say that Yngwie has made a profound, powerfull and moving song? I'm talking about the type of song that is timeless, meaning that no matter how many years pass people still listen to it because it has all the makings of a great song. Granted I don't know that much of his stuff, but is his very style enough to inspire non-guitarists? Sure, I enjoy shred occassionally. I'm still young, and still aspire to achieve that kind of technical profiency, but the bottom line is, I started playing the guitar to be able to make beautiful music and move people. When I picture myself in 50 years, sitting under a tree playing the guitar- to my grandchildren perhaps, I picture myself playing something like blowin' in the wind, not some shred peice.

Now for my favorite guitarists (in no particular order). I
Hendrix
Slash
Rhoads
Al Di Meola (damn... this guy moves me)
Satch
Vai
EVH

That's about all I can think of now, I'm probably missing a few, and I definatly anticipated this list changing dramatically over the course of my life. I'd be damn frightened if it didn't.

You got it James. There are reasons that Yngwie never was widely popular outside of guitarrist circles, his music only appeals to people who can appreciate the technical difficulty of it. Show it to a piano player, or a violinist, and they'd say whats the big deal (guitarrists, including yngwie, are slowpokes compared to good violinists, pianists, saxophone players, flutists, pretty much everybody, hehe.) Show it to a non musician, and they'd probably just get bored.
James, reading your favorite guitarrist list, sounds like you've got some good taste man. Can I make a few suggestions of other guys you might like? Well a guitarrist that I absolutely am in awe of is joe pass. If you hear the stuff he did unnacompanied, its just great, he was a great guitar player, and non guitarrists can definitely dig his stuff. While his stuff is very difficult, its not in the flashy malmsteen way, but rather in the ability to play bass lines and chords at the same time, (you really have to know your chord voicings to be loose with that) and the ability to improvise arrangements (that's basically what he was doing.) Just trust me and take a listen.
I'll also suggest Wes Montgomery, beautiful player, great improvisations, smooth, cool cat, nothing more to say.
Django Reinhardt, try not to get put off by the cornball sound. If you get his small band stuff, and can get past the bad recording quality and initial corniness of the sound, you'll notice a guitar player who was supremely gifted at improvising strong melodic phrases. Jeff Beck still thinks Django was without question the best ever. Well, those are the three I'm suggesting you check out, of course there are tons, but these guys come to mind for now,
Joe Pass
Wes Montgomery
Django Reinhardt

James you are absolutley right!!!
i mean the beatles could barley play any chords at all when they started to perform but i think people will remmember them much longer then malmsteen...
i can understand why people like speedy guitarists than can play millions of notes in no time, but their music to me is feel-less... because all they do is just hitting the strings.... my favorite guitarist is angus young , who is much slower than malmsteen or that guy from metallica... as a matter of fact i think that almost anyone who learn guitar more then 2-2.5 years can play any song of ac/dc
but when you hear a song of ac/dc it's like big ball of energy explodes into you... when i fist time heard ac/dc i was about 10 years old, and the song was "you shook me all night long" and although i can play this song easily and i can't play most of malmsteen songs i think, to me ac/dc are much greater guitarists and to me one their song worths all yngwie music

Cool, I'll check out those artists Luigi, thanks.

I checked out some Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhard stuff,
it's great. Funny enough that we got talking about Django, 'cause at the club I was at yesterday there was a big mural painted on the wall with a lot of crazy imagery and the name "Django Reinhard" in bold print across the top. Apparently he played there way back when.

Oh btw, for those of you who haven't yet heard any of Paul Gilbert's stuff, this guy can shred. Yngwie can't touch this guy's speed, and what's more he shreds in an interesting and tasteful manner. In the song I'm listening to right now ("I Understand Completely"), his fastest shredding is done on an acoustic too.

Hey Luigi, every heard of Jim Ross? The guy's an awesome acoustic player. I read on the back of the CD that his "territory" is being able to merge percussion, rhythym, melody - everything - in his playing. He plays without any other backup instruments of any kind, just him and his guitar, and sounds great. Give him a try.

Sounds cool I'll check him out, what kind of music is it?

Hard to describe really. He doesn't really put himself in any particular genre, although I suppose he'd best be classified as a folk player.

In no particular order:
Jimi Hendrix
Dimebag Darrell Abott
Kirk Hammett
Kerry King
Marty Freidman (before he sold out)
Steve Vai (Dr. Vai now, since he got his PhD in playing guitar)
Eddie Van Halen
Randy Rhodes
Tony Iommi
Carlos Santana
Gary Rossington
Ace Frehley
Angus Young
Joe Perry
Stevie Ray Vaughn
Slash

There are many, many excellent guitarists out there. This is an extremely touchy subject, but here goes.

1. Eddie van Halen
2. Jimmy Page
3. B.B. King
4. Kirk Hammett
5. Joe Satriani
6. Eric Clapton
7. Stevie Ray Vaughn
8. Jimi Hendrix
9. Slash (I loved his work on Slash's Snakepit - It's Five-o-clock somewhere!)
10. James Taylor