Who is you r least favourite guitarist

MIKA-the-better-one · 2009-12-18T12:46:49+00:00

Who is your least favourite Guitarist or band. And why. Local and international. International Nickleback, Chad Kroeger 3 Doors Down guitarist Zack Wylde (I really dont think these guys are great but thats just me) Nickleback are predictable and the same every song. I wont bring up another guitarist as in an old thread of mine risked death..... ? Local Walt Prime Circle Crash Car burn

sepheritoh

Anyone that is a better guitarist than me.

Oh damn, that means I hate the whole world, including those just born.

Frank Zappa I just do not get. At first I thought it must be me, but then I realised it is him not being able to entertain me sufficiently. I really tried. Listened to many of his offerings, but he failed every time.

DonovanB

I can handle listening to Steve Vai, Satriani and Eric Johnson. But Yngwie and petrucci are too much for me.

singemonkey wrote The warning sign for me tends to be when the first thing everyone mentions about the guitar player is their tone...

I dunno, BB King had great tone and he's not a hated shredder.

singemonkey

DonovanB wrote I can handle listening to Steve Vai, Satriani and Eric Johnson. But Yngwie and petrucci are too much for me.

singemonkey wrote The warning sign for me tends to be when the first thing everyone mentions about the guitar player is their tone...
I dunno, BB King had great tone and he's not a hated shredder.

What I mean is that it's the first thing mentioned about them. "Wow you won't believe the guy's tone." It's unlikely to be the first thing someone would mention about B.B.'s guitar playing. Lots of guitarists I love have great tone - even if it was "mastered" by plugging a guitar straight into an amp - but for me it's a bad sign when it's brought up before anything else. I usually end up going, "ho-hum..."

guidothepimmp

i really dislike all the guitar geniuses who make me feel shart about my playing ability (or lack thereof). Because, I feel like I busted my arse to learn what i know, and now that i am older, find it more difficult and more frustrating to learn new things that theoretically should be easier for me to learn because I am now more apt and able, yet find it extremely discouraging because i almost do not have the patience that i had when i was younger.

So watching satch, or john mayer, scofield, hetfield, malmsteem, tony macalpine, zappa, hendrix, bonamassa thanks a lot you @rseholes for making great music, yet at the same time making me feel so dejected and inadequate that i just end up frustrating myself even more >☹

Rob-dos

Squonk wrote Me

lol, same

Riaan C wrote Anybody who plays fast just for effect or because they can. ?

too true 8)

and guitar snobs.. people who stand there and question you on theory, or who rip on peoples gear or who judge others skills (lol im judging now hahaha)

Bob-Dubery

singemonkey wrote There's the Mike whatsit from Mike and the mechanics. Snoozerama.

Rutherf...

....

Oh. Did I miss anything?

He does have that effect. I was going to say some thing along the lines of "they made Daryl Steurmer play bass so that Mike could play guitar" but then Daryl Steurmer, for all his chops, is not exactly a shot of caffeine.

I don't like the guitar playing in the Eagles either, so there ?

I liked them better when Bernie Leadon was in the band. He added some good colour and wasn't trying to prove he was a guitar hero. Oddly I liked some Joe Walsh's pre-Eagles solo work. I think the Eagles gig was much easier for him and he stopped putting in the effort.

PeteM

For me, focusing on 'least favourite' is a waste of productive time.

BMU

My dislikes are simple, I despise the highly regarded or popular ones who can't play. The Cobains and Oasis's of the world. Arctic Monkeys, that type of thing. Feel, schmeel. Then again they don't affect my world much at all, this is not something I lose sleep over. It's more that I'm in work avoidance mode and I haven't replied to this thread yet (I think) so...

Bob-Dubery

BMU wrote My dislikes are simple, I despise the highly regarded or popular ones who can't play. The Cobains and Oasis's of the world. Arctic Monkeys, that type of thing.

I don't. They're just not amazing guitar players. That doesn't mean that what they produce isn't of any value or can't be appreciated.

The mistake that some folks make is to regard somebody like Kurt Cobain as a guitar hero. He came in surprisingly high on the infamous Rolling Stone 100 Greatest guitarists thingy. IMO he WAS a significant figure in popular music. He was not a great guitar player, and didn't position himself as a guitar hero. I think that the high ranking in the RS poll came about because people confuser "makes cool music" with "is a bitching guitar player". One does not guarantee or require the other.

The Clash weren't great players. That doesn't mean that they didn't make some great music.

Bob-Dubery

X-rated Bob wrote The mistake that some folks make is to regard somebody like Kurt Cobain as a guitar hero.

The other mistake to make is to judge music purely by the chops on show. If there's no guitar hero on show then that does that mean the music has no worth? The Beatles didn't have a GREAT guitar player. Keith Richards is not a technically elite player, but he's very effective and laid down some great tracks. The Edge isn't a great player, like Keef he is an EFFECTIVE and distinctive player and his band wouldn't sound anything like the same without him.

BMU

The OTHER mistake people make is this anti-proficiency pro-mediocrity backlash which seems so popular around here. By all means enjoy the music of someone who learnt to play 3 chords 6 months ago, just don't ask me to.

singemonkey

BMU wrote The OTHER mistake people make is this anti-proficiency pro-mediocrity backlash which seems so popular around here. By all means enjoy the music of someone who learnt to play 3 chords 6 months ago, just don't ask me to.

By all means enjoy the music of someone who plays 70 notes per second but has never written a single song anyone's ever cared about... just don't ask me to. ?

BMU

singemonkey wrote
BMU wrote The OTHER mistake people make is this anti-proficiency pro-mediocrity backlash which seems so popular around here. By all means enjoy the music of someone who learnt to play 3 chords 6 months ago, just don't ask me to.
By all means enjoy the music of someone who plays 70 notes per second but has never written a single song anyone's ever cared about... just don't ask me to. ?

Sure. But that's not what, say, Jeff Loomis does. He's written plenty songs that plenty people care about. Maybe just not that many people in this neck of the woods. Or Per Nilsson (Scar Symmetry). Or the guys in The Faceless whose names I don't even know. Or Jason Becker. Or Guthrie Govan.

But seriously, and not to you attack you at all Singemonkey... who are you thinking of when you say that? I can't think of a single guitarist I enjoy who fits that description. It's all just tall poppy syndrome and it drives me crazy! Hehe.

singemonkey

I'm just saying that it's not an anti-proficiency backlash here. While a lot of the metal guys you listen to are virtuosos and play a style that's very fast and technical, there are people out there who are revered more for their technical ability than for their ability to move people. In your style of choice, the two tend to go together. But they don't always. And a lot of us are not interested in guitarists who have blazing chops, but never do anything interesting with them.

It's not that we revere people because they can't play well. We revere them for playing awesome stuff. Marc Bolan, for example wrote more classic riffs in his short career than Yngwie Malmsteen's managed in a lifetime. This despite the fact that Bolan's not going to be remembered as anyone's choice of most technical guitar player.

Being technical doesn't stop you playing cool material - only a fool would argue that. It even gives you all kinds of advantages in terms of versatility. But being technical doesn't make you an interesting guitar player either - and many people who weren't at all are far more influential because they simply did awesomely creative stuff with the limited abilities they had.

It's false for beginners to think that technique is unimportant. It's also false for them to think that the better their technique becomes, the cooler their playing will be. Many of the coolest guitar players ever couldn't sweep pick to save their hamster from the guillotine.

Jack-Flash-Jr

singemonkey wrote I'm just saying that it's not an anti-proficiency backlash here. While a lot of the metal guys you listen to are virtuosos and play a style that's very fast and technical, there are people out there who are revered more for their technical ability than for their ability to move people. In your style of choice, the two tend to go together. But they don't always. And a lot of us are not interested in guitarists who have blazing chops, but never do anything interesting with them.

It's not that we revere people because they can't play well. We revere them for playing awesome stuff. Marc Bolan, for example wrote more classic riffs in his short career than Yngwie Malmsteen's managed in a lifetime. This despite the fact that Bolan's not going to be remembered as anyone's choice of most technical guitar player.

Being technical doesn't stop you playing cool material - only a fool would argue that. It even gives you all kinds of advantages in terms of versatility. But being technical doesn't make you an interesting guitar player either - and many people who weren't at all are far more influential because they simply awesomely creative stuff with the limited abilities they had.

It's false for beginners to think that technique is unimportant. It's also false for them to think that the better their technique becomes, the cooler their playing will be. Many of the coolest guitar players ever couldn't sweep pick to save their hamster from the guillotine.

Amen brother.

[deleted]

Wow, I'm am SURPRISED, I thought a lot more people would like THE G3. I'd really like to have powerfull feelings about this, I'm just very good at rationalising everything. Sometimes the over- the- top- ness makes me angry sometimes it makes me think, hm, well, people paid for it, that's what they want. To me when a song is THAT good it goes to the realm of the supernatural and the guitarist can't really lay claim to it (very unfair I know). It's like a combination of forces. So thus when a guitarist just doesn't make the cut I think, well, maybe something in me didn't respond to it, it doesn't make it bad. It's just a guitarist.

ps. I think really bad music is the kind that makes you lose your hearing. Very counter productive.

Bob-Dubery

BMU wrote The OTHER mistake people make is this anti-proficiency pro-mediocrity backlash which seems so popular around here. By all means enjoy the music of someone who learnt to play 3 chords 6 months ago, just don't ask me to.

I'd argue that it's the other way around -that there's a tendency on this forum to revere players who have got large vocabularies but very little to say. But what do I know? I don't practice enough or something.

There are two traps to fall into really. The first being that gob-smacking technique is required to produce great music, and the second that great music must mean that the musicians involved were great players. I don't see anybody seriously arguing that you have to be a crap player to make great music. I have seen it argued that some people have made great music DESPITE their technical limitations - but that's not the same thing.

Music is an art, and art that doesn't move people ain't worth jack.

Richard Thompson put it quite well: "If music is great, then the construction of it is veiled by its impact - you may analyse it later, but it should sweep you along with its originality and artistry."

MIKA-the-better-one

PeteM wrote For me, focusing on 'least favourite' is a waste of productive time.

you have just wated time.....

And to the whole techinicality VS simplicity (actual playing ?) lol, I remember a whole thread on this where by my views were made apparent on the matter. But in short I do find more talent in guitarists like kurt cobain (a virtual caveman on guitar) just due to his ability to craft music not show off. Drag racers are the fastest but put them in a normal car and they are no better.

BMU

Yah. Anyway I still despise the popular and overrated ones who can't play. To me (ME ME ME ME ME) what they do is utterly without value. They can't move me, ergo they're not worth jack. -> QED.

I would also despise the over-skilled ones who play just for the sake of playing while it sounds like sh*t, except I can't think of any. Maybe Yngwie? But no, he still has many awesome moments. And his playing does NOT sound like sh*t.

And I don't see Rolling Stone revering anyone like that, just idiots like Cobain. Nor do I often see the skilled ones on the charts. So: usually, on average, [ON AVERAGE, ON AVERAGE] the popular opinion rewards mediocrity, inadvertently or intentionally punishes the truly gifted and in my small way, I don't stand for that.

Anyway it's probably true that on the whole there isn't an anti-proficiency backlash here, it's just that the anti-proficient shout the loudest. Maybe the others have wisened up and just roll with it. Probably something I'll get out of my system too.

Jack-Flash-Jr

BMU wrote Yah. Anyway I still despise the popular and overrated ones who can't play. To me (ME ME ME ME ME) what they do is utterly without value. They can't move me, ergo they're not worth jack. -> QED.

I would also despise the over-skilled ones who play just for the sake of playing while it sounds like sh*t, except I can't think of any. Maybe Yngwie? But no, he still has many awesome moments. And his playing does NOT sound like sh*t.

And I don't see Rolling Stone revering anyone like that, just idiots like Cobain. Nor do I often see the skilled ones on the charts. So: usually, on average, [ON AVERAGE, ON AVERAGE] the popular opinion rewards mediocrity, inadvertently or intentionally punishes the truly gifted and in my small way, I don't stand for that.

Anyway it's probably true that on the whole there isn't an anti-proficiency backlash here, it's just that the anti-proficient shout the loudest. Maybe the others have wisened up and just roll with it. Probably something I'll get out of my system too.

The issue in the end is not technical proficiency by a player, it's an understanding of music and what really moves one as a player and others. That's what a riff like *gasp* Smells Like Teen Spirit is all about. How do you know Kurt couldn't shred? Perhaps he just chose not to because shredding is usually but not always, not a very elemental type of playing. Son House clapped his hands out of time and sang along to that, no guitar no nothing, and buddy... there is REAL power there... if one gives oneself a minute to get over the fireworks of technical display players and sometimes one need to age a bit to get there - you feel the INTERNAL HYDROGEN BOMB and that's where the magic is (300bpm or 20).

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