Playing the guitar, the difference between being good and being a genius....

[sbrothy]

In danger of blowing my own horn I consider myself moderately good at playing the guitar. Other people even tell me so. But, every time there's any danger of it going to my head I listen to this particular piece and I'm instantly put in my place:

 

[jedishrfu]

There are quite few exceptional guitarists that I've heard over the years:
- Chet Atkins
- George Harrison of the Beatles
- Led Kapana playing Hawaiian slack key guitar
- Charo playing Malagueña (a student of Andres Segovia)
- Jake Shimabukuru playing the Beatles My Guitar Gently Weeps on a concert ukelele
- Andres Segovia (Grandmaster of Spanish Guitar) playing anything
- Roy Clark multi instrumentalist of Hee Haw playing malagueña or anything

And many others...

 

[DennisN]

Two awesome performances I've posted elsewhere:

Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing (Alchemy Live)
- not only Mark Knopfler on guitar is great, the entire band shines here!



Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood (Live at the El Mocambo)
- outstanding

 

[jackjack2025]

There are quite few exceptional guitarists that I've heard over the years:
- Chet Atkins
- George Harrison of the Beatles
- Led Kapana playing Hawaiian slack key guitar
- Charo playing Malagueña (a student of Andres Segovia)
- Jake Shimabukuru playing the Beatles My Guitar Gently Weeps on a concert ukelel
- Andres Segovia (Grandmaster of Spanish Guitar) playing anything
- Roy Clark multi instrumentalist of Hee Haw playing malagueña or anything

And many others...

Jimi Hendrix

 

[sbrothy]

Two awesome performances I've posted elsewhere:

Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing (Alchemy Live)
- not only Mark Knopfler on guitar is great, the entire band shines here!



Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood (Live at the El Mocambo)
- outstanding

Two of my favorites there. I've heard Dire Straits Live. DKR 250,- (divide by 6 for a ballpark value in American dollars). Another time.

 

[sbrothy]

Stevie is in my book for the slowest, angriest slow blues ever played. Admittedly, he's not the best vocalist (better than Joe Satriani though ), but in Tokyo he really showed who mastered the art. Various places in the song it's like it almost stops, only to continue. I'm impressed with the drummer who can keep down that tempo:



In the song he sings something along the line that "someone fired a gun", and then he almost makes his guitar sound like a gunshot.

I kowtow to Stevie!

 

[Hornbein]

There are maybe half a billion guitarists in this world so there would be five hundred one-in-a-million practitioners. I'll confine myself to non-world-famous players who could use more recognition.

Gabriella Quevedo

She plays remarkably cleanly. The guitar is a "dirty" instrument, it tends to squeaks, and whistles and buzzes. "Even Segovia has finger scratch" -- Tony Tedesco. That whistling comes from moving fretting hand fingers sideways while still in contact with the string. You have to lift them straight out, not easy because you are in a hurry to get to the next position. Even she can't eliminate this but gets it to a tolerable level. Electric guitars cover all this up, maybe that's cheating.

In general I say that non-musicians don't understand tone. One of the hardest things about most musical instruments is getting a great tone. Amateurs think this is the result of having the best equipment, but actually that doesn't make that much difference. How do the greats do it? It's a mystery.

Recently electronics have developed enough that electric guitarists can buy tone. I'm OK with that, but think the achievements of those who can do things the natural way should be recognized. Maybe to make a beautiful sound on your own you have to be a beautiful person.



Kent Nishimura



Note that that guitar has a pickup. That eliminates finger scratch.

Mary N

On the other hand, if you can get a great sound by using a ton of electronics then more power to you. Andy Summers comes to mind. The Queen of this though is Mary N. I think though she would still sound great without all that stuff. How much talent can you cram into one person?



As far as rock guitarists go the ones who impress me the most are the ones who play the best backing guitar, playing behind a singer usually. That's what you spend most of your time doing so shouldn't it be most important? In this vein I'd go with Eddie Van Halen. There are bootlegs of his isolated guitar parts, without the rest of the band cluttering things up. You can hear all sorts of detail and inflection. Dang that sounds beautiful. I hear that and I think, what a genius. Wait, didn't I say non-famous players? Yes, but he's famed for his uberflashy solos, not for this.



And what a waste. He could not resist booze. That can happen with very sensitive men, they have to anaesthetize themselves to deal with this world, Jerry Garcia being a prime example. It makes me cry.

As far as guitar genius goes you can't beat Joni Mitchell. Jimmy Page was in awe of her. At a party he was offered to be introduced to Joni but was too ashamed of himself to show his face. How sad.



There are all sorts of highly skilled guitarists in country music. "They can pick more notes than the number of ants on a Tennessee anthill." Then there's slide guitar [Johnny Winter] and fusion [Greg Howe] and dobro [Jerry Douglas]. We gotta draw the line somewhere, eh? This could go on forever.

Finally here's a personal favorite that most of y'all won't like. To me this epitomizes rock and roll guitar. I like the way in the middle of his solo he just stops. He'd said what he'd wanted to say, why go on further?



Shortly after this James Williamson abruptly disappeared from the scene. I thought he was dead from a heroin overdose, found out later he'd become an electrical engineer.

 

[marcusl]

Shortly after this James Williamson abruptly disappeared from the scene. I thought he was dead from a heroin overdose, found out later he'd become an electrical engineer.

Which is worse?

 

[hutchphd]

No one has mentioned Doc Watson. I saw him and his son Merle play in Yellow Springs Ohio in the early 1970's. Blown away.
And then there is mississippi John Hurt. How can you bottle that?

 

[BWV]

 

[DaveE]

The list is long. We can all add famous names. Not mentioned yet:
-Leo Kottke
-Jorma Kaukonen
-Al Di Meola
-Pat Metheny
-John McLaughlin
-Junior Brown

But I'll highlight Michael Hedges. Good, interesting, different, and not that well known.

 

[pinball1970]

No one has mentioned Doc Watson. I saw him and his son Merle play in Yellow Springs Ohio in the early 1970's. Blown away.
And then there is mississippi John Hurt. How can you bottle that?

Don't know this player, I will check him out.

 

[pinball1970]

What a great thread!
I love the guitar but I do not have the fingers, my little finger does a stupid movement when I am playing single notes. Ok for chords.
The best players do not have these jerky movements.
Jan Ackerman from the Dutch 1970s band Focus for me as an all rounder was the best.
Great sound, always original solos, no other player I heard from that era would choose those notes.
It helped that the chord structure to the music was complex.
Classical, jazz and rock all in one player, genius.

 

[pinball1970]

Street Walker. This was after Focus.

 

[pinball1970]

He described this piece as "a little hectic..."

 

[pinball1970]

Richie Blackmore, putting Hendrix, who he admired, together with blues and classical in 1970.

The solo begins 8.38

 

[sbrothy]

To complete the picture these two instrumental pieces are played by Stevie. One is a cover of Hendrix's LIttle Wing although Stevie happily keeps his mouth closed. I know it's almost sacrilege to say out loud, but in my opinion Stevie does it better than Jimi!



The other one is Riviera Paradise with Stevie and Double Trouble:



EDIT: But man, so much to listen to.... Thanks guys!

 

[sbrothy]

Oh, and btw this deserves mention too (Paco de Lucia, Al de Meola and John McLaughlin playing acoustic jazzy flamenco). I tried to learn playing the tracks just listening and repeating (a process I succeeded with with a lot of other artists). I was very frustrated until I found out that there were 3 players! Felt a little stupid there.

Friday Night in San Francisco -Mediterranean Sundance / Rio Ancho (Live at Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, CA - December 5, 1980)

 

[Mark44]

Don't know this player, I will check him out.

(Referring to Mississippi John Hurt)
One of my favorites since 1971, whose playing influenced a whole lot of guitarists.

Another of my personal favorites is Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and later Hot Tuna. I've seen Jorma when he was with Jefferson Airplane sometime in '67 or early '68 and once again when he was with fellow Airplane alumnus Jack Casady, in Hot Tuna. Mark Knopfler has already been mentioned. I saw Knopfler in the early 90s, I guess just before he left Dire Straits. I'm also a longtime fan of Leo Kottke.

 

[sbrothy]

Richie Blackmore, putting Hendrix, who he admired, together with blues and classical in 1970.

The solo begins 8.38

Well, if we're talking about solos.... Nevermore is like a little in depth to Megadeath, Their main vocalist is an opera singer by education though. It's makes a difference. They're one of the the bands who's live concerts live up to their studio albums.

I've yet to hear a more brilliantly harmonically apt, and technically well presented solo in this old number ("Timothy Leary! Where are you noooow? The world needs you... [...] " :P )



Solo starts 2:57, after "[...] IMMOOOOORTAAAAAL! [...]"

 

[sbrothy]

(Referring to Mississippi John Hurt)
One of my favorites since 1971, whose playing influenced a whole lot of guitarists.

Another of my personal favorites is Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and later Hot Tuna. I've seen Jorma when he was with Jefferson Airplane sometime in '67 or early '68 and once again when he was with fellow Airplane alumnus Jack Casady, in Hot Tuna. Mark Knopfler has already been mentioned. I saw Knopfler in the early 90s, I guess just before he left Dire Straits. I'm also a longtime fan of Leo Kottke.

Don't know all the artists you mention, but if you like Jefferson Airplane I'll give my stamp in full confidence.

 

[sbrothy]

(Referring to Mississippi John Hurt)
One of my favorites since 1971, whose playing influenced a whole lot of guitarists.

Another of my personal favorites is Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and later Hot Tuna. I've seen Jorma when he was with Jefferson Airplane sometime in '67 or early '68 and once again when he was with fellow Airplane alumnus Jack Casady, in Hot Tuna. Mark Knopfler has already been mentioned. I saw Knopfler in the early 90s, I guess just before he left Dire Straits. I'm also a longtime fan of Leo Kottke.

You mentioned Leo Kottke so offhandedly that I had to check him out. Thanks for that pearl!

 

[Mark44]

You mentioned Leo Kottke so offhandedly that I had to check him out. Thanks for that pearl!

Kottke does a lot of instrumentals, but he does sing in a few of his songs. One that I really like is "Louise," and another is "Pamela Brown." A favorite instrumental of his is "The Fisherman." You can find all of these on Youtube.

 

[Mark44]

Regarding Mississippi John Hurt, I remember reading an article in Guitar Player magazine years ago. Hurt recorded some songs back about 100 years ago, but with the arrival of amplified blues, he fell out of favor. A folk-music archivist, Alan Lomax, was travelling around the country back about 1965 with a goal of finding folk artists and/or music of the past.

He knew that Hurt had a song called "Avalon," which referred to a small town in Mississippi. Lomax went into the post office there, to ask if anyone had heard of Miss. John Hurt. The postmaster told him that Hurt was still alive and lived a couple houses down the street.

Lomax went to the house to find Hurt at home. At the time, Hurt didn't even own a guitar, so Lomax took one out of the trunk of his car. Hurt immediate started playing as if no time at all had gone by since he had made recordings 40-some years in the past.

I believe Lomax recorded at least 20 of Hurt's songs, enough for a couple of albums of country blues. I first heard of him about 1971 and have been a fan ever since.

Here are links to a couple of his songs:
Richland Woman Blues:

Casey Jones:

 

[symbolipoint]

Post #24, wonderful report about expository information about a guitar blues player.

 

[symbolipoint]

To original poster @sbrothy, post #1:

The best generalized answer is this online article:

 

[symbolipoint]

@sbrothy,
Although your o.p. is focused on guitar playing, to be aware that a very very creative artist, Brian Wilson, has from formal education, only an associate degree in Music, might be interesting to know.

 

[robphy]

Jason Becker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Becker
https://jasonbecker.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacophony_(band)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_David_Lee_Roth_Band#A_Little_Ain't_Enough

---

'Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet' [Film Trailer]


jason becker solo live japan


NEW NEVER SEEN FOOTAGE - Jason Becker Shows Arpeggios,Japan `89


Jason Becker Age 15 Rare video

• Perpetual Burn (studio version) - Jason Becker

JEFF LOOMIS - Perpetual Burn (Jason Becker Cover)

 

[sbrothy]

@sbrothy,
Although your o.p. is focused on guitar playing, to be aware that a very very creative artist, Brian Wilson, has from formal education, only an associate degree in Music, might be interesting to know.

Indeed. I respect education. In all it forms. (Probably because I have virtually none myself. )

 

[sbrothy]

To original poster @sbrothy, post #1:

The best generalized answer is this online article:

I'd like to read this article but I can't seem to get at it. Could you post (or maybe PM) a proper link?