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i hear so many people complain about how the rock genre has nothing else to offer.well their all wrong!there is an untapped source of excitement.it`s called the tasty guitar solo, this is something that makes all speed metal,death metal,etc,bands boring.tasteless go nowwhere solos ,that my friends, comes with feeling and few people have it.you know exactly what im talking about.the tasty solo is the one that if you cover a song you have to include the solo note for note or it`s a waste of a good song because nothing replace it.the thing is that taste comes with feel and inspiration.tell me the solo from master of puppets or the the solo from burn?give me taste anytime.

I saw Zappa play Schools Out with Alice Cooper last night on Leno , and thought a lot of the same about his performance. One second he was putting that feel to it the next he was just a dweeb playing a bunch of fast garbage. I don't think he knows better. Being able to shredd with a feeling isn't as easy as one would think.

excellent point 1collaborator

For the other side of that coin listen to Chris Broderick's solos in Tornado of Souls, or Mustaine on Wake Up Dead (Megadeth.)

Talbot

Or on the other other side, give me a guitarist that is not afraid to CREATE in a live situation.
Try to name the ones that you think fall in that category. I mean truly step away from the patterns, or recorded solo. There are very few, and they don't include Zak Wylde , Santana, Or even Dicky Betts.

Usually, just a few fills are all you need. I was never big into gratuitous guitar solos. You can sometimes pull off the right effect with just controlled noises.

"look what I can do" lead players drive me insane... or usually out the door.
I am NOT impressed with how fast or catchy you can play. If your not expressing the intent of the song your just in the way is how I see it.

David Gilmore never did a fast lick in his life, and few can touch him as an expressive lead guitarist.

Hayden King wrote:"look what I can do" lead players drive me insane... or usually out the door.
I am NOT impressed with how fast or catchy you can play.

Oh boy described me to a tee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZn0Fxq0z0E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcS_DukrJSM

Crip2nite wrote:

Hayden King wrote:"look what I can do" lead players drive me insane... or usually out the door.
I am NOT impressed with how fast or catchy you can play.

Oh boy described me to a tee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZn0Fxq0z0E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcS_DukrJSM

That's what you did

I try to combine fast and slow parts to capture a mood. It's like sex.

Hayden King wrote:

Crip2nite wrote:

Hayden King wrote:"look what I can do" lead players drive me insane... or usually out the door.
I am NOT impressed with how fast or catchy you can play.

Oh boy described me to a tee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZn0Fxq0z0E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcS_DukrJSM

That's what you did

But.. I started playing just for sh¡ts and giggles and whether it's your cup of tea or not, the crowd ALWAYS requests a solo from me and I ALWAYS walk out of my gigs with no less then a C-Note.... so obviously my main objective is to have fun, please my crowd and walk out with $$ in my pocket so ....been doing this for the past 5 years and there's no signs of slowing down unless I make that decision! I'll keep shreddin the crap out of my axe "fast and catchy" as long a it supplements my income and the audience calls for it! One mans junk is another mans treasure!

I think music is very subjective...its all opinion and there is no right or wrong. I've been playing guitar since I was 13, and over the past 21 years I've learned from experience not to get wrapped up in music as a competition.

I'm an unbashed shred player, and pull no punches when it comes to that. I feel very fortunate that I found a style of playing that I'm passionate about, and I don't take that for granted. What I have found, at least on a local level where I am, is that there is a powerplay that seems to develop. The last band project that I was in the singer in particular was unhappy because he felt that my style of guitar was too over the top and monopolizing the sound of the band, and in turn felt that the band was a vehicle for my guitar playing rather than for the song (which was the farthest thing from the truth).

Technical guitar creates a certain type of sound, and in order to develop and create that sound, you need a certain type of physical ability on the instrument. Nothing more, nothing less. Its not a competition (though I know in the 1980's it was), and I don't think I'm better than anybody else, I just like what I like, and I know its to each his own.

The only issue I have is the when people jump on technical guitarists and criticize them for what is perceived as over the top, self indulgent playing. The idea of "feeling" to me is also subjective; if I'm playing a sweep arpeggio or a quick ascending/descending scaler passage how do people know whats going through my mind when I'm playing? There can be excitement, rage, passion, etc etc. It becomes this cliche where people so only blues players play with feeling, everyone else doesn't compare, and thats simply not true. Maybe to YOUR ears, YOUR personal musical tastes shred has no feeling, but its not a fact, its an opinion.

This argument also was very "mainstream" in the early and mid 90's during the grunge period. People who didnt have chops on a technical level loved criticizing the shredders from the prior decade who were on the "decline" as they saw it, and were filled with bile for guys with chops, because grunge artists were now on billboard magazine, selling millions of records kinda saying "ha, we are getting attention now and we didnt have to spend hours chop building, WE play with feeling"...and where is grunge bands now? Trends are trends. By the same token, if you criticize someone who play slow, or has little to no chops, you get villafied, especially if your a shredder...its almost like "how dare you say that about someone who plays with feeling"....again subjective.

Anyways, my 2 cents on this!

If there's a place for it that's cool. If a guitarist is an extraordinaire that's what people will come to see.
My own tastes tell me it's suppose to be another voice in a song, there is space for it but it doesn't need to be a race of notes to be good it just needs to be in place and hopefully show some emotion and melody to the song.
I bring up Little wing as a beautiful example of guitar melody in a lead. But that's rare player/writer. I think some guitarist are in-tune with that and try to create their own little wing. While others are so technically advanced these days the melody can get lost because the calisthenics are so impressive.
Not a big fan of John Mayer but he plays leads in some of his tunes with so much feeling, nice blend of blues and technique. Worth the 7 minute watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TErQbwHHh_w

Here ya go, Hayden.... a bit slower...lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy4I16VO4VA

Jeff you nailed it on the head. I love to see a guitar player shine, especially if he's good at what he's doing. My husband is a character and he loves to shine, and he's good at it, and see other guitar players trying to talk smack about him because he enjoys dressing up and doing his thing.

But then some of my songs have guitar solos and some of them don't, it can get kind of old when there's a solo in every song in every place and the guitarist really isn't doing anything different than what he did in the last song. My husband's blues band used to drive me crazy because every bleedin' song they placed, each person would take a solo and the song would then become 20 minutes long and it would get boring. I told my husband, why don't you take a solo in one song and let the other guitarist take one in the next song, why every song?

Welp, just my couple of pennies.

Chaeya