These last days, something keeps on running through my head: the most recognizable guitar sounds/tones (without really trying, I usually think about rock music, because this is my “business”, let’s say). Please keep in mind that I am not considering the style of each guitar player, but his tone only, even if when trying to identify a guitar player both are considered.

1. Brian May (Queen) ,the overdriven tone, has an electric guitar sound that in my opinion can be recognized in an instance. It is somehow a strange sound, and for sure I wouldn’t set my guitar this way, but it really defines him. I don’t think that his clean tone has anything special.
2. Slash (GNR), the overdriven and the clean tone. I am not a big fan of Slash, if you constantly read this blog you may already know this, but I really believe he belongs here. I think that the one thing that helps defining the tone of Slash is the fact that he is tuned one step down, thus using low tensioned guitar strings, which gives some kind of a “loose” and sweet relaxed sound. About the clean tone, I have asked myself what makes it particularly recognizable for ex in Don’t cry or Knocking on heavens door. I have added a delay on my rhythm clean picking tone and I was surprised to see how close I get to it when playing Knocking!
3. Joe Satriani’s overdriven and clean tone. How could you possibly miss Satriani? How could you miss the one that is called the master of tone?! Here I think that his Fred pickup (which gives him that beautiful feedback) helps a lot in getting the almost patented overdriven sound.
4. Metallica’s clean tone. Well, this is kind of funny! Metallica, which became famous for trash rock to be recognizable by the clean tone. Well, but for me, I think that the tone in One, Enter Sandman, Fade to black can never be mistaken!
5. Carlos Santana’s overdriven tone. In such cases it is difficult to say where recognizing the sound starts and where recognizing the licks end.  Santana’s style is unmistakable, but so is his guitar tone, in my opinion. And I know it is not rock, so don’t point your finger at me!

I would have said also Stevie Ray Vaughan, Mark Knopfler, Jimi Hendrix but I can’t tell where playing style ends to only speak about the sound. I think I would recognize a new Dire Straits song by the way Mark Knopfler plays, but I don’t know if only the guitar sound would be enough.

So, what’s your take on this?

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I guess I’ve been hit again by the featuring-mania, I don’t know. And damn, it’s again Slash,after writing that post with Slash top 5 featuring acts, I seem to find him everywhere. But I have never thought I will find Slash playing with Ozzy.

The performance itself is nice but there are a few things I can not stop myself making fun of.

• I love Slash’s “pose”, his image when being on stage, that shaking of his guitar when holding a power chord, the same I know from GNR’s times (at 2:26).
• I smiled when I saw him balancing and making that spread-out-legs “rock icon” pose, bowing over his guitar while picking the notes of a simple clean chord, like in a very demanding solo, even if this song…has no solo!! So I didn’t quite understand what Slash contributed with, beside him being on stage…
• The concentration of round sun glasses is way too high there…

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Today I was thinking to write about something else, but while searching for a particular thing on YouTube, I got a lot of videos with Slash. Again, Slash! Seems that this guy had a lot of interesting featuring, so I thought about pointing you the top 5 Slash featuring acts. So, here we go:

1) Slash meets Michael Jackson

I guess everybody knows Give Into Me , was quite famous at his time. The starting riff reminds me of Take me for a little while of David Coverdale and Page, also of one of Shakira’s song that I can not name and…one of my own. Honestly, after hearing Shakira’s song I got mad cause my song was 3-4 years older. Well…

Not one of my favorites, but it reminds in my mind over the years. I didn’t search for this song, I just knew it.

Just a solo thing, as he says, a s a favor to the record company, but it resulted in a great song, IMO. Here’s the song.

An other beautiful solo contribution of Slash.

Well, here’s just pure rock, I guess he loved it too! And Duff is there too!

If you have any other interesting featuring acts, let me know. In the meantime, don’t forget to Digg this!

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Since a long time I think about what is the best guitar you could have? Well, I must say that I got to the conclusion that is not you the one that choses the electric guitar, it is not even the “electric guitar choses you” idea. Let’s put it this way: you want to play jazz and you pick a Jackson KE2 Kelly like this one. Would it feel right? Well, I think not, even if it would probably do the job in the right hands, if the situation asks it and you don’t have any other choice.

How about playing heavy metal on an Ibanez Artist model? Again it does not feel right. Of course that, once more, it would probably do the trick for a situation where you don’t have a choice, but it won’t be the same.

As you probably see, I have kept Gibson electric guitars and Fender electric guitars out of this because Fender and Gibson, as the time proved it, fits any gender. I have seen Gibson played by heavy metal bands as well as blues and jazz bands, if you consider Malmsteen, then Fender would be the weapon of choice for any speed kind.

However, I think that in most cases, some electric guitars fit better some musical styles. A jazz guitar player would look and feel right with an Ibanez AS model, like John Scofield, while a shredder would probably use the Jackson model I have spoke about a bit earlier.

Electric guitars are lovely toys, but you need to feel comfortable playing them. Don’t chose an electric guitar that you don’t feel comfortable since it won’t give you the feeling you need on stage. You need to feel full, from the way your guitar stays in your hand to the way you look there. If you feel right from all point of views, then, your creativity will work best. Otherwise you will have drawbacks that will keep you from expressing the way you could. I think this is true for anthing you do in your life, you should only do what you love, unfortunately this is not always possible as all of us probably know.

Did you ever think how Slash would look with a Dean from hell guitar? Dimebag looked great with it and fully expressed what he felt, but think about that guitar in the hands of, let’s say…Clapton?! I remember once while in the rehearsal room of some local band I have tested a hollow guitar and felt like the worst guitar ever to me, at that time. Why? Because I had that “metal all over” thing and no matter if the guitar would have been the best ever, the most expensive and had some signature on it, for me it was not satisfying at that time.

How about you? Are you playing the guitar you love?

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OK, it may sound fancy but I will explain you in just a second why I named my article “Electric guitars or the universe of sound”.

I named it this way since more than acoustic guitars, electric guitars open a world of sounds that reveal infinite possibilities. There is a lot of science in how an electric guitar sounds, in the way the sound is set by the guitar player or by the sound engineer, the sound needs to have certain mathematical level of trebles, of bass, but if you listen to those guitar heroes that you look up to, you will see that they all have their unique sound.

Electric guitars sound different because of many parameters that should be taken into consideration, from the wood type the electric guitar is made of, to the amplifier parameters and all the way to the particular way the player knows his way around music.

Even the position where the guitar strings are pinched matters when you speak about sounds of electric guitars and that is why all those guitar heroes sound that different.

I picture electric guitars sounding in a “visual” manner

I am a visually oriented person and I “see” everything, including sounds. Maybe it is difficult for you to understand what I mean, but picture this: let’s take a 70’s electric guitar player, let’s say Jimi Hendrix and his astonishing way of playing the guitar (by the way, I am not a big fan of Hendrix, but I do appreciate his perspective of the music) and Joe Satriani, a real God of electric guitars, in my opinion.

When I picture the sound of Jimi Hendrix’ electric guitar I see it as a tape running, flying, twisting in the air, but as a colored tape, I mean like a 2 faces limited thing, in one word…a tape. That, in my opinion defines the whole period of the 70’s from the point of view of how electric guitars sound.

When I think about modern electric guitars, when I think about how Joe Satriani makes his futuristic sounds, I see an infinite, fluid, conic shape, with a small base, some kind of a 3D tube that narrows to the infinite end, reflecting a silver-like light. This is the way modern electric guitars sound. The whole music of Joe Satriani sounds like surfing with the aliens, if you know what I mean…

I don’t know if you agree or not, this is my way of seeing the music, this is the way electric guitars make me feel and imagine music. Various electric guitar players give me different feelings, different impressions.

For example, if I think about Slash of Guns N’ Roses I think of him as having an incredible equilibrium, the way a cat has. Remember, a cat is said to always fall on her feet; this is what Slash makes me feel. Each time I see him playing his Gibson I have a damned ugly feeling that, look, now he’s going to miss a note, see…now, not yet…aaa, he’s going to miss the next one..But you know something? Despite this feeling of insecurity that Slash always throws on me, he always manages to put there as many notes as needed in order to make the song work. Without being one of the best electric guitar players around, Slash has other qualities, in my opinion. He is very melodic and has his unique style of playing. But that will probably be the subject of an other post, sometimes in the near future.

I could speak like this for hours about electric guitars, about how they sound and how various guitar heroes play and how they sound, but for the moment I stop here hoping that you have understood why I named my post “Electric guitars or the universe of sound”…

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