Nuno vs Lynch vs Prince vs Steve Vai

tallcoolone said:
Hey everyone is welcome to their opinion. We happen to strongly disagree on Prince. Gary Moore? He was the master of meat n potatoes. Sometimes meat n potatoes fits best.

I like Nuno's new song I checked out thanks to this thread--killer playing that for once didn't make me immediately think of late 80's wankery which was cool. But I wasn't humming the solo to myself after. That's a HUGE part of being an iconic master of the instrument. Anyone can play a lot of notes with enough practice but not everyone can make incredible music with those notes.
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Bluse Gary Moore or Rock Gary Moore? Rock GM was anything but meat n potatoes. Gary was pushing the limits of jazz fusion with things like Coliseum II and his solo "rock" stuff is pure fire. I have zero opinion on Blues GM, I rarely listened and as a fan of GM, felt he'd finally given up on hitting mainstream as a rocker and slipped into the blues thing to make a solid living, which he did.

Lastly, some of my favorite players are meat n potatoes, nothing wrong with that at all but those players aren't lauded as some kind of guitar genius as Prince is. As I said above the "Gently" thing isn't bad at all but as @CarlF said, close your eyes and it's just basic playing. My "gag" reference was in response when that is whipped out as justification for Prince's virtuosity. Musical genius, sure have at it but a guitar virtuoso, which is two different things...no he wasn't.

Lastly, of which I disagree completely is being able to hum a solo and how that equates to being an iconic master of the instrument. Because you're basically stating that most of the true greats aren't masters. How many Vai, Malmsteen, Gilbert or even EVH (which ain't many) etc... solo's can you hum? Are you saying they aren't masters of the instrument? I'm not a particular fan of Vai or YJM but to say they aren't masters or even alude to that is crazy. On the flip side, I can hum many of Ace Frehley's solo's and nobody is gonna consider him, nor should they a true "master" of the instrument. Hey I love being able to hum solo's, take the outro solo of Journey's "Any Way you Want It", I can hum every bit of that and it not only features vocal like lines but finishes with a flurry of notes and is my single favorite solo, period. But I would never base one's Iconic guitar status on just that because alot of truly great musicians wouldn't qualify.
 
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jabps said:
Lastly, of which I disagree completely is being able to hum a solo and how that equates to being an iconic master of the instrument. Because you're basically stating that most of the true greats aren't masters. How many Vai, Malmsteen, Gilbert or even EVH (which ain't many) etc... solo's can you hum?
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Well, personally I don't consider Vai, Malmsteen or Gilbert to be iconic guitar players. I've seen all three live and while I was blown away by their technical prowess I was also bored after about 10m. IMO technical skill can get you maybe 25% of the way there. The real magic is, again, creating music. Something EVH, Hendrix, Page, Clapton and to your point Schon can/could do.

Joe Satriani is an incredible guitar player but IMO he isn't an icon like David Gilmour or even Brian May is. Speed and acrobatic playing are cool but far from the main point of picking up the instrument. IMO of course
 
tallcoolone said:
Well, personally I don't consider Vai, Malmsteen or Gilbert to be iconic guitar players. I've seen all three live and while I was blown away by their technical prowess I was also bored after about 10m. IMO technical skill can get you maybe 25% of the way there. The real magic is, again, creating music. Something EVH, Hendrix, Page, Clapton and to your point Schon can/could do.
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Lots of people would use a similar analogy between say Stan Getz and Charlie Parker.
I'm sure Parker bored the crap out of a lot of listeners who would've preferred Getz's smoother, more familiar phrasing.

Give me Parker every day of the week though.

Did you ever read how Gilmour comes up with such perfect solos - pretty much every time?
 
Nuno is undoubtedly talented. I think the problem with Nuno and a bunch of other shredders is they write songs to be platforms for their solos. Instead of writing solos that accent the songs. After a while everything sounds very similar with little variety and change from album to album. Nuno even said recently "I write nursery rhymes for adults". I think if he moved away from nursery rhymes and focused on writing something a bit more complex and thought out, he could write an album that would blow us all away.
 
tallcoolone said:
Well, personally I don't consider Vai, Malmsteen or Gilbert to be iconic guitar players. I've seen all three live and while I was blown away by their technical prowess I was also bored after about 10m. IMO technical skill can get you maybe 25% of the way there. The real magic is, again, creating music. Something EVH, Hendrix, Page, Clapton and to your point Schon can/could do.

Joe Satriani is an incredible guitar player but IMO he isn't an icon like David Gilmour or even Brian May is. Speed and acrobatic playing are cool but far from the main point of picking up the instrument. IMO of course
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So it appears your idea of an iconic guitarist is strictly based on song and the ability to churn out hummable solo's.

Still, you're negating a whole other segment of guitar. Whether you or I like Malmsteen isn't the point, he's iconic because of his influence i.e. he changed the way many approached the guitar afterwards. As did Rhoads, as did EVH which was on a whole scale many have never achieved.
I'm not a YJM fan in particular, I marvel at what he does but after a few minutes like you, I have to move on. Still though with what he contributed to guitar, how is he not iconic?

I digress - back to my point which was simply about being a virtuoso (which has zero to do with being iconic) on guitar, Prince is not. He's a meat and potatoes guitarists, nothing wrong with that. And this conversation is exactly why many players get shut down from speaking their mind about Prince "as a guitar player" because it seems, some cannot separate his ability on guitar vs. wrapping it up in the whole package. Is Prince an iconic artist, yes. Is he an iconic guitarist, no. Is he a virtuous guitarist, no. Not IMO. Is he a good basic player, yes.
 
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jabps said:
So it appears your idea of an iconic guitarist is strictly based on song and the ability to churn out hummable solo's.
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Not strictly, but yes I would consider it a requirement of any "iconic guitarist" to have at least a handful of riffs/songs that have achieved widespread recognition. The true greats have a catalogue.

Is the end goal of playing the instrument to make music or do fingerboard gymnastics? If Prince wanted to play Eruption he could have. I'm no Prince historian for all I know he may have a shredder album out there but prob not. He was too busy playing tastefully and selling a bazillion albums. While Malmsteen and Gilbert were doing NAMM and local GCenter appearances.
jabps said:
Still, you're negating a whole other segment of guitar.
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Not negating at all. I appreciate the players you mention, I just do not hold them in the same regard as you. IMO they are the 'meat and potatoes guys'. Not enough creative talent so they had to lean on hours of practice and hard work to make up for those deficiencies with technical prowess.
jabps said:
I digress - back to my point which was simply about being a virtuoso (which has zero to do with being iconic) on guitar, Prince is not. He's a meat and potatoes guitarists, nothing wrong with that. And this conversation is exactly why many players get shut down from speaking their mind about Prince "as a guitar player" because it seems, some cannot separate his ability on guitar vs. wrapping it up in the whole package. Is Prince an iconic artist, yes. Is he an iconic guitarist, no. Is he a virtuous guitarist, no.

Not IMO.
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Not sure you know what IMO means lol.
 
tallcoolone said:
No but I would rather listen to Gilmour play 3 notes than YJM play 100,000
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I often wondered how the guy could come up with one perfect solo after another.
Read an interview maybe 20-25 yrs. ago.
He takes the backing and loads it on a clean 16-24 track tape.
Then he improvises a solo on each track individually while muting everything previous.
After he picks and chooses all of the best bits from each and strings them together into
a single solo which he then plays all at once for the album.

I know lots of players do this but it's always just a few takes - not a dozen or more!
 
Donnie B said:
I often wondered how the guy could come up with one perfect solo after another.
Read an interview maybe 20-25 yrs. ago.
He takes the backing and loads it on a clean 16-24 track tape.
Then he improvises a solo on each track individually while muting everything previous.
After he picks and chooses all of the best bits from each and strings them together into
a single solo which he then plays all at once for the album.

I know lots of players do this but it's always just a few takes - not a dozen or more!
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Sounds so easy anyone could do it haha!
 
It would be cool to see someone who is truly great at both playing guitar and writing equally good musical ideas, but it seems to be like finding that non-existent unicorn. I think this is why with classical musicians (my main field) one usually chooses either to be a player or composer. Too hard I think to really master both crafts. I've never seen it done myself. I still imagine sometimes how amazing it would've been if we could've had great composers write music for guys like Shawn Lane or Guthrie Govan to play with their abilities. Their music itself I find lacking, just not compelling imho, but the playing itself of course is very impressive
 
Donnie B said:
What have you heard from Shawn?
I agree with your statement in regard to Guthrie but not with Lane.
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I don't recall the song names anymore, but I've heard lots of stuff from him. Nothing that I'd honestly consider great in terms of musical ideas with respect to things like melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, etc. Maybe decent in some cases, but that's it. The quality of his playing does not match the quality of his compositional abilities presented imho and that's ok, I just wish in this field like in classical we had more composers that specialize in it
 
braintheory said:
It would be cool to see someone who is truly great at both playing guitar and writing equally good musical ideas, but it seems to be like finding that non-existent unicorn. I think this is why with classical musicians (my main field) one usually chooses either to be a player or composer.
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I sometimes think the "virtuoso" type playing isn't really enjoyable to anyone outside of our little circle. I'm only a weekend hack in a cover band but even I see what people oooh and aaah over and it isn't usually what us guitar players would think. Isn't it possible some guitar players see this and set their ego to the side for the sake of the music? Let's face it, Queen wouldn't have been the same band with squealing harmonics and diving floyds all over the place.

Excellent point about classical musicians, never thought of that
 
tallcoolone said:
I sometimes think the "virtuoso" type playing isn't really enjoyable to anyone outside to our little circle. I'm only a weekend hack in a cover band but even I see what people oooh and aaah over and it isn't usually what us guitar players would think. Isn't it possible some guitar players see this and set their ego to the side for the sake of the music? Let's face it, Queen wouldn't have been the same band with squealing harmonics and diving floyds all over the place.

Excellent point about classical musicians, never thought of that
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If the compositional quality is there I enjoy a great virtuosic piece as much as a great piece that is sparse in notes. It's just about quality to me and for whatever reason it seems to be much hard to find good examples with more virtuosic playing even in classical, but there is some out there

The goal of music imo is to convey feeling or tell a story and if and when that is done with virtuosic stuff I'm all ears and love it, it's just much more rare IME. This is why I never enjoyed EVH's leads and other players who followed suit sadly, but I loved some of his riffs and rhythmical stuff, which is actually to me much more difficult to play well than his leads
 
Donnie B said:
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Nice, I admit I've not heard that one. I will have to listen a few as is almost always the case for me with pieces I hear for the first time. There are definitely some interesting harmonies going on there, although the few fast licks that Lane played I don't think I'm likely to like musically even when the song is more digested for me in my head, but outside that it seemed cool

Even on initial listen, many of those harmonies made me feel something. The fast licks did not though for me
 
braintheory said:
Even on initial listen, many of those harmonies made me feel something.
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Every song on that album is a mini-masterpiece of one sort or another.
It's all over the map style wise and yet each song stands on its own.

This is so beautiful.



And then you get this from his 1st solo album. You know Shawn's playing all the keys, right?
The year he won best new artist in GP magazine he came in 2nd place in Keyboard magazine.
Dude was a savant.

 
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@Monkey Man

He got the one album deal with Warner Brothers which included a nice advance to record it.
Shawn didn't drive, never even got his license, so Barry Bays takes him shopping. Buy's a PC
and recording software along with a really good synth/sampler. They drop off everything at
Shawn's place - he lived with his grandmother - and then they go out for the evening.

Barry drops him off late and then stops by around noon the next day. Shawn had been up all
night learning the software and synth and had already written and recorded a couple of songs. :oops:
 
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