Is the guitar hero dead in music that has mass apeal?

[degenaro]

Try talking or sing as fast as you can with emotion ?

The way I see it you can use speed and emotion. It is just not the case with most of the stuff I have heard.

Why would anyone do that?

There is good and bad in everything....whether its slow or fast. I think there has to be some of each slow and fast, low notes/ high notes, quiet/ loud etc.....

When I play on stage my voice is the tool I use the most after my guitar rig. I know if the tempo is moving fast (as in faster than it should be) there is often less emotion in the singing (not always). This is the same for all music. The same thing happens when someone reads a story out loud. I always use this example to show people how to open up the emotion in there playing. For me there is a huge difference between playing notes and playing with emotion. I have seen people play something perfect that did not move anyone because of the lack of emotion in the playing. If you do not feel it well playing no one does. Even if you record music the emotion well be there or not. Most people can not play fast with emotion .... till they have been playing for some time. Even then a lot do not. I feel the lack of emotion in playing is what killed the guitar years ago. It is a dead language that fewer and fewer people speak.

Music is just art. Art with no emotion or passion has little or no value to anyone.

I always like to reference jazz and classical music in this kind of topic because if you were to hear Coltrane Live in Paris or hear how Beethoven would shift from an Adagio to a Prestissimo on piano ...you can hear tremendous passion and emotion...its how the notes are played and how the story is being told and where it takes the listener. especially in the improvisational framework. Painting a picture...Uli Jon Roth and Eric Johnson are masters of this and have extraoridinary individuality. Yngwie has his moments, but gets overindulgent.

Well if we're talking about execution...any piece, or any line for that matter has a slow, medium and fast tempo it works with. Take it outside its comfort zone and it will sound weird.

 

[Bob Savage]

Everything involving the words "Hero" and "Music Business" are obsolete and outdated at the present time.

It is my belief that this will turn full cycle within the next 8-12 years, once systems to actually make money again in the new age get solidified. This will coincide nicely with the population finally getting over the thrill of spending 2/3 of their recreation time on their computers, and actually venturing out more again for their interactions and entertainment. (not as much as before, but far more than now)

The one has zero to do with the other IMO. It just happens that guitar is going the way of the saxophone. Go back 60 years...the sax was the guitar hero then. There will b a huge perception shift of what defines a musician in the future and I'm guessing we'll be lookin at laptop hero or DJ Hero or something like that. Ignoring that means that we're going the way of the sax, relegated to playing Top 40 and the occassional shiner moment in a pop tune. But what do I know...

I'm pretty good with computers... so you're saying, I still have a chance of making it before I'm 80? YEAH!!!!

 

[degenaro]

Everything involving the words "Hero" and "Music Business" are obsolete and outdated at the present time.

It is my belief that this will turn full cycle within the next 8-12 years, once systems to actually make money again in the new age get solidified. This will coincide nicely with the population finally getting over the thrill of spending 2/3 of their recreation time on their computers, and actually venturing out more again for their interactions and entertainment. (not as much as before, but far more than now)

The one has zero to do with the other IMO. It just happens that guitar is going the way of the saxophone. Go back 60 years...the sax was the guitar hero then. There will b a huge perception shift of what defines a musician in the future and I'm guessing we'll be lookin at laptop hero or DJ Hero or something like that. Ignoring that means that we're going the way of the sax, relegated to playing Top 40 and the occassional shiner moment in a pop tune. But what do I know...

I'm pretty good with computers... so you're saying, I still have a chance of making it before I'm 80? YEAH!!!!

Sure...

 

[ZachMN]

I think about Ed's point on sax playing a lot- look at how guitar changed the landscape for those guys....anyway DiMeola made a comment regarding passion only being in the domain of slow players once- he said something along the lines of 'do you think Flamenco players aren't playing with emotion and passsion?' I'll try to find the exact quote in the library of old mags I have.

We have projected our perception that 'shredding' was bigger than it really was. There were some moments to be sure but the whole music scene wasn't dominated by that style, just elements of it to spice things up....the best players use technique as a means of musical expression not as an ends....

 

[Loudness250]

I think out of all the 80's shred players, EVH played with plenty of emotion, sure he was flashy for his time but........ And also you had people saying that all he was doing was picking fast and finger tapping but we all know that if you watch what he's playing that isnt all he's doing. The Grunge thing was kind of a build up over the years from years of Alternative , New Wave and punk that had always been there underneath the mainstream metal and pop throughout the whole 80's. It was just waiting to emerge big at some point and when Metal kind of bloated up too big and got to the boring glam phase that was the perfect time. I'd take grunge any day over the current situation in mainstream music. 92' kicks ass over 09'. But I don't think EVH or any one shred guitarist is responsible for the demise of the guitar hero in pop music.

 

[stephen sawall]

I feel EVH was one of the people that did not play with much emotion and helped kill the guitar. I do like some of the early stuff. But every time I saw him play live I felt like I was watching him just doing finger exercises with no soul when doing solos.

If he would have done more solos like the one in Panama ...... That solo is killer.

 

[van hellion]

I feel EVH was one of the people that did not play with much emotion and helped kill the guitar. I do like some of the early stuff. But every time I saw him play live I felt like I was watching him just doing finger exercises with no soul when doing solos.

If he would have done more solos like the one in Panama ...... That solo is killer.

dear god i hope your being sarcastic!!!!!! late van halen is dripping with good stuff, solo to right now, why cant this be love...

i will stop before i start listing how great he is.


A Wood

 

[Greazygeo]

I feel EVH was one of the people that did not play with much emotion and helped kill the guitar. I do like some of the early stuff. But every time I saw him play live I felt like I was watching him just doing finger exercises with no soul when doing solos.

If he would have done more solos like the one in Panama ...... That solo is killer.

I never thought he was very good.

 

[stephen sawall]

I feel EVH was one of the people that did not play with much emotion and helped kill the guitar. I do like some of the early stuff. But every time I saw him play live I felt like I was watching him just doing finger exercises with no soul when doing solos.

If he would have done more solos like the one in Panama ...... That solo is killer.

dear god i hope your being sarcastic!!!!!! late van halen is dripping with good stuff, solo to right now, why cant this be love...

i will stop before i start listing how great he is.


A Wood

No I am not ...... and I have heard him say about the same thing about himself. I agree his solos did become more emotional in the later years. But but a lot of the songs are lame to me. (just my taste)

As far as him helping to kill the guitar ..... Some of the stuff Ed has done with the guitar was very cool. He was a inspiration of a lot of great stuff that came after him. When done well it can be produce some pretty amazing results.

But I feel even more crap guitar playing was bad imitations of him. There was a army of bad imitations of him every place you went at one time years ago. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

It is not like he had control of all the people who were doing very bad music inspired by him.

 

[van hellion]

i may be a lone soldier here but i wave the EVH banner high! he inspired many musicians (whether it be god or bad is not my place to say) and eddies contribution to the technical side of things is obvious (high gain, humbuckers in strats etc)

like i said opinions vary, but in my humble and irrelevant opinion, other than hendrix there isnt another guitarist who has done as much for electric guitar than EVH.

long live king edward!!!!!!!!

A Wood

 

[stephen sawall]

i may be a lone soldier here but i wave the EVH banner high! he inspired many musicians (whether it be god or bad is not my place to say) and eddies contribution to the technical side of things is obvious (high gain, humbuckers in strats etc)

like i said opinions vary, but in my humble and irrelevant opinion, other than hendrix there isnt another guitarist who has done as much for electric guitar than EVH.

long live king edward!!!!!!!!

A Wood

It was very obvious before to me from hearing your playing you where very influenced by EVH. You are one of the people who have done very good things with that style of playing.

The peak of bad clones was some place between 84 and 90.

I was a fan in 1978. I put a HB in a Strat long before you could buy one. I did some of the songs in cover bands in the early 80's. I figured out some of the solos with nothing but a cassette player.

Was EVH the first one to put a different pick up on a guitar ? Was he the first one to put a HB on a Strat ? Jerry Garcia was putting all kinds of crazy combination's of stuff together on guitars years before I heard of VH. Was he the first one to use high gain ? Carlos Santana maybe ? Anyone know this stuff ? I do not know of anything he was doing including tapping that other people had been doing for years before him.

 

[stephen sawall]

It was all the horrible over blown solos of the people that were trying to be EVH that was a big part of what killed guitar solos about 1990.

Very few people were being moved in anyway by the boring solos that were every place ..... this all lead back to songs that were hooked based. Not just lame songs with a over blown guitar solo with no guts or passion.

Like I said I do not think EVH had any control over the millions of clones .... but many of these people is what killed the guitar.

It was only a matter of time before people got sick of being fed crap. A large part of that crap was bands based on the VH formula.

Some of these bands were very good. Most sucked so bad I could not believe they were ever signed.

I should know better than to even bother trying to point this out in a place like this. It was very obvious to me that a change was going to come ..... and it did.

 

[van hellion]

i may be a lone soldier here but i wave the EVH banner high! he inspired many musicians (whether it be god or bad is not my place to say) and eddies contribution to the technical side of things is obvious (high gain, humbuckers in strats etc)

like i said opinions vary, but in my humble and irrelevant opinion, other than hendrix there isnt another guitarist who has done as much for electric guitar than EVH.

long live king edward!!!!!!!!

A Wood

It was very obvious before to me from hearing your playing you where very influenced by EVH. You are one of the people who have done very good things with that style of playing.

The peak of bad clones was some place between 84 and 90.

I was a fan in 1978. I put a HB in a Strat long before you could buy one. I did some of the songs in cover bands in the early 80's. I figured out some of the solos with nothing but a cassette player.

Was EVH the first one to put a different pick up on a guitar ? Was he the first one to put a HB on a Strat ? Jerry Garcia was putting all kinds of crazy combination's of stuff together on guitars years before I heard of VH. Was he the first one to use high gain ? Carlos Santana maybe ? Anyone know this stuff ? I do not know of anything he was doing including tapping that other people had been doing for years before him.

great points your making, but my reference to evh was not impling he was so much the first but more the biggest. he did things that jerry and carlos were doing but he took them light years further.


i do get what your saying, i do, but like i said and you have stated its not so much EVH fault but the bad spawns that came about it. i just had to disagree with you when you mentioned his playing lacking soul and emotion

A Wood