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Guitarists Self Destruction?


diablo175

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While the text was detailed and the writer had apparently done some decent research, I thought the subject matter discussed was soporific, and the same might be said for the writing style. One wonders how many of the guitarists targeted by the article would actually read completely thru it. YMMV

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I feel less intelligent for having read through that garbage.

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Buddy of mine sent me that earlier today. I skimmed it. Thought it was garbage. I understand my opinion is not gospel. But meh...

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I just spent an hour typing something I decided not to post, lol.  

When the goal of playing guitar tipped too far into either being a sport to see who could play the most the fastest or who could own the rarest shit and away from making music with friends for a crowd, everything that actually makes guitar cool started being washed away, often leaving only our worst tendencies as a community of musicians. 

Aside from singers, we always tended to be the cattiest shits in the band in every band.  I'll cop to that.  But now it feels like most of the guitar community is, "You can't play like Tosin Abasi; you suck.  Your gear isn't boutique; it sucks.  You're amp isn't modern tech; you suck.  Your amp is modern tech; you suc

Who wants to be involved with any of that?  Seems a million miles away from whatever it is that creates songs like "I Wanna Be Sedated" or "Unchained."

 

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I’m old school, if a players got chops teach me. If they ain’t got chop’s teach them. Gear was always run what ya brung. 
Alway’s respect and have fun!!

That article is Bullshit....

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I'm about to leave ALL the amp facebook groups I am a part of because of similar stupidity. It's like the "Vai vs Satch" and "Whose the greatest guitarist" BS that plagued all of the guitar related forums in the past. All these guys gotta have the best chops, the best amps, the best this, the best that, and then post crappy iphone videos that sound like butt.

People just need to let others enjoy the damn things. I'm never going to even approach guitar godliness, but at least I can try to have tone that makes ME happy. And gear that makes cool sounds.

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When I saw the title "Guitarists Self Destruction", this immediately came to mind:

Twenty or thirty years ago, back in my pre-Internet days when I cared about reading guitar magazines, I always went to Guitar Player, never Guitar World.  Guitar World always seemed too fanboi-ish to me, especially their yearly compilation of the 'latest' guitars and gear...which IMO was just one big annual advertisement.

I had to look up Tosin Abasi online, as I'd never heard of him.  Now that I know of him, I have three words:  not my style.

IMO, the only loathing that really matters is self-loathing, and I got enough of that already.  Caring about what other people I don't know think about my playing ain't particularly Rock 'n Roll in my book, so I don't care.  :P 🤘  Besides, what's 'in' will be 'out' will be 'in' again, eventually.  It's all cyclical, it all reminds me of this clip of fifty-five-year-old dialogue:

 

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I think it made some great points. I mostly played bass when I was younger, and I don't recall bassists having the psychotic snobbery and spun-glass egos that are so common in the world of electric guitar. My only other "enthusiast" world is cycling, and Missus Polara, after a recent ride over a pretty challenging trail, during which we we talked to quite a few people, commented "Wow, mountain bikers are so welcoming! I didn't expect that at all."

The only guitar forum I can handle is the HFC. I'll use the Gear Page to sell stuff. The world of "rock" guitar (a very loose term, but hey...) sometimes seems like Neverland, populated by Lost Boys who are forever competing over gear and 64th note sweep picking.

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                                                    I guess my take on that is you are what you are when you are put on the planet.............................after you have some life experiences behind you you can look back on them and see what works and what doesn't. Its not ever going to be a perfect world nor will it be a perfect existence for you. Whether your a guitarist, or musician in general, or you work for WASTE MANAGEMENT picking up the trash. My call on this article is Bullshit........................just MHO.

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I'm genuinely curious about the people saying this article was garbage. You think the electric guitar community is NOT obsessed with gear and tribalism over stuff like EVH versus Vai? Really?

Sure, we in the HFC may all be paragons of welcoming warmth and hospitality (cough, Hellrider) but I agree with the author: TGP, Harmony Central, and the comments section of any YouTube video are like a flashback to 7th grade, where if you didn't have the right shoes and hair and couldn't sink a three-pointer you were unworthy and ostracized.

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I think the reason many people think the article is garbage is that the "problems" it describes not only aren't new, but are somewhat inherent to the Alpha Male attribute of being a guitarist.  You pick up a guitar to be cool, you practice to be better than your rival or your idol, and you strut and show off to impress people.

Not every guy, and not every guitarist.

But it's normal enough. If you don't like heat, you shouldn't seek out a hobby that puts in you in the kitchen.

The article itself seems to be one of a fairly recent phenomenon (recent = within the last decade), that finds everything typical and normal to be problematic and worthy of hand-wringing, and probably necessitating some sort of authority intervention.

The effort put into writing it, and even reading it, would be better spent just playing guitar.

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24 minutes ago, polara said:

I'm genuinely curious about the people saying this article was garbage. You think the electric guitar community is NOT obsessed with gear and tribalism over stuff like EVH versus Vai? Really?

Sure, we in the HFC may all be paragons of welcoming warmth and hospitality (cough, Hellrider) but I agree with the author: TGP, Harmony Central, and the comments section of any YouTube video are like a flashback to 7th grade, where if you didn't have the right shoes and hair and couldn't sink a three-pointer you were unworthy and ostracized.

I think it's more a sense of community than anything.  The HFC, the PRS forum, and one other board are the only forums I still read pretty much daily, and they're all fairly small  user groups with a certain number of members who seem to have a stake in keeping things running smoothly.  That doesn't eliminate the occasional outbreak of nastiness or trolling, but those are never allowed to become the norm.  By the same token, none of the three are what I'd call aggressively moderated - you can step over the line without being hit by a flamethrower.

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38 minutes ago, Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:

I think the reason many people think the article is garbage is that the "problems" it describes not only aren't new, but are somewhat inherent to the Alpha Male attribute of being a guitarist.  You pick up a guitar to be cool, you practice to be better than your rival or your idol, and you strut and show off to impress people.

Not every guy, and not every guitarist.

But it's normal enough. If you don't like heat, you shouldn't seek out a hobby that puts in you in the kitchen.

The article itself seems to be one of a fairly recent phenomenon (recent = within the last decade), that finds everything typical and normal to be problematic and worthy of hand-wringing, and probably necessitating some sort of authority intervention.

The effort put into writing it, and even reading it, would be better spent just playing guitar.

Hmmm. Well, I wouldn't want my daughter to ever find any online guitar forums, because navigating seventh grade is tough enough without so-called adults acting out like middle schoolers in social media. That was the point I took from the article. For example, she's a big fan of BTS, and their online community is really welcoming. I wish playing a guitar didn't so often become an alpha boy pissing contest. I don't think it encourages participation unless you're into "Boo-yah! You owned him, dude!" culture. I definitely didn't get into music as a way to be a badass and make others feel like shit. Even when I raced BMX or mountain bikes, if I won I'd never dis the guy who came in 30th. My momma didn't raise no braggarts.

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31 minutes ago, mudshark said:

Looks like to simply enjoy playing a guitar and not worrying about all the other bullshit has dropped out of style these days.

No it's still there.

The thing is, if you just want to play guitar and not care about what others think, you have to actually *not* care about what others think.

 

It really doesn't work to demand that we somehow stop competitiveness so that the people who want to not care about what others think can feel unthreatened.

Not caring about what others think starts and ends with not caring what others think.  It doesn't, can't, and shouldn't extend to controlling what others say and do, which is what this article seems to be recommending.

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1 hour ago, Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:

No it's still there.

The thing is, if you just want to play guitar and not care about what others think, you have to actually *not* care about what others think.

 

It really doesn't work to demand that we somehow stop competitiveness so that the people who want to not care about what others think can feel unthreatened.

Not caring about what others think starts and ends with not caring what others think.  It doesn't, can't, and shouldn't extend to controlling what others say and do, which is what this article seems to be recommending.

I guess it just mystifies me that people take simple things and find ways to argue about them.

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I wanted to look up information on Molly Hatchet and ran across a TGP thread that was a mix of useful information and slams on the players in Molly Hatchet. 

"Their licks were good for a beginner to learn from, but I quickly excelled to become a genuine virtuoso who can look down upon the inadequacies of Molly Hatchet's 'guitar players' if one could consider them able to play in the first place." 

My opinion was that everything sounded right on those Molly Hatchet albums, and it certainly was and is above my skill level.  If I let braggarts on the Internet control what I can like and admire there will be no fun left in even owning a guitar. 

The rock and roll attitude has always been belligerent, so if someone does not approve of my guitar playing I will just turn up louder. 

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I don't necessarily agree with the author's premise. In truth, I think he grabbed onto one recent facet/zeitgeist of guitar playing and accompanying mindset and is trying to string it up as the culprit for much, if not all, of the woes befalling guitar-dom. I said it was interesting, not altogether valid. ;)

Guitar players pop psychology, to my mind, is a curious mixture of conflicting attitudes and ego. Hefty doses of seeking to belong, acknowledgement (heard and/or seen) and validation (as a cool person, a performer, a player,) along with a smattering of ego fragility and an aversion to being overly harshly judged in the public arena.

But this has been in play since the earliest days of rock n roll guitar playing. Frankly, I don't know what ills are responsible for the beleaguered state of guitar playing, if that is, in fact, true. But I don't believe this current tendency to shit on and flame other guitarists to be the main culprit. It's been around in different iterations, for a long time. One- up-man-ship, pettiness, and who's better blah blah ain't new. This current trend is just a different way of going about it, with the built-in anonymity and bravado imparted by the medium of the internet making it much more prevalent, even global.

If I could travel back in time, I'd tell my younger self not to sweat it, (but maybe focus on developing certain weak aspects of my playing :P) that I end up doing some pretty alright stuff. Might not have the adoring fans and oodles of cash but... fuck, I'm doing some things on guitar that are damn satisfying. YMMV

 

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I think the editor said, "we have a couple pf pages we need to fill up someone come  up with something". There are  myriad of reasons guitar music and players are not to the fore and none of them are to do with guitarists having a go at other guitarists.

I watched Christmas ToTP and not only did I not recognize any of the music (that is my failing for being a crusty old git and not listening to radio other than rock channels), none of it was what you could call guitar based. Popular music has moved on as means of making music has developed and generation's tastes and cultures have changed, as it has done from when prehistoric man first banged on a hollow log (not sure about what that remark says about drummers! 😄). Guitar playing and great guitarists will never go away they are just no longer an essential part of pop music for today's teenager.

  

 

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2 hours ago, diablo175 said:

But I don't believe this current tendency to shit on and flame other guitarists to be the main culprit. It's been around in different iterations, for a long time.

I don't think there's any one reason, but I do think our tendency to be complete assholes has been exacerbated by the internet and contributes.  But I think everything from post-grunge bands to "can't be above 102 dB at the desk" has all contributed.  

Electric guitar, in my opinion, is best presented in the context of rock 'n' roll and it's family of subgenres.  That entire family is at its best when it's at least a little transgressive, loud, and right on the edge of falling apart.  I think what gets lost among guitarists today is that you can be a virtuoso and still not bring any of that to the table, but you can also be a pretty mediocre player technically and yet bring all of that to the table, and the latter is generally going to be more exciting to a lot more people. And then there were guys like Jimi and Eddie who managed to bring all of the above into their music.  

Rock music has to be dangerous and sexy to really work its magic - the genre is named after slang for fucking after all - and by the mid 00s, mainstream rock couldn't have been less so.  There's nothing about Three Doors Down, Nickelback, Chevelle, and so on that has that "anything could happen at any time" feeling.  We've all got that band in that moment we watched growing up - for me it was that GnR show at the Ritz - where we didn't know if it was going to turn into a riot or an orgy or maybe both.  That had to do more with the attitude of the whole thing than any one player's virtuosity.   Though I'm old enough to know better now, when I was 12, I thought Guns 'n' Roses or Motley Crue were basically drunken pirates sailing from one damsel to the next and evading capture, and I thought bands like Slayer might really be serial killers.  That's what enthralled me, not guitar solos. 

So I guess that's what I'm saying.  It seems to me that a great deal of the internet guitar community misses all of that.  That's why they can say a guy like Mick Ronson or Keith Richards sucks with a straight face.  It's been so long since a young rock band was bringing out hordes of teens and college kids that a lot of that is now just a memory for those of us who got to experience rock at its height.  It's no more easy trying to explain to a 20-year-old shred phenom what it felt like seeing a big time colosseum show when you were their age than it is trying to explain to my classes what it felt like seeing the Berlin Wall fall. 

I think if you can't get in touch with that, it's really easy to think guitar is all about chops and gear when, if we're all being honest, it never really was.  Those things are fucking awesome when you throw them on top of already great, exciting music, but they aren't what made band legendary by themselves.   Without that kind of "fuck, fight, or dance" attitude, it's really just all pop music with a little guitar aesthetic sprinkled in, and pop is superficial and ephemeral by definition.  

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