Lamest, weakest guitar riffs/solos

Sure, while that all makes perfect sense, (and well-stated), I still don’t see that as all that big of a deal, at all, to keep the two in the same thread.

ok I’ll probably get totally flamed for this…

Carlos Santana…

Sure, I like some of his work with Santana and John MacLaughlin (even the Smooth solo with Matchbullocks 20 I don’t HALF-mind, I guess) but manoman the following solo from 2:21 to 2:53 I thought was incredibly dingleberry-like (not a good thing). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKLnmMacEB4.

Missed edit window - fair to say, then, that there’s a certain degree of “sameness” to a number of CS’s solos?

There have been a lot of soloes in this thread that have been subjectively worse for me than You Really Got Me. However, it is the only one where I can see where it is lacking – throw some variation in after the first half, geesh!

Santana is a spiritual player far more than a technical one. If you tap into that, he’s the man. If you don’t - and I’m one of those who don’t - he’s fine.

Yeah, I left AYBCS out because I couldn’t remember whether it was John or Paul who did the second guitar.

I’ve never cared for Carlos Santana’s guitar, just doesn’t do anything for me. Way back in the early 70’s I heard someone who was trying to identify a song on the radio; when it reached a guitar solo in the middle, he exclaimed “Oh, it’s Santana. I’d recognize those six notes anywhere.”

Although I knew it was a ridiculous statement, I kind of agreed with it.

There’s an abortion of a guitar solo in Asia’s ‘Heat of the Moment’ (solo starts at 3:00). It doesn’t help that the song is intrinsically terrible.

Living Colour’s ‘Cult of Personality’ has an ugly messy solo (beginning approx 3:01).

The outro solo of ‘Philosophy of the World’ by The Shaggs is rather weak but they were unpolished ‘outsider’ musicians. (solo starts at 2:40)

:eek::(:p:p:p

See Post #23. A bit too out there for mainstream solo, yes.

Yeah, it’s amazing considering how highly regarded they were as a band. George always looks like he’s struggling, rarely smiling. On the records he always sounded a little “draggy” coming in late and slightly flat. Chet Atkins he wasn’t. High falsetto in a scouse accent didn’t add to the mix.

I’d much rather focus on George’s work adding a spice to the mix. His descending chords in She Loves You; the low twang notes in Help; the 12 string Rickenbacker on Ticket to Ride.

Can you provide some examples?

Not unison but harmonized in thirds and sixths. Unison refers to matching the same pitch. Is there a word for when it’s the same duration of notes in different pitches (all the notes hitting simultaneously)? Bartók used that in Concerto for Orchestra, when pairs of instruments played the same melodic contour and note durations, but at various different intervals.

Happy to be typing rather than pronouncing the most ungainly consonant cluster in the English language, “sixths” /sɪksθs/.

Maybe parallel harmony?

Plus Harmonic planing (with a few more finely defined versions of various types of planing/parallelism.

As for the second, I would nominate “strengths” /stɹɛŋ(k)θs/ (especially since I do pronounce that “k” there.)

Both are hard, but I nominate “squirrel”. I once read on this board that this is THE English word no German could ever pronounce right, and I immediately checked with myself and the poster was right. With hard concentration, I can pronounce both “sixths” and “strengths” quite well, but although I know how “squirrel” should be pronounced, I still can’t pull it off convincingly.

But the Hollywood movie with the hardest to pronounce title for speakers who don’t have a th-sound in their language still is “The Sixth Sense”.

Ok, just another post on this before we go back to our regularly scheduled thread, but, for me, as a native English speaker, “rural” is the one that always trips me up. Similar to “squirrel,” but I don’t find the latter difficult at all, but “rural” always makes me slow down my speaking speed.

Word.

Simultaneous harmonized parts?

Also I’m sad to report that the sixth sheiks sixth sheep’s sick.

obligatory 30 Rock clip

See, that’s another one I quite like and would make my “best solos” list. But I do tend to like chaotic solos like that one, or Tom Morello’s, or Greg Ginn (Black Flag.)

Oh, here’s an obvious one. How about Lil Wayne? OK, probably shouldn’t really count, as he doesn’t bill himself as a guitarist, but this is pretty bad.