The thing about great guitar players is...

[wst3]

a deep knowledge of chords, in both a theoretical and practical sense. Coupled with a deep knowledge of the fingerboard and they become something else.

Note I said knowledge of, I suppose one could limp along by simply memorizing the fingerboard and every possible chord. Maybe? But knowing the fingerboard and theory makes the difference.

I could list dozens of guitarists who clearly know both - Eric Johnson, Bryan Sutton, Tony Rice, Lenny Breau, Danny Gatton, and so many others.

What got me thinking about this, other than my never ending, sometimes futile attempt to do the same, was watching Dan Tyminski last night.

One man, one guitar, a bunch of songs, and even more stories, and just an absolute mastery of the guitar.

Makes one want to go back to the woodshed!!!

[Guy Rowland]

Well, ever the contrarian...

My favourite guitar player was The Edge. Born out of the three chord simplicity of punk - and finding they couldn't even play that - he developed an idiosyncratic technique relying heavily on effects - delay in particular - that has often been emulated but never bettered. On the vast majority of songs he filled out the complete sound of the band with no keyboards or 2nd guitar, and his sound is the single most identifiable element that makes U2 sound like U2.

Point being - his playing is very much born from practice, not theory, and he came up with something completely fresh. As the years have rolled by he has diversified - the huge rock chords of Vertigo are a world away from the angular figures of I Will Follow, or his ambient experimentations with Brian Eno. But I've always felt he was someone who was never taught and just experimented.

This is a fantastic documentary - now it seems free to view on YouTube - that puts together three totally different guitarists - The Edge, Jack White and Jimmy Page:

[Jaap]

Thank you so much Guy for that link. I had totally forgotten about that documentary and never watched it and can't wait to wrap up work to watch it.

My two favorite guitar players are really on different sides of the spectrum.

My long hero is Slash, love his emotional and powerful playing. Saw him many times live with Guns and Roses but also with Miles Kennedy. He is just a beast that plays and plays and plays. Even when he has done shows of 2.5 hours with Guns and Roses he can be sometimes found in clubs where he jams with friends who live in the town where he is playing. He is non stop on tour. Maybe not the most technical advanced player, but he has got a really unique sound and playing, which I just love.

The other is Plini. A very advanced player with extreme knowledge of the guitar and the fingerboard. I met him in a masterclass in Mannheim last year during the Guitar Summit and there I got confirmed what I already was thinking, he is more of a composer using a guitar then a guitarist playing his compositions (no idea if that makes sense).

[Lawrence]

Bill,

Dan Tyminski’s vocal on “Man of Constant Sorrow” changed my perspective forever. I wrote a dozen bluegrass inspired songs after seeing “O Brother Where Art Thou”. I love his work.

Eric Johnson does unbelievable stuff on guitar. Very original, amazing chops.

Jaap- I think Slash is pretty darn proficient and a great rock guitarist.

[wst3]

Larry - if you like "O Brother Where Art Thou" (And who didn't <G>) you have to try to catch him - out solo or with his band.

He really is a quadruple threat - singer, songwriter, player (he also plays a mean mandolin), and entertainer. My only gripe is I wish he'd play more plain old bluegrass flatpickin'. He does it brilliantly, but rarely. Even with Union Station he seldom stepped out, but that was how the band worked.

I was kinda surprised that in the most recent tour everyone took their turn in the spotlight. And that's when I realized that they really needed a flatpicker. (No, I won't be auditioning...)

Guy - I appreciate your contrarian perspective. I've long been a fan of the Edge, and his use of simple chords and of course delay. But by his own admission those simple chords did not spring forth from theory. And they weren't Grant Green simple chords... nor were they supposed to be, and I doubt that would have worked.

My thing, I guess, is just imagine what Edge could have done with a little more knowledge about chords and harmony. He has said, many times those chords were the product of what he didn't know. And I think he took that a lot further than pretty much anyone else.

(sorry if I sound like a snob... there are a lot of guitarists who know very little about the underpinnings, and yet create brilliant and beautiful music. I just wonder how much further they could have taken their art.)

[Guy Rowland]

Guy - I appreciate your contrarian perspective. I've long been a fan of the Edge, and his use of simple chords and of course delay. But by his own admission those simple chords did not spring forth from theory. And they weren't Grant Green simple chords... nor were they supposed to be, and I doubt that would have worked.

My thing, I guess, is just imagine what Edge could have done with a little more knowledge about chords and harmony. He has said, many times those chords were the product of what he didn't know. And I think he took that a lot further than pretty much anyone else.

(sorry if I sound like a snob... there are a lot of guitarists who know very little about the underpinnings, and yet create brilliant and beautiful music. I just wonder how much further they could have taken their art.)

I think you've perfectly highlighted why I love The Edge's approach, but I don't agree that theory would have "improved" his work. IMO it would have diluted it, made him less original.

Theory is one way of creating art. Trial and error is another, and that is usually the one that has chimed with me. I get the notion that "you need to understand the rules in order to break them", but I don't think that is always true either.

As one obvious example, punk is an entire genre that is born from not remotely caring what the rules are. I did a thread on it some time ago. I wouldn't expect many or any here to like punk music, but it spoke to people (to use a ghastly modern phrase). And more importantly, the spirit of punk really changed pop music completely. Bands as diverse as U2 and Everything But The Girl were both born from punk and it's "just do it" ethos.

I still love that ethos to this day. "What kind of a noise can I make with this thing?"

[Lawrence]

I love Steely Dan and the Ramones. Music has many niches and I’ve always been grateful for that.

[wst3]

Not sure how to explain myself better, but I believe a knowledge of the underpinnings in any subject, including art in all its forms, only makes it easier to follow your muse. Maybe quicker is the better word?

There is nothing wrong with trial and error, or even just tripping over a good idea, and I love "what kind of noise...", I do that myself, frequently, especially as synthesizers have become increasingly complex. I do that with music too.

A long time ago (in a place far away) I was asked to write music for a production of "The Tempest". Yeah, no problem! Not only is it my favorite of Shakespeare's works, it is incredibly complex, with countless interpretations. Where to even start?

The director wanted a modern feel with at least a hint of Celtic and Americana influences, and he wanted a very small pit band.

To this day I can't explain how I came up with Prospero's theme, I just started noodling around on the guitar in a relatively unfamiliar tuning and it just happened, or rather the basic idea did. It took some time, and some study, to complete the piece. Almost all the rest of the music came from there as well. Maybe it is me, but I could not have completed even the first piece if I did not have some knowledge of how music is constructed.

U2 and Everything But The Girl remain two of my favorite artists, and I know that the spirit of punk had a lot to do with the directions music took some 40 or 50 years ago (can it really be that long?)

[Piet De Ridder]

(...) Everything But The Girl were (...) born from punk and its "just do it" ethos. (...)

Everything But The Girl born from punk, Guy? Ben Watt’s roots are folk and jazz music, I always thought. And based on his early solo-work and several EbtG songs, he seems to have a deep love for all things bossa nova as well. I’ve never heard a hint of punk in anything he has put his name to. Not saying it doesn't exist, just that I've never heard it.
(The jazz strain running through much of his work probably came from his father, Tommy Watt, an acclaimed jazzpianist — who has performed with virtually all the greats in British jazz history — and who was also a brilliant arranger and successful bandleader.)

Ben Watt is a guitar player of far more than average skills, a capable pianoplayer, a composer of songs that are often harmonically pretty sophisticated — in a good way (as opposed to that obnoxious and tiresome ‘listen, how clever!’ way) — and clearly a musician who, when the circumstances demand it, will rely on his thorough knowledge of all the technicalities of music-writing and -making. Because he can.

__

[Guy Rowland]

(...) Everything But The Girl were (...) born from punk and its "just do it" ethos. (...)

Everything But The Girl born from punk, Guy?

It's true! Well, partly true. I thoroughly recommend Bedsit Disco Queen. It was one of the most educational music books I've ever read, in that I learned how half the population hears music. Tracey Thorn says that her first musical efforts with the Marine Girls were dire, not least because they couldn't break music down - literally could not distinguish between a guitar and a drum kit. It was all about the lyrics and the vocal performance - and since then it's dawned on me that this is REALLY common. Most people who have the radio along and sing along to the hits? Chances her it's the words and performance they're into, and the rest is just "backing".

To add to that, Tracey was cripplingly shy - in their first bedroom sessions she sung from inside a wardrobe.

As to punk, here's how she begins:

I’d always kidded myself that it was punk that got me started. It was certainly the answer I gave in interviews when I was asked about the beginnings of my musical career. I even had a box of punk singles upstairs that seemed to support my claim, and if, when I did the sums and realised I was only thirteen when many of them were released, it ever gave me pause for thought and made me wonder whether I’d actually bought some of them after the event, well, that wasn’t anything I was going to own up to.

It’s not that the punk version of my story is a complete lie; more that it’s a compression of a story that begins just after punk. It’s a simplification of a truth that’s a little more complicated than journalists tend to like answers to their questions to be; an acknowledgement of the fact that, if they were confused by my liking for punk, it would hardly have made matters easier to start trying to draw fine distinctions between punk and its immediate aftermath, or to define the precise delineations of post-punk.

In terms of chronology, a year or two either way might have made all the difference. If I’d been born a couple of years earlier or later, I wouldn’t have been thirteen when punk happened, and everything that followed it might have just passed me by. Maybe being thirteen when it all began was the reason for everything. If I’d been born a couple of years later, I might simply have been too young to have been attracted to something so ostensibly dangerous and threatening. A couple of years earlier, and I might have been a year too old to have been so completely taken in by what could have seemed a mere fad, a musical novelty aimed at impressionable, easily scared children and their easily scared parents.

As it was, in 1976 I was almost too young. But not quite.

She met Ben Watt at university in 1981, and bonded over their shared musical loves. The punk influence was a long way before they made music together though, and yes Ben definitely has more conventional influences (I've read a book of his too, but that was about his near death experience later in life so I don't know nearly so much about his own musical journey). I was so struck by the punk origin of EBTG for the very reason you are incredulous - their first single was indeed a bossanova - Each and Every One. None of their music sounds remotely like punk.

But the point of it is (try not to roll your eyes) punk is a state of mind. The can do spirit. It inspired people to make music bypassing all the theory. And by trial and error, amazing things can happen.

Tracey Thorn has one of the all-time great voices (and I also thoroughly recommend Naked At The Albert Hall, a book all about singing itself). I doubt anyone would ever had heard of her were it not for the naiveté of punk, and it's ethos that anyone could have a go.

Other unlikely artists who say they were born from punk:

Sade
Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera)
Simple Minds (originally Johnny and the Self Abusers)
Madonna
Bjork
Amy Winehouse

Sorry for the tangent, I should restart that punk thread...

[Guy Rowland]

Not sure how to explain myself better, but I believe a knowledge of the underpinnings in any subject, including art in all its forms, only makes it easier to follow your muse. Maybe quicker is the better word?

There is nothing wrong with trial and error, or even just tripping over a good idea, and I love "what kind of noise...", I do that myself, frequently, especially as synthesizers have become increasingly complex. I do that with music too.

A long time ago (in a place far away) I was asked to write music for a production of "The Tempest". Yeah, no problem! Not only is it my favorite of Shakespeare's works, it is incredibly complex, with countless interpretations. Where to even start?

The director wanted a modern feel with at least a hint of Celtic and Americana influences, and he wanted a very small pit band.

To this day I can't explain how I came up with Prospero's theme, I just started noodling around on the guitar in a relatively unfamiliar tuning and it just happened, or rather the basic idea did. It took some time, and some study, to complete the piece. Almost all the rest of the music came from there as well. Maybe it is me, but I could not have completed even the first piece if I did not have some knowledge of how music is constructed.

U2 and Everything But The Girl remain two of my favorite artists, and I know that the spirit of punk had a lot to do with the directions music took some 40 or 50 years ago (can it really be that long?)

There's some types of music I just cannot do at all. Jazz is my kryptonite. I just can't do it because of my own non-existent knowledge of the theory. By and large I don't like jazz at all so I've no motivation to learn (but yes, I freely admit I do like music that is jazz adjacent, which much is). I'm less intimidated by concert music than I am by jazz.

But I've grown comfortable over the years in the knowledge there's a lot I CAN do, or at least try my own take on.