carlosguardia said:
"for his day" ok, here we go again... How many cars in 1969 could go from 0-60 in less than 6 seconds?! How many recording facilities in 1969 could record 24 tracks?! How many cymbal varieties could a drummer find at his local musical instrument store in 69?! How many guitar players in 1969 practiced 16th notes at 120 bpm?! How many guitar players in 1969 could master sweep picking, string skipping, two handed tapping, and artificial harmonics??!!
Chris, electric guitar playing, much like rock music altogether, has changed very much in the last 50 years. What "for his day" is supposed to mean regarding Jimi Hendrix, in my statement, is that back in the sixties, very few if any guitar players incorporated such playing techniques as Hendrix did. Nowadays, every other player can play eruption, purple haze or black star. Andres Segovia was an incredible talent but his style and technique are something very different and were already invented and in use when he was born. Classical guitar technique has varied very little in the last 100 years my friend.
Carlos
Though you have some good points, I still contend that Hendrix was over-rated, and that the phrase "for his day" is essentially meaningless.
For his day, Jimi got sounds from his guitar that nobody had ever previously gotten - at least not on any commercial level. This, in my opinion, is where his true talent really was - not so much as a player, but as a "sound artist."
True, guitar players did not "practice 16th notes at 120 bpm... master sweep picking, string skipping, two handed tapping, and artificial harmonics." Neither did Hendrix. He was responsible for none of these advances in electric guitar playing. Rock/blues guitar players in 1969 were not typically "technically" good players. There was no "culture," if you will, of being an accomplished player in that genre. Segovia could play 16th notes well beyond 120 bpm, and he could do artificial harmonics (not pick squeals, but artificial harmonics.... some people get confused....).
So, the technology was there, there just weren't any rock players who pursued that level of technical ability in their playing.
You're right in that classical guitar technique has changed little in 100 years. Segovia basically took the ideas of Fernando Sor and expanded and refined them to further modernize the technique. At the time of Hendrix, there was no real such thing as "rock technique." It was an oxymoron, really. Hendrix did not really have technique in his hands - he was not a technically great player. (yes, he was a technically great sound-artist....) The whole "using the thumb over the neck to play bass notes over top of chords" does not, in my opinion represent technique. (It's actually BAD technique, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion.) He made no pretenses to be, either, I don't think. It wasn't until the 70's and 80's that there was a culture of establishing technical proficiency in a rock idiom.
Of course, a whole part of this arguement hinges on what makes a good/great player. My definition of comparing a good player against another (though, admittedly, misses a lot of what makes a player "sound" good ie. tone, feel, etc.) is pure technical ability - things that can be measured and quantified, to compare one player to another on the same scale. Like any other technical specification, it does not present the whole picture.
I don't believe that Hendrix was any more ABLE a player (based purely on the level of difficulty at which he played) than a lot of other people out there over the years, who have been basically forgotten as "average" players.
Chris
)
