I have been playing for about 6 years now, and like JACKELOPE said, all that means is that I can understand good playing from shit.
The guys I like listening to are the ones who seem to have tought themselves the instrument. The guys who I dislike are the guys who seemed to learn the instrument in a school.
This may be way to generalized, but music-school players like the jazz-fusion players and such just seem to lack the basic emotion that goes into playing sometimes.
Give me a Duane Allman, a Mark Knopfler, a Jerry Garcia, hell, give one of the session guys from the Stax/Volt labels from Muscle Shoals. Guys whose entire purpose for playing is to express some kind a emotion.
Sure, I can be impressed by somebody’s technical proficiency, but music isn’t supposed to be surgery. To me it is supposed to be confession.
Steve Morse,Christopher Parkening,Mark Knopfler and Ry Cooder are all faves of mine. But,at least in recent history, my vote for best all-around virtuoso guitarist is (was) Danny Gatton. The man could play anything,anywhere,anytime. He had great taste, tremendous style, and incredible chops.
I think I was the first to meantion Steve Morse as a player. A couple others have said his name.
I met the man. I met him right before he gave a clinic at Grandma’a Music in Albuquerque, NM. I bumped into him when I walked in the door. I said ‘Hey’ and he said ‘Hey’. He was warming up. He then started to talk to me, telling me jokes and stuff while running scales faster than I could ever hope to. He was going from triplets to string skipping to arppegeos while talking without a pause. Just amazing.
He then went up on the stage and asked some questions from the audience. After a while someone asked if he could play a piece for us (That’s why we all showed up). He said yes and then started an acoustic riff and looped it, put another line on top of that and then put a midi line on top of the other two. Then he started to solo over the three (Yes, three) lines he had put down already. It was amazing. It sounded like there were 4 people on stage. When he was done, and we all were in awe, he said that it was something he was thinking about but probably wouldn’t record. I left thinking that if I could record something half as cool as what he had played I’d die happy.
At the same time, his technical ability isn’t what makes him my favorite player. It’s his feel. His phrasing is really wild. I can play about %90 of the stuff out there but his phrasing drives me nuts. He can and does do things like go, in one song, from a neo-classical piece to a blues solo and back. He is also the only player I have ever heard that can go from a tune based on an Irish folk tune to heavy metal to classical on the same CD.
He also has his own little music space, which I call Steve space. He gets realy aural at times yet keeps is within the song. It’s hard to explain, pick up ‘High Tension Wires’ and hear for yourself.
okies, i havent read EVERYONES post :o so i dont know if anyone has mentioned this but we have a really good artist here in australia called John Butler: a blues-rock sort of style, very emotional and very chool.
** casdave **, I DID mention Julian Bream. Of course, I mentioned him as an example of someone inferior to Christopher Parkening, but still, I mentioned him…