But I can't till tonight when I get home from class. Which will be like 3am your time. So you will see SOME sort of response tommorow hopefully.
No rush.
Also, I am aware of the difference between "what I like" and "what is difficult." So I assume you are harping on that difference for others in this thread.
I'm not aware that I harped on about that difference. If so, it was unintentional, so you can assume it wasn't directed towards anybody in particular.
I feel confident I can find solos from Clapton and McCready that will impress you.
Sweet
The more solos in the thread the better.
And I find it HIGHLY unlikely that Steve Vai is doing the same types of Guitar tricks as Tom Morello. Tom Morello is pretty well known as an innovator in the guitar industry.
You're probably right about them not doing the same tricks. What is true though is that Vai is also recognised as one of the biggest innovators in the electric guitar industry. So that makes them both innovators, all square so far. The difference is that Steve Vai posses a level of technical ability that far surpasses Morello's (unless you have anything to indicate otherwise). Which makes Vai better, lots better (objectively speaking).
I don't fully understand why you think you are a better guitar expert than dozens of guitar magazines and general music magazines?
Hell, you ask GUITAR players who their idols are and they consistently list Clapton, Page and Eddie VanHalen. Why are YOU a better judge of musical talent than the people out there DOING it and WRITING about it for a living?
Bah. Arguments from authority. Magazines have to make money and for that they have to appeal to as many people as possible, so they have to feature the most popular guitarists. They also have to be interesting. An in depth technical analysis of who is better might be okay for one issue, but that's it. Readers are interested in far more than "who is better?". They want to read about the guitarists who's music they love, be it Page, McCready, whoever. Of course, there are plenty of magazines featuring the guitarists I listed too. They're just not featured as often because they have a smaller following.
Guitar players have idols because they loved their music, and rightly so. Nobody idolises guitarists purely because of ability. Shawn Lane is an awesome guitarist, one of the best who ever lived, but I hate jazz-fusion, so he's not my idol. My idol is Vivian Campbell (Dio). I love his solos way more than anybody else's. But I recognise that he's not the greatest guitarist ever, not by a fair distance. There are those who can do everything that Campbell can and more. Clearly the idols of famous guitarists are not a good measure of ability.
I want your qualifications and your basis for the opinions.
I don't have qualifications other than listening to a lot of technical guitar music, reading a lot of magazine/books and watching a lot of tapes/DVDs about technique and playing guitar myself. I'm not just asking you to accept my opinion on it's own strength, that's why I posted the clips (see next paragraph). Can you post any clips that indicate in any small way that Page, Clapton or McCready can play passages as technically challenging as those by Petrucci, Satriani, Vai and Becker?
And saying "Just listen..." is not a basis for opinion.
Indeed. However, I know the mechanics of most guitar techniques. I have attempted those techniques, so I know how difficult (or not) those techniques are. Generally my own findings are in agreement with everything I have read and seen about those techniques from players and teachers. This is the basis for my opinon that the clips I posted present a higher degree of technical difficulty than any I've ever witnessed from Page, McCready or Clapton. Take the Jason Becker clip. Sweep picked arpeggios. I wouldn't even like to guess the BPM. Obviously just an impressive solo from McCready wouldn't be enough. It would have to demonstrate a more difficult technique/combination of techniques or that he could sweep pick arpeggios as quickly and cleanly. There are many guitarists who can and, at the same time, can match (give or take) the other techniques in the above clips too. If McCready can't, then he falls drastically short of being "one of the best guitarists still alive and playing". Instead he falls into the very unexceptional (technically speaking, obviously YOU may still rightly consider him an exceptional musician).
If it were, then people wouldn't still be arguing about it.
People are still arguing about it because a lot of poeple do not have a good enough understand of the mechanics of playing the guitar, nor a broad enough knowledge of the guitarists out there and they often let their own tastes get in the way of the comparison.
-Kev
