I guess I'm officially too old...

[Riffster]

Lets get things straight though, I am not into this genre myself either but I assure all that this cat can play anything you ask him to, classic rock, blues, metal, etc. I also bet you cash he can bend strings and play slow. Is just that playing fast is his thing.

 

I have seen Yngwie play slow blues live and he sounded pretty damn good.

 

We all seem to forget that while a lot of guitar players try to come up with their own style they are influenced by players of the past.

[surfpup]

I also bet you cash he can bend strings and play slow. Is just that playing fast is his thing.

 

I guess this is the "Picasso could paint straight if he wanted to" argument. I totally agree on a technical level. I'm sure this guy can do lots of things not evidenced in the video. That said, I approached it as a listener, and, as a listener, I don't find his playing in the video moving at all.

[Riffster]

Oh I don't either, I don't find the Prog Rock style appealing at all. A friend lent me the Arch/Mateos album and it left me cold.

 

Having said that I keep in mind that guys that play like this have other skills that we don't get to see.

 

example: Adrian Smith if Iron Maiden can be seen playing Blues on the Flight 666 documentary and he sounds pretty damn good, I'd never guessed it.

[Riffster]

And by the way Picasso did paint "normal" in his early career so probably that analogy supports what I am saying.

[MissouriPicker]

Wait until your 66 and you pick-up these mags...lol...Seriously, I don't even try to keep-up with anyone who plays the music currently played on mainstream radio....especially if it's country music. It simply does not speak to me. I can't identify with it. Every-now-and-then I'll hear someone that intrigues me and I'll listen to some of their stuff, but mainly I stick to what I've enjoyed for years.......I think where the music industry goes wrong ( and it's not just now. It's been this way for years) is that they think technical wizardry with an instrument is the same as entertainment. It's not. I don't care how good someone is with shredding notes and pushing buttons to make different sounds. I want to enjoy what I'm listening to. I'd much rather hear a low-key song like Cash and Springsteen often have done. Something on the quiet side, but the words mean something, and the performer makes the song his own. I can get into that. The other stuff is just noise to me........Of course, this is music we're talking about and everyone is different.

[moparguy]

I won't knock the guys chops - who could? And I will say I liked his chords - they were cool. But I have two problems with this type of lead playing...

 

1 - No bending. To me string bending is what makes the guitar vocal - makes it sound like a voice or a horn. As a listener I get bored if there is no string bending - and I got bored quick with the video that was posted. Why don't these guys ever bend?

 

2 - Sounds like a computer. The tone was very polyphonic and synthy. Gimme a Fuzz Face and a Marshall any day!

 

I guess what I'm saying is that I could probably make some sequencer program thing could do all that and that it doesn't feel very human or emotional to me.

Ding Ding Ding, couldnt have said it better

[Kaiser Bill]

At first I thought it was just me..... now I see I'm not alone. I didn't get it either...yes he can play...but so can most of us.. It must be WHAT he is playing that I don't get or care for or understand. Speaking for myself of course. Give me a nice chord sequence that makes musical sense, and a catchy melody that people will be able to hum in their heads later. Something that will be around 20 years from now....unlike me.

[Izzy]

Wait until your 66 and you pick-up these mags...lol...Seriously, I don't even try to keep-up with anyone who plays the music currently played on mainstream radio....especially if it's country music. I think where the music industry goes wrong ( and it's not just now. It's been this way for years) is that they think technical wizardry with an instrument is the same as entertainment. It's not. I don't care how good someone is with shredding notes and pushing buttons to make different sounds.

 

Firstly, there has been a merging of ALL genres. Country is pop with a bit of twang and even R&B is pop with a bit of soul...everything is pop on the radio. fk the radio.

 

You're very right about talent not equaling entertainment and talent not always equaling music that inspires. This guy is talented but are we missing something? His playing made me think of Bach.

 

Strangely, when I listen to Bach, the way some of those songs are meant to be played, very precise and without being stylized or corrupted by soul...they're still capable of inspiring. They seem emotionless because of the precision but those songs on the Switched on Bach record I grew up on are breathtaking.

 

Is this guy's playing maybe better suited for Bach type stuff, is it more of that sort of thing for the listeners? Perhaps this is where Surfpup's comment about his music being better suited for another instrument is derived from. His style reminds me of synth playing, though in synth playing you can use the bend and pitch wheel to create a bit of edge or soul.

 

@ Surfpup

 

You're making me feel like if I don't bend I am not playing the guitar properly. But damnit, pup, some folk players don't bend, they just strum the thing and pick a bit, and I've heard whole flamenco songs without bending. You gonna tell me flamenco isn't guitar sounding?

[kidblast]

I think where the technical aspect of a performance comes in to that degree it just doesn't hold a lot of people's (who know nothing about a guitar or how to play one) attention.

 

otoh, when it comes to music and musicians listing to other players,, Ahh, there's the rub huh? Impressive to watch, sure... can I listen to 20 minutes of it? nope..

 

(Same can be said for Steve Vai, I have nothing but admiration for him, the guy is just scary good,... yet, I can't listen to any of his albums front to back. One track at at time and I'm done..)

 

Seriously this guy has great hands (and the way he bends his right thumb gives me the willies...). but in some of the vids I saw, it's hard to say what he's playing and what's he's over dubbing with. But the cat can certainly play,

 

I'm just not buyin what he's sellin is all.

 

I also notice he's using a fractal rack unit, these seem to be a big favorite alternative to a standard amp among a lot of the pros.

[milod]

Well... I'm past old and into the antique. <grin>

 

But it did kinda remind me of what I might have expected from one of those wide fingerboard multi-string lutes of yore - centuries before even this guitar-pickin' antique.

 

It looks to me as if, as Izzy suggests, there's a huge stew of styles out there that are strongly influenced by others.

 

That's nothing new. Listen to acoustic stuff from the rural "south" recorded in the '20s and you have to see strong similarities in lyric and even overall style. "We" just tend to say if it's a white guy, it's "folk" and if it's a black guy doing the same piece in virtually the same style, it's "blues." Much "classical" music borrowed from folk tunes.

 

To me, since sound recording came along the tendency for musical styles to speed up the bit with borrowings.

 

Izzy brought up flamenco. It sounds to me that current flamenco is so far different from material recorded 50 years ago and more, that it's a whole world away from the older material.

 

I'll add that it seems to me that "the young" tend to specialize in what they hear around them and the material popular among friends and peers. The older they get, the more likely to expand their horizons as their "friends and peers" similarly expand. Heck, I work with folks two generations younger. Oddly out here in the boonies I've heard little concern from "kids" that "old people's music" is outdated even while their friends are playing music that seems lacking in much of anything except heavy rhythm guitar, bass, drums and even vocals...

 

BTW, how many hours can most of us take of listening to a string quartet doing Bartok or Webern? I imagine the same material on guitar and shudder.

 

m

[jimmyl51]

How many of us can remember when Guitar Player was a really GOOD magazine with guys like Herb Ellis and Tommy Tedesco on the cover as well as the monthly columns by Howard Roberts.............of course this is when we actually learned how to PlAY the guitar............most of today's guitar magazines are very sad with the exception of Just Jazz Guitar which is an excellent publication jim in Maine

[rct]

I remember when Guitar Player was about guitar players. For a long time now it's just "review"s and "test drive"s and other assorted advertising. And Hendrix, of course, because he is the only guitar player there ever was.

 

rct

[milod]

I hate to say this, but I think the magazine biz is such that there was an effort to specialize big time - with the result that there's no "general interest" material.

 

m

[surfpup]

And by the way Picasso did paint "normal" in his early career so probably that analogy supports what I am saying.

 

That was my point exactly.

[kidblast]

I remember when Guitar Player was about guitar players. For a long time now it's just "review"s and "test drive"s and other assorted advertising. And Hendrix, of course, because he is the only guitar player there ever was.

 

rct

 

 

yeap.,

 

I let my sub run out this summer, after about 20 years of getting an issue every month. it's just not what it once was.

 

If you like lots and lots of Adds, gear reviews on the now-a-days overwhelming array of pedals and gadgets sprinkled in with an occasional article or interview you're interested in reading,, then it's the magazine you've been waiting for.

otherwise,, NEXT!

[Izzy]

My ideal guitar mag would have

 

Guitar playing technique tips from a different pro each issue (charts or diagrams or something cool like that, lots of detail)

Two songs (chords/tabs) one classic oldie and one current smash hit

Question for the luthier section (you submit we answer)

Question for the tech (amps and pedals)

A poster of the featured band or artist and an article on them/him

Review of a new product

The rest can be all ads

 

My friend used to lift these mags when we were teens in the 90s and I thought the mag was cool, last time I saw one I flipped and flipped and thought, "is this a sweetwater catalog? damn."

[pippy]

I dunno, I'm 50 and I like it. Reminds me of King Crimson and Robert Fripp's solo work.

Erik

I've only listened to the one 4-minute clip posted by moparguy (#14) but, if I added the word 'quite' between 'I' and 'like', that's what I thought too.

Fripp; and some of Steve Howe's work with Yes - specifically ''Topographic Oceans'.

 

The big difference IMHO is that where Fripp/Howe might play&repeat this type of phrase/sequence a number of times they would then take it on somewhere else and do something completely different with it.

This was just too much of the same thing over and over.

I liked surfpups thought ; "I guess what I'm saying is that I could probably make some sequencer program thing could do all that and that it doesn't feel very human or emotional to me."

 

The 'Flamenco' parallel is on the button, too.

I've some less traditional/more modern compositions performed by Paco Pena which possess a strong resemblance to both the chordwork and single-note phrasing used here.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Abasi has done something far more interesting than the one clip I've watched but I'm not so enamoured by his style that I'll bother trying to find it.

 

P.

[kidblast]

My ideal guitar mag would have

 

Guitar playing technique tips from a different pro each issue (charts or diagrams or something cool like that, lots of detail)

Two songs (chords/tabs) one classic oldie and one current smash hit

Question for the luthier section (you submit we answer)

Question for the tech (amps and pedals)

A poster of the featured band or artist and an article on them/him

Review of a new product

The rest can be all ads

 

My friend used to lift these mags when we were teens in the 90s and I thought the mag was cool, last time I saw one I flipped and flipped and thought, "is this a sweetwater catalog? damn."

 

 

back in the day, Guitar Player was close to this.

 

There used to be full transcriptions from various artist, these days, it's just snippets of solos, or intros, the whole tune transcribed is a thing of the past.

 

From time to time a good issue will appear, but more often than not, you get about 5% of what you have an interest in, the rest is fill.

[Riffster]

My ideal guitar mag would have

 

Guitar playing technique tips from a different pro each issue (charts or diagrams or something cool like that, lots of detail)

Two songs (chords/tabs) one classic oldie and one current smash hit

Question for the luthier section (you submit we answer)

Question for the tech (amps and pedals)

A poster of the featured band or artist and an article on them/him

Review of a new product

The rest can be all ads

 

My friend used to lift these mags when we were teens in the 90s and I thought the mag was cool, last time I saw one I flipped and flipped and thought, "is this a sweetwater catalog? damn."

 

Guitar World is the closest to this,

 

- 5 full tabs per issue including all guitars and bass, with performance tips.

- Detailed lessons that span genres from metal to blues with theory and online sound/video.

- Review of new products ( and also the classic,

- The magazine actually has a mini-poster, I still have the one with Rory Gallagher's Strat.

 

The problem for a lot of people come when they can relate to a genre or whatever. Then the magazine is "bad" despite all of the above.

 

Guitar World also has a significant selection of lesson issues and DVDs by style and genre, several on Jimi Hendrix alone, how to play entire albums of his.

 

Is not that there isn't a good magazine out there is just that you have to find the one that covers the artists you want.

[surfpup]

@ Surfpup

You're making me feel like if I don't bend I am not playing the guitar properly. But damnit, pup, some folk players don't bend, they just strum the thing and pick a bit, and I've heard whole flamenco songs without bending. You gonna tell me flamenco isn't guitar sounding?

 

Sorry, Izzy. Twas not my intent. I was speaking as a listener, not as an authority on guitar playing awesomeness. I just love the vocal-like qualities of bends and slide. It speaks to me - always has. Flamenco is certainly a totally different beast - but this guy was not playing Flamenco. He was playing jazzy rock electric guitar and I think a big soaring solo full of bends and singing sustained notes with killer vibrato would have sounded great there. Instead I got a bunch of mechanical, staccato sweep picking. Yes it was physically impressive (and no I could not do it myself) but I still I found it boring as a listener.

[Izzy]

Sorry, Izzy. Twas not my intent. I was speaking as a listener, not as an authority on guitar playing awesomeness. I just love the vocal-like qualities of bends and slide. It speaks to me - always has. Flamenco is certainly a totally different beast - but this guy was not playing Flamenco. He was playing jazzy rock electric guitar and I think a big soaring solo full of bends and singing sustained notes with killer vibrato would have sounded great there. Instead I got a bunch of mechanical, staccato sweep picking. Yes it was physically impressive (and no I could not do it myself) but I still I found it boring as a listener.

 

I get what you're saying, I was just teasing. Like I said, his style reminded me of the harpsichord...you remember that key instrument that...it didn't matter how you hit they keys they always resounded the same, no stylizing with that instrument...maybe he was emulating that on purpose. It was pretty dull though.

 

Its not that I don't want to bend, its just that I haven't gotten there yet. Though I did look up lessons on how to when I was learning classic 50s rock. Its harder than it looks for sure.

[milod]

Actually I'm increasingly convinced my comment about "lute" in the pre-Baroque and Baroque musical era may be closest.

 

For what it's worth, there was not the bending of strings.

 

OTOH, there was far more expected improv added to the "sheet music" than most of today's "classical" musicians will admit. That's a factor that so many "play off the map only" musicians today seem IMHO totally to ignore. Lots of added grace notes, trills, etc., were added - and were expected to be added by the writer.

 

m

[J.R.M.30!]

I sense a distancing from Tosin Abasi's playing by the OP, hmmmm maybe because of envy.

[milod]

jrm...

 

I dunno. I may be wrong, but it appears to me more along the line that it's not the kind of guitar playing as is appreciated by folks here.

 

One hears little on this forum about classical guitar players, for example. Or much about jazz. Etc.

 

I may be full of prune juice or the effects thereof, but it seems to me that "rock" is headed the same way as jazz in the 1950s in that it's increasingly esoteric - nobody can either whistle or dance to it and it doesn't necessarily work for a weekend warrior combo to more or less duplicate for a teen dance or saloon gig.

 

The '50s were a time of major splintering of styles and loss of "jazz" within more popular genres. "Jazz" was increasingly part of pop, even country, in that decade and beyond - but "pure" jazz was relegated to relatively smaller market share.

 

It's kinda like there's a tiny audience for a classical picker who can handle a fugue.

 

In fact, I've been told that classical players aren't any good regardless since they don't "shred." I've heard too often, "They don't play as many notes." When it's pointed out that there are far more notes being played in a given period of time, the response to me frequently has been a shaking of the head and rolling of the eyes.

 

It's not skill or talent, I think, but rather whether it fits folks' notion of what they consider "good music" and anything else isn't as "good."

 

m

[pippy]

I sense a distancing from Tosin Abasi's playing by the OP, hmmmm maybe because of envy.

Oh, I don't think so. I think most of the replies have taken into consideration Mr. Abasi's considerable skill.

 

But if I were asked to draw up a list of 100 players whose ability I would 'envy' Mr. Abasi's name wouldn't be amongst their number.

 

But if you really like his style then don't let anyone tell you that your admiration is misplaced.

 

And vice versa, of course.

 

P.