I’m not a guitar player… I don’t really care about playing techniques and virtuosity performances…
So I’m not gonna ask you who is the best guitar player on the planet. I’m not into comparisons. You cannot, ever, say which one is better than the others. All tastes are in nature.
What I need to know is what do you need to enjoy a good guitar solo and, please, give examples.
For me, I like to think that the guitar is talking to me. I wanna feel the message. I wanna see something when I shut me eyes. I wanna be immersed and feel some kind of a rush through my body.
The solo in Ozzy’s No More Tears makes me quiver from the first note to the last… The slow build up gradually transforming into a violent succesion of speedy riffs until the final climax takes my breath away everytime. It’s like a slow accumulation of a bunch of little, tiny, annoying things. You add them one by one, slowly at the beginning. Then, you realize that you can’t stop putting ‘em in and, even if you want otherwise, you have to continue again and again until it goes overboard then, suddenly, almost without any warning, there is a blinding explosion. And when you open your eyes, it’s like nothing happened. Everything is clean, everything is sharp, nothing moved, nothing is broken. You just smile and say to yourself « man, what a rush! »
Another of my favorite solos is done by three guitars… On April Wine’s Roller, the piece where the three guitarists take turns at sending riffs puts me on the edge of my seat every time I hear it. I see them like they are trying to wrap the two others, one after the other. Speed rap trashing, one by one. Like three guys trying to get the only seat available beside the cutest girl in the bar.
David Lindley’s solos (there are two) in his version of Mercury Blues… They are so enthralling, I catch myself air playing them at every occasion… So fast, so clean, so enticing. Lindley makes it sound easy to play slide guitar (I know it’s not easy, you don’t need to remind me). When I was young, way before MTV, I was air playing that song like there was no tomorrow. I was jumping up and down, running around, kicking it high, doing the split … When MTV arrived, I was really happy. At last, I would be able to, maybe, see a clip of that guitar player who help me sweat my ass off. What a deception!!! Lindley was standing behind his slide guitar, not sweating at all. But damn, I was hooked on his hands movements…
What about yours?
So I’m not gonna ask you who is the best guitar player on the planet. I’m not into comparisons. You cannot, ever, say which one is better than the others. All tastes are in nature.
What I need to know is what do you need to enjoy a good guitar solo and, please, give examples.
For me, I like to think that the guitar is talking to me. I wanna feel the message. I wanna see something when I shut me eyes. I wanna be immersed and feel some kind of a rush through my body.
The solo in Ozzy’s No More Tears makes me quiver from the first note to the last… The slow build up gradually transforming into a violent succesion of speedy riffs until the final climax takes my breath away everytime. It’s like a slow accumulation of a bunch of little, tiny, annoying things. You add them one by one, slowly at the beginning. Then, you realize that you can’t stop putting ‘em in and, even if you want otherwise, you have to continue again and again until it goes overboard then, suddenly, almost without any warning, there is a blinding explosion. And when you open your eyes, it’s like nothing happened. Everything is clean, everything is sharp, nothing moved, nothing is broken. You just smile and say to yourself « man, what a rush! »
Another of my favorite solos is done by three guitars… On April Wine’s Roller, the piece where the three guitarists take turns at sending riffs puts me on the edge of my seat every time I hear it. I see them like they are trying to wrap the two others, one after the other. Speed rap trashing, one by one. Like three guys trying to get the only seat available beside the cutest girl in the bar.
David Lindley’s solos (there are two) in his version of Mercury Blues… They are so enthralling, I catch myself air playing them at every occasion… So fast, so clean, so enticing. Lindley makes it sound easy to play slide guitar (I know it’s not easy, you don’t need to remind me). When I was young, way before MTV, I was air playing that song like there was no tomorrow. I was jumping up and down, running around, kicking it high, doing the split … When MTV arrived, I was really happy. At last, I would be able to, maybe, see a clip of that guitar player who help me sweat my ass off. What a deception!!! Lindley was standing behind his slide guitar, not sweating at all. But damn, I was hooked on his hands movements…
What about yours?
