Guitar Playing...The faster the better??

Having been looking around youtube.com a bit recently , I have had a chance to see just how many excellent guitar players there are in the world today. A couple of names that have stuck in my mind are Monte Montague and Antoine Dufour (put either of these names into a search in youtube and you will not be disappointed).

But I have to say that so many of the guitarists out there are really only attempting the same thing, and that is to play as fast as is physically possible. But they all only manage to achieve the same thing, which is not much! It is of course fantastic to have a platform for us all to show off what we are capable of, be it guitar playing or anything else that you care to mention. People should be entitled to post whatever they like, and long may it last. But my point is this, music is all about expressing something, be it a mood, an emotion, or a message, or to communicate something that words cannot. Is it not true to say that so many films are made by there score, and could even have flopped without it.

If you were to memorise the dictionary and recite it quicker than anybody else, the words would not tell a story or mean anything at all. Like wise, the alphabet is not a word or a sentence. If you can say it fast, or backwards, it again says nothing at all. But those words and letters arranged with talent and artistry are what make great scripts, great novels or convey an idea or some vital information to the world.

There are a couple of guys on the web (who shall remain nameless) that are playing so fast that you can’t actually hear what they’re playing. Is this not entirely pointless? Could it be that they simply have nothing to say? What else could be the reason for this kind of “playing”. The likes of Beethoven, J.S. Bach and Mozart, who are with out doubt 3 of the greatest musicians humanity has ever seen, did not write music that consisted solely of fast flurry’s of notes, in fact quite the contrary. Knowing every scale and every chord does not make you a great musician, it is the artistry and vision of these composers that set them apart from everyone else. They did not try to show everything they knew, or how fast they could play it through intense and frenzied bursts of music. Beethoven himself is quoted as saying "Slow is great"

Another travesty in the world of modern electric guitar is the attempt by certain "Heavy Metal" guitarists to play the classics of say Paganini or Vivaldi. Let’s not beat around the bush , these composers, along with those mentioned above knew infinitely more about music than we could ever imagine. Nothing sounds worse than a guitar saturated in distortion getting the “Malmsteen” treatment. It is beyond belief that these guys can even begin to consider themselves anywhere near equal to these giant musical intellects.

This is of course only my opinion and I'm not so conceited to think that it be the only one that is important.

Cheers folks,

Paul

--
www.paulrose.co.uk