Originally Posted by: Tinpan

Hey dlwalke. Can you make your points with only great guitar players in mind. This is a guitar website. Great songwriters all , but I'm inspired by guitar players so not sure Bruno mars or pink etc etc hold much sway if you're trying to make a point.

Hey Tinpan,

With respect to the first point I was making, I'd say Traci Chapman, Melissa Etheridge, Jewell, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega, Taylor Swift, Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton, for example, are all extremely solid players.

With respect to the second point - i.e., that for popular music male musicians audiences skew male and female musicians audiences skew female (with lots of overlap to be sure), the data I was looking at didn't specifically break the artists down into guitar players. I took a look back to see if I could do that myself but because it was mostly looking at contemporary artists and I'm more of a late 60's and classic rock guy, I don't even know who most of them were. So no, I can't do that but I'd be pretty surprised if music with prominent guitar was an exception. The article did mention that Hendrix is one of the most heavily skewed artists in terms of his audience. That is certainly consistent with my own experience. I know that if I was told I had to choose between having all Hendrix or all Joni MItchell on my music player, I wouldn't have to think twice.....and neither would my wife.

Your question raises an interesting point though. Should GT's song lessons be restricted to great guitarists (or songs with great guitar parts)? Defining great is an issue itself I suppose, but I would say absolutely not. I think GT should offer lessons for songs that people want to learn how to play. I have a pretty expensive list of songs I'd like to learn and few of them would qualify as having great guitar parts. Some are actually pretty simple (e.g., 3-4 chord strumming songs like Bob Dylans "Knockin on Heaven's Door" [done] or "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield [done]) and while others are a little more involved, they're still not songs that to my mind have "great" guitar parts but are just songs I like and would like to play a recognizable version of (e.g., "Heroes" by David Bowie, "King of the Road" by Jerry Reed, "I've Been in Love Before" by Cutting Crew, etc.). If this was a site for aspiring professionals as opposed to hobbyists I'd feel differently but those folks are better off going to a school like Musicians Institute or Berklee College of Music, for example.

-Dave