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You are like a good white wine......not much room for vocals hummm.

Sean:
You technical guitar skills are awesome. Far beyond mine for sure.
But, (there's always at least one but in crowd isn't there)
Very few artist and in very few compositions can endless speed riffage be called a "song" IMO.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you have the talent to pull it off.
I just don't think this one hits that mark, for me anyways.

Thanks for the music all the same.

For all of your technical expertise, I find it amazing how little actual taste you have. I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but is there a market for this outside of teenage guitar haro wankin' wannabes?

Can you play it again, note for note? Would anyone notice if you did? There is nothing here that sticks to my head, & my head isn't made of Teflon.

I'd be impressed if you did this once, but you've become a one-trick pony, seemingly unable to grab the average Joe's mind with anything at all, other than your speed. There is no discernable melody. No hook. Nothing at all to make it stand out from all the other wanking out there.

My last guitar teacher had the same problem. he was like a Top Gun pilot that couldn't actually fly anywhere, but man, his loopety-loops & such were really cool. I kept telling him, too - without a discernable melody, you may as well sit at home & do your finger exercizes, cuz every local band I've seen with this kind of approach dies a terrible death after the 1st set.

I think it's a great demonstration of your knowledge of your instrument, as well as technique and skills.
What makes me a hard sell is that I wouldn't define it as a "song". TO be fair, there are few instrumentals in any genre that I would define as such. It is one man defining his ability with his instrument-which is certainly something to be appreciated. On the other hand, I really don't hear any variance in rythmic sections, or anything that leads up to a climactic point (vocals/lyrics tend to be what guides the listener to that point). I wouldn't call it "wanking", because it's obvious that you put a lot of work into your craft. However, I wouldn't call it a song, either.
BTW, a drummer can play the most amazing drum solo anyone has ever heard, but without the necessary parts, I wouldn't call it a song either.

Nice playing, man.

Thanks Guys!

Sean Akins wrote:Thanks Guys!

LOL, way to take it on the chin dude. Gotta give you that, you take criticism well.

So, just to interject.. Yeah, pretty much what Philby said..

I remember being 18 and totally enamored by Yngwie (back in 1987 hah).. I started wanking everything, trying to be more like that..

And one day it hit me when listening to someone else like yourself.. I couldn't stand to hear it. I only really liked it when I listened to myself.. then I looked at what Yngwie was doing.. yeah, he was wanking, but for the most part, tastefully.. The songs and solos DID have hooks.

Yours is missing that. It's just wanking. Anyone can do that after learning two scales, frankly. Most of what you are doing are tremolo and harmonic tricks too.. You've got ability, but yes, like philby said, very poor taste-

Kramer, I just lstened to your music; I will keep my style of playing. . You can't play guitar, trust me!

So you're not having sex with us anymore?
Kinda rude really aren't you? You don't take part in anything other than yourself do you.

Sean Akins wrote:Kramer, I just lstened to your music; I will keep my style of playing. . You can't play guitar, trust me!

You can play the instrument, but it doesn't sound like it's in tune with your accompaniment. Shred in same key or get new and/or different support.

The "wammy bar" use is particular to a couple of guitarists.
Are you sure you want to limit yourself to "their" sound?
That sound is good, but to be used you need to tweak it to make it sound more like "you" and less like "him", ideally.

That's an evolution of your own style.

Sean Akins wrote:Kramer, I just lstened to your music; I will keep my style of playing. . You can't play guitar, trust me!

Wow .. you really think you're hot stuff … yea you can solo for 20mins and sound like a multitude of other players, none of it original sounding or attention grabbing and thank god there more to music than that …. boring

Kramer’s playing is every bit as good as yours if not better, he tends not to whack-on for 20 mins and throws in some chords. Personally I don’t think much of Valerie’s singing but that has nothing to do with Kramer’s playing.

Ron

If you've got any poo. Fling it now!!

Wow Sean any schmuck can make a guitar scream and squeal like a stuck pig. Music needs to breath man. And you completely suffocated your jam. You need to learn how to harness your abilities and let the music breath. Play with soul and meaning instead of hatred and dismay. I'm not dissing you on any front just trying to give you a bit of worth while friendly advice. Keep at it and it will come to you. A very unique and talented guitarist to listen to for an example is Brad Paisley on any of his instrumental songs on any of his albums. The man knows when to lay on it and when to let her breath again.

Good points, Jason!

Sean - also check out Roy Buchanan, or Trey Anastasio, or Danny Gatton, or even Carlos Santana. There's 4 distinct styles there. All 4 can shred, but usually go for a much more melodic approach, each in his own way.

It's tough to teach taste, but I look at things like Gilmour. He was speaking of Yngvie Manglestein, I think, when he said something about being able to put more heart & soul in a single held note than Yngwie could with a gazillion in the same amount of temporal space. (I'm paraphrasing, of course.) I quite agree.

There are only so many notes that a human ear can accept at a time. When you surpass the allowable amount, it all just runs together in a blur of sound that the average Joe misses entirely, no matter how good you are at what you're doing. Eventually, it all starts to sound like bugs humming, with about the same emotional effect.

I don't even think it's the amount of notes that is the problem. Sean's "shredding" isn't really shredding at all. It's more wanking than anything else. Oh, there's a few scale passages here or there, but for the most part it's harmonics and whammy-bar wanking.

I'd change the name of the song to "For Me", because clearly Sean is the only one getting anything out of it. But a better title might be "Masterbation".


Guys like John Petrucci, Doug Ott, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson and Neal Schon... they can all "shred". But the difference between what they do and what Sean is doing with this piece of crap is light years apart. They inject their playing with melodies and emotion, and use the speed as sort of Nitro.

There is absolutely no melody in this thing called "For You". No hooks, no melodies, nothing memorable. Hell, even Satriani, who makes his living with instrumentals, knows that it takes a melody to make a song. I can hum a number of key melodies to Satriani's songs... I couldn't hum a bar to this rubbish - there's absolutely nothing impressive or memorable about it.

Unlike a lot of players here, I'm a guy who appreciates shredding and technique and fast playing. And I couldn't even stomach this thing; I had to stop listening 3/4 of the way through. It hurt my ears to hear that much self indulgent rubbish.

I'd put this piece of "music" right up there with the masses singing out of tune trying to get on "American Idol". It's got the same train-wreck appeal. In both cases, you're listening to people who *think* they're good, but they really sound pathetic, and they don't know it. Clueless.

Ignorance is bliss.