What really makes a guitar player? Is his unique playing style, along with his own sound?Is it creativity? OK, if I think about it, creativity helps defining the style. And sound also, so I think I can stick to this “style” thing. It is about being recognized (again marketing?!) out of the crowded space of guitar playing.

Let’s think for a bit and create an artificial environment where you put a guitar player in a closed box, so you can’t see him, don’t know who’s inside, give him all his equipment and let him create a piece of music.

Can you tell who the guitar player is just by listening the musical piece he created? If you can, you probably have a great name there, a guitar player that is sure of himself, with strong roots, a real “guitar hero”.

I think of a few that I would recognize in such a case:

• Joe Satriani - one of the most creative guitar players IMO, close to my heart since a long, long time. His own high tech guitar sounds and his unmistakable riffs put him there as one of the main guitar icons of the last 20 years
• Steve Vai - OK, maybe this time it is me not being that creative, probably you think that sure, this guy is some kind of Satriani fan, how could he not like Vai? And so it is, but this is not the reason I put Steve Vai here. Now really, can you have Steve Vai playing in that closed box and not recognize him? I think that those long-finger licks he patented make him sure of his place here.
• Slash - I don’t particularly find Slash to be such a great technician, but his fat Gibson sound and the way he always falls on his feet when soloing, plus his licks of a particular sweetness ask for a place here.
• Joe Perry of Aerosmith. Well, I can only think of the ending of songs such as Crazy, Crying and I could tell he’s in the box, no doubt about it.
• Frank Gambale. Here’s the fact that he started to study guitar by listening to keyboard players so his way of playing the guitar is quite unique. If you also count his personal method of fast picking and his upside-down scales, he’s there!
• Gary Moore - He’s got the blues, man!! I know I would recognize him in a moment. Wouldn’t you?
• Stevie Ray Vaughan- I would have put here also SRV from the start but after listening Andy Timmons playing “I remember Stevie” I was amazed by how he managed to catch that particular style of SRV. OK, I said above that each artist should play his own style, not try to sound like somebody else, so SRV should be put there also
• Brian May - no need to say more, he’s there.

Yngwee Malmsteen - no doubt, one of the most powerful influences for skilled players with his own sound and style. However I don’t add him here since too many guitar players copied him that you can not say anymore who’s ho nowadays. But if the list was made 20 years ago probably he would have been the first.

Who did I miss?

Later edit:

• Yngwee Malmsteen - for creating an unique style, neo-classic rock, even if so many followed him that today they assimilated his style that you can not tell the difference. Jon of GuitarNoize.com convinced me to add Yngwee.
• Jimi Hendrix - OK (still Jon)
• Paul Gilbert (Jon)
• B.B. King (Jon)
• Carlos Santana (thanks Pilgrim)
• Albert King (Pilgrim)
• Glenn Kaiser (Pilgrim but I don’t know him so…)
• Fank Zappa (thanks Dr J)

Anybody else?

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I was not a big fan of YouTube. To be honest, in the beginning I could not understand what is all the fuss about. Some people uploading their stupid videos with their dogs at the pool or some idiots drinking Cola while eating Mentos…

That was in the beginning. Now I heavily use YouTube for watching cool concerts, songs, videos and guitar lessons, I almost all the time find something interesting to watch there and my most important (like 95%) usage of YouTube is for music.

I have seen there a lot of wannabes, a lot of people trying to play the guitar like their idols, I have seen people trying and people failing and also some of them succeeding. But what really impressed me is this guy, Gustavo Guerra!

When I have first seen him on YouTube I couldn’t believe my eyes. Or ears. Really! He seems to be in absolute the same league as Satriani, Vai, Malmsteen, Gilbert, etc. He plays guitar with an amazing easiness and feeling, speed and technique. Using specific electric guitars for specific artists made him look more than cool and built him a brand image. He must have money and a lot of passion for electric guitars, since he owns custom models of famous artists, playing Satriani on Ibanez Joe Satriani models (I have counted about 3 of them, including the chromed model), Vai on JEM model, Malmsteen on his scalloped Fender, Eric Johnson on his model, damn, he seems to have them all, he must feel like a child in a toy store, really.

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Did you ever notice that famous guitar players have their own way of producing the vibrato? Take for example Eric Clapton, he has some fast, almost one finger vibrato. Also if you consider the fact that he has also an unique way of keeping the guitar neck in his hands, when soloing, I would say that if I would only see his hands playing the guitar, I would know it is him. Pay attention to his solo here.

OK, let’s take Steve Vai also: when  I have seen Vai vibrating a note, I was confused, he has some large, round way of vibrating a note. His (looooong) finger does at the same time a vertical and an horizontal moving, kind of a circle; I could say that he massage that particular string, like when your head hurts and you press your forehead circularly. See here in order to understand. It may be a show thing, it is more interesting for the camera, but this also gives him a low frequency vibrato that is “sweeter”.

To also consider a third  type, take Malmsteen, which has his violin like vibrato, probably because of his violin backgrounds. If you have never thought about that so far, pay attention next time you listen Malmsteen and also listen a violin player after listening Malmsteen.

Any other examples you could think of?

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I was reading this post here about top 28 most recognizable guitars. I must say that I just love this topic, even if I have never thought about it. I will not post here again the same top that the other guys posted on their blogs, just that I must admit that there are some electric guitars, mostly, that made a strong impact on the way the artist’s image was built. Indeed, think about Prince with his Purple Glyph Symbol Guitar, think about Zakk Wylde circle guitar, think about Michael Angelo Batio with his The Reverse Double-Neck guitar, etc.

I had only one thing to object to that top. I don’t see the Red Special model of Brian May and that’s one recognizable model, I think that every guitar player in this world knows it and some also know the legend of how it was built.

I would also add Steve Vai’s cut through guitar to that list and maybe a few others too. However the list is great.

Man, I just observed now: no SRV no 1 model either?!!

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Personally I consider a musician should be good in what he does from a technical point of view. I mean, if you put an electric guitar in the hand of a guitar player he should know his way around it. This is because I listen to bands that have skilled musicians. I like Joe Satriani, I like Vai and I like bands like Helloween, Dream Theater, Iron Maiden, Vanden Plas, etc and the music they play is sharp, clear, with elaborated musical phrases, with a lot of instruments and a lot of those speedy glitters that we all love.

But this is just a point of view. If you take Kurt Cobain for example and his almost famous out of tune notes and his proverbial lack of technical skills and judge him by this scale, then there would be have no place for him on stage, but if you judge by the fact that he was part of a movement that totally changed the music in only a few years then we should pay him the respect he deserves.

The only observation I could make here is that I am not convinced that Kurt Cobain was aware of his creative process, I just think that he did what he felt and it all probably came naturally to him, without thinking too much about it. I think that this is the essence of the music he made and of the feeling he transmitted. Actually if you think about it, the feeling is what really counts when you consider music such as Nirvana used to play. When you take a band such as Dream Theater there is so much you could appreciate so even if you find that a song doesn’t quite transmit a strong feeling you can always find some technical thing that makes you love it.

So, is Dream Theater better than Nirvana? Is Steve Vai better than Cobain?

I think there is no way to compare musicians. There is one for every one of us. That is what makes the music so beautiful, the fact that you find at any moment something that moves you, depending on your mood. Do you think that Joey DeMaio, the bass player of Manowar, well known for his passion for “true metal” and his disrespect for
”posers” doesn’t listen blues? My personal opinion is that he also has his moments when Steve Ray Vaughan or BB King put him in that state where nothing else counts but blues.

I posted this because I had a discussion with a friend of mine some time ago about a band here, Vama (Veche) is called, and about the lead singer which is an actor before being a singer. Or is he a singer before being an actor? Well, personally I think that exactly this duality gives him the possibility to express himself the best on stage; he has the potential and the training to express a large scale of feelings and this makes it easy to communicate with the public even if sometimes he can not control his voice very well.

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If you think about it, I don’t think that any other musical instrument influenced the 20th century more than electric guitars. I think that electric guitars are to the last century what piano and the rest of the historically related instruments were for their time. Of course that if you think about Mozart, Beethoven, they used to compose their music on piano, or how you called it back then. I am sure that if they would have lived today, they would have given a great importance to electric guitars and probably they would have been rock stars. I am not joking, I mean what I say!

Think about Steve Vai, Satriani or Yngwie Malmsteen, gods of electric guitars, right? I have the conviction that born under an other star, a few hundred years ago, their names would have been listed near Mozart’s name and Bach’s name. Today, electric guitars are what drive the rock, blues, country music scene the same way as piano did some time ago.

Will electric guitars gods be remembered a few hundred years later?

Well, this is a really good question, and most of all, difficult to answer because we don’t have a way to compare what is going on with the music industry these days. Think about the fact that they didn’t have too much to do back then so composers, music people were seen as important figures of those days. Today, everything changes fast, electric guitars are a presence of the last 70 years I think, you can not predict how the music will change and if electric guitars will still be part of the next 100 years’ music. But who knows, maybe people will still remember and kids will learn in school about Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or Andy Timmons…

What do you think?

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