Players who grate...

[deleted]

A bit of a reverse on most of the topics in this section...

I was wondering if you guys had pet peeves - guitarists who really irk you for having either garnered a lot of (you think) unwarranted attention, or whose styles or playing just set you on edge? I don't want to start a fight where people bag each other's heroes...but I think it'd be interesting to hear what people DON'T like in a player.

For me, though I can appreciate showy stuff for its technical merit, I'm not big on people who don't play for the song. I find it hard to imagine pulling together a band whose sole purpose is to back me up while I stand there and wank tediously. Because I wouldn't want to be one of those other musicians. Partly for this reason, I find Carlos Santana incredibly annoying. So, who gets under your skin?

Heath

i am gonna be leeched for this , but imo i never thought hendrix was that great , maybe he was awesome in his day , but honestly never really impressed me that much , and have never seen what all the fuss is about

Dirk

Tailon. wrote: i am gonna be leeched for this , but imo i never thought hendrix was that great , maybe he was awesome in his day , but honestly never really impressed me that much , and have never seen what all the fuss is about

you're a brave man ???

Just kidding, I think there was something more than just his guitar playing that drew people in. And the fact that he inspired many great guitar legends makes him great.

nick

Carlos Santana annoys me somewhat. As the one guitar magazine I read stated:

'if people wanted to watch you jerk off, they would install a camera in your toilet' ?

lately, while I appreciate his music, John Mayers been grating me, when hes on stage he has this 'wow Im the best' look on his face.

Bob-Dubery

Difficult - because it's subjective to a large degree. It may also be that there are details that people who don't pay a lot of attention to a genre don't hear. EG I tend to find metal guitar playing quite boring and cliched - especially as regards the tone. But it may be that because I haven't paid enough attention to that genre that I am missing out on distinctions between theser players (which means I am turning into my dad, to whom all electric guitar and electric guitar playing sounds the same).

I don't like sonic cliches, the fashionable sounds that somebody decides have to be on every record. In the 80s I got sick of everybody trying to sound like Mark Knopfler. In the 70s a lot of guys went for that sweet, sustaining, Larry Carlton sound. Been there. Done that. Got the fridge magnet. Can we move on please?

aubs1

Tailon. wrote: i am gonna be leeched for this , but imo i never thought hendrix was that great , maybe he was awesome in his day , but honestly never really impressed me that much , and have never seen what all the fuss is about

? ??? :?

nick wrote: , John Mayers been grating me, when hes on stage he has this 'wow Im the best' look on his face.

Maybe because he is.......and probably one of the most popular!

Then again, you like the Beatles or you don't!!! Who cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nobody has sleepless nights about who likes/dislikes whom.

Bob Dubery wrote: Can we move on please?

With you, Bob!

FatBoy

Tailon, you can count your lucky stars that the technology needed to bitch-slap someone over the interwebz does not yet exist.

Agree with bob for the most part. All metal players sound the same to me, it still baffles me that they have all these sub genres as well. Speed metal, death metal, black metal, NuMetal, hardcoreI'msoemo metal etc etc, I doubt that most people know the difference anyway.

I absolutely hate shredding, its sounds absolutely awful to me. I can't point out any specific players, but that style of playing just grates me to no end.

Bob-Dubery

aubs1 wrote:
Bob Dubery wrote: Can we move on please?
With you, Bob!

I was talking more about the cliched guitar productions than this debate. I get tired of all these people who think the best way to have a hit is to make the guitars sound like some other big hit. It got to the stage in the early 80s where, for a while, Santana was trying to sound like Knopfler - or made to sound that way by producers. I get depressed at how many players try to sound like their hero or like some big hit rather than like themselves.

Ray

Never liked Hendrix, apart from Abraxas Santana either. Al di Meola - how many notes a second can you manage. Actually any of the guys who just rattle off the speed thing dont appeal to me. But they are good I guess.

aubs1

Bob Dubery wrote:
aubs1 wrote:
Bob Dubery wrote: Can we move on please?
With you, Bob!
I was talking more about the cliched guitar productions than this debate. I get tired of all these people who think the best way to have a hit is to make the guitars sound like some other big hit. It got to the stage in the early 80s where, for a while, Santana was trying to sound like Knopfler - or made to sound that way by producers. I get depressed at how many players try to sound like their hero or like some big hit rather than like themselves.

Gotcha!! Just should'nt have added "with you, Bob"

Bob-Dubery

Tailon. wrote: i am gonna be leeched for this , but imo i never thought hendrix was that great , maybe he was awesome in his day , but honestly never really impressed me that much , and have never seen what all the fuss is about

To me he's one of those players who is simultaneously great and overrated. Which is not his fault. I think you have to consider him in the context of when he broke through. There is no doubt that he substantially raised the game in electric guitar playing, and opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Just as Dylan had done with songwriting.

It's like Isaac Newton - surpassed by Einstein now and it's hard to understand what the fuss was about, but in his time he fundamentally changed humanity's understanding of the universe.

Or Eddie van Halen (not that I'm a van Halen fan actually). Taking those records at face value now you'd think he's pretty good but he sounds like... and.... and... But he too effected a major shift and opened up new areas.

I'm also not a big Hendrix fan. I think it's harder now to appreciate what he represented and did, even if you intellectually understand the case. I hear lots of echoes of his playing, especially in the current generation of guitar tyros - notably John Mayer and Jack Johnson.

Good and important as Hendrix was, I will not countenance the notion that he is unsurpassed and unsurpassable. I'd like to think that no great is unsurpassable. (the only one who is showing serious longevity as "the greatest" is Shakespeare)

AlanRatcliffe

For me there are very few I dismiss entirely, but I make an exception for John Scofield ? To me, his playing sounds like Don Martin sound Effects read: Skroink, kerploogle, etc. Santana I'm not a fan of, but I know why many do like him.

With any classic player (like Hendrix) or style of music, you have to take into account the context of the times which they appeared. Hendrix was doing stuff no-one else had before and with a flash and flair second to none. Sure, it's old hat now, but he did it first and it was very different from most of what had come before. It meant he had much more impact than you can appreciate now, with you coming from a background of the players who took what Hendrix did and built on it (and their musical progeny).

I'm only just beginning to appreciate the real impact the Who had on music that followed (including Hendrix). If you can, check out a series of DVDs called The 12 Ages of Rock (BBC) - it's given me a new appreciation of many bands (and styles of music) I didn't quite get, or didn't understand why they had so much impact.

Explorerlover

Kerry King
Slash
Santana
Kirk Hammett
Dave Mustaine

Bob-Dubery

Ray wrote: Never liked Hendrix, apart from Abraxas Santana either. Al di Meola - how many notes a second can you manage. Actually any of the guys who just rattle off the speed thing dont appeal to me. But they are good I guess.

There was one Santana album that I listened to some years ago and thought "gee! Listen to that. This guy's better and more interesting than I thought."

Years later I found out that the playing I'd enjoyed so much was actually by Neal Schon.

Though that revelation also improved my estimation of Santana. After all his ego was sufficiently un-fragile that he could let somebody else onto his albums and give him a share of the spotlight and thus risk being shown up.

Bob-Dubery

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: I'm only just beginning to appreciate the real impact the Who had on music that followed (including Hendrix). If you can, check out a series of DVDs called The 12 Ages of Rock (BBC) - it's given me a new appreciation of many bands (and styles of music) I didn't quite get, or didn't understand why they had so much impact.

It's doubly difficult for artists who rose to fame in the 60s because that was such a fast moving time. Listen to successive Beatles albums from about '65 onwards. They moved so fast. Those times moved so fast.

The Kinks song "Dedicated Follower Of Fashion" was partly a lampooning of a shallow dandy, but also hinted at the difficulty in keeping up with the trends in the 60s.

Bob-Dubery

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: I'm only just beginning to appreciate the real impact the Who had on music that followed (including Hendrix). If you can, check out a series of DVDs called The 12 Ages of Rock (BBC) - it's given me a new appreciation of many bands (and styles of music) I didn't quite get, or didn't understand why they had so much impact.

+ 1 on that. Townsend was a great songwriter - caught the times so perfectly.

Plus they were influential in the longer term as well. They cast a huge shadow over punk and new wave.

Squonk

Hendrix was more than guitar playing.
Listen to "Little Wing" , artistic brilliance, I sometimes still get goosebumps listening to the solo in "all along the watchtower", simple but goosebumpy.
But as you have all said, judge the guitarist in right context.

@ Alan John Scofield is a strange guitarist ?, he is not melodic at all, and I think we become used to the melodic way of playing, He also seems to use too much distortion for "so called jazz".

I battled with Scott Henderson at first but appreciate him now, Another strange guitarist is Adrian Legg who is obviously gifted but doesn't come accross in studio.

Strangely I am into Metal, but try my best to ignore the Gnarly vocals.

But no player really gets under my skin ?

Sean

Every guitarist that can play better than I can, and that's everyone and his dog >☹

Renesongs

For me a great guitarist is one that is innovative. The danger with being innovative is that your music is not instantly recognizable and therefore not instantly popular. The guitarist that I don't care to listen to are those which contribute nothing new to guitar or music. I won't mention the guitarist that do not move me because some of them are idols of other forum members and to criticize another musicians mojo is to unleash a heap of negativity.

doc-phil

Fritz Brand wrote: All metal players sound the same to me, it still baffles me that they have all these sub genres as well. Speed metal, death metal, black metal, NuMetal, hardcoreI'msoemo metal etc etc, I doubt that most people know the difference anyway.

I absolutely hate shredding, its sounds absolutely awful to me. I can't point out any specific players, but that style of playing just grates me to no end.

Oi! Highly rude! ? If you don't listen to metal then you'll never be able to tell the difference between genres such as metalcore, grindcore, NWOBHM, new york hardcore, joburg hardcore (yes, it exists), deathcore and all the other 'core' genres - which i suppose is in itself a sub species of metal. ?

I dont appreciate numetal or black/Norwegian metal at all. Guitarists in bands like Korn and Cradle of Filth grate me... Particularly the latter, they're more about showcasing how evil they think they are than actually creating decent music.. just my thoughts ?