why are guitar solos not cool anymore?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jimistone
  • Start date Start date
Reason 1: Been There Done That

Fashion dictates. It was done so much in the past so people want something new. I especially agree with the whole 80’s thing killing it. Killed it for me. (Now if I hear an old David Gilmore solo…. that’s another story - or should I say he knew how to tell a story.:))

Reason 2: Brain Drain

Happens in all fields of endeavor. Biology became big in the 80’s and 90’s, most of the brightest minds went in that direction, so Physics and Chemistry suffered. Electronic music has taken hold in the 90’s and 00’s, most of the talented musicains are going in that direction, so rock guitar playing has suffered.

barefoot
 
Chris Tondreau said:
I agree that the pendulum continues to swing. The early-mid '90's announced that it was no longer cool to be a solid musician - especially for guitar players. Players who were good (Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains) had to hide their skills in order to be taken as credible until years later. (Tiny Music from STP and Three-Legged Dog by Alice in chains as examples) Even still, though, there wasn't a lot of soloing.B]
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Amen, bruthu. I grew up in Seattle, right smack in the middle of the '80's. I watched first-hand as a lot of hair bands here morphed into grunge. It was interesting watching them as they wore their guitars lower, and lower, and lower.........:(

Aaron
http://www.voodoovibe.com
 
barefoot said:
Reason 1: Been There Done That

(Now if I hear an old David Gilmore solo…. that’s another story - or should I say he knew how to tell a story.:))

[
barefoot
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Now, THAT'S what I call a cool solo, something by Guilmour, Santana, Clapton, Harrison. Therefore, I haven't heard cool solos in a long, long time (maybe the last tasty guitarist I can remember is EVH).

But it's all about tastes.
 
Aaron Cheney said:
Here's the deal:

Everything old will be new again. The history of anything goes in cycles, and music is no different.

In a few years solos will be cool (again), and all the great studio cats will come out for their moment in the sun. Then things will snowball (again) until everybody is sick of it and starts looking for something different (again).

Aaron
http://www.voodoovibe.com
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Totally. Give the industry another 2-3 years and all that bad heavy metal (and it's prerequisite wanking -er soloing) will be "retro", re-packaged and jammed down our throats. The guitar-centric grunge evolved into the edification of the "garage band" sound and that will lead us back into the 80's for sure.
Hope you didn't throw out all your spandex or Jacksons!

the 70's and 80's proved that guitar soloing was just a way to way to fufill obligatory song style trends. Innovative guitar work may have inspired it, but only really mattered for a select few. Someone said Neil Young and SRV, they knew when why and how to solo. today's music is just as formulaic and contrived as it's always been, just doesn't happen to include guitar solos.
 
I’ve already seen a few women wearing tank tops under fishnet shirts…. granny shoes too.:(

Jackson:(
Spandex:(
Mousse:eek:

Say it isn't so! :( :( :(

barefoot
 
Voxvendor - thanks for the complement, buddy! I owe ya one, eh?

Aaron Cheney - I've been playing for twenty years, and spent much of the '90's watching the phenomena of young players wearing their guitars very low. After this long playing, the only style of music that CAN be played (so far as I can figure) with the guitar that low IS grunge!! Even a lot of the new punk stuff (ie. Blink182, etc.) has some things that just feel awkward as hell to play with the guitar that low. Never could make sense of that one!!

Where and when to solo - As great a player as Steve Vai is (he pretty much made the Eat 'em and Smile album by DLR a classic guitar album....), I've often maintained that he single-handedly destroyed Whitesnake. Overplaying like crazy..... everywhere!! I like players like Vernon Reid, Nuno Bettencourt, and Peter Lesperance (Harem Scarem.... check 'em out!!) because they totally rock like crazy on the guitar, but never do it at the expense of the song.

.... I still got an old pair of cowboy boots in the back of my closet...

hehe

Chris
 
you know this generation is in trouble when Fender gives Tom Delonge his own model Strat.....this should be reserved for guitar heros IMO.....not that the guy cant write a catchy hook, and i do like their music, but guitar hero he is not.......and who wants a Strat with one pickup (a humbucker at that).....

beyond the solo, look at the rhythyms.....Dropped D and 7 string power chords...even the quality of rhythm guitar has gone through quite a suck ass period.....whats the excuse for that?.....
 
I agree that 7 strings are useless (although Vai does use them), but don't knock dropped D, Tool uses it in ALL of there songs, and there rythm is not Sh!t...
 
Im not knocking dropped d....even Eddie Van Halen used that......but he used it as part of his sound and riffs...not so he could play a power chord with one finger.....

im knocking those that use dropped D just as an easy way to do power chords, and do it the whole song.....

i want riffs...i want solos......
 
I agree. Riffs are important. I also like melodic solos. My favourite is the solo in My Sharona by The Knack. How the hell does a guitar player write a song without a killer riff anyways? Doesn't make sense.
 
As a guitar player who also writes, I'll take a stab at your question. My songs rarely have killer riffs. It's all in the approach. Although I don't consider myself a Beatles fan, really, I believe it was Paul McCartney that imparted the following wisdom that I whole-heartedly agree with: "a good song will exist on it's own terms with just a single vocal and an acoustic guitar or piano." (or something to that effect...) Beyond that, everything else is production.

When I write with this in mind, I try to come up with a melodic idea that matches well with a certain lyric. I build my verse from there as I weave my melodic ideas around the lyrical ideas. The chorus usually follows from there as I build up the ending of the verse.

Once I have the melody and lyrics down (usually matched with a very basic chord progression), I figure out what I want the other instruments to do - starting with guitar. Usually any riff I come up with just isn't the best complement for my melody/lyric combination.

Chris
...and when I run out of ideas, I just start to shred, and then come back to it....

hehe
 
But still, calling the nirvana "smells like teenspirit" riff a solo is a disgrace to all shredders. i bet jimi has to agree on that one...

Guhlenn

how in the world could y'all have mistakenly thought i was talking about "smells like teen spirit" when i said "
"none of the new rock has guitar solos in it. Well, if you count a simpleton riff that is basically the vocal line of the chourus (that my 7 year old daughter couyld probably play)"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

everyone knows that solo is the vocal line of the VERSE!
:D
seriously though, i loved nirvana and the way they arranged their songs....just didn't understand why everybody in rock HAD to sound just like them....and i hated the hair band stuff (especially the solos)

if you look back at my post i said the great solos of the late 60's and early 70's. (didn't say shit about the 80's)
pick up a copy of Johnny Winters "still alive and well" (if something that un-cool is still in print)...now thats guitar soloing!
claptons guitar work is good...ditto on george harrison...anything by albert king and freddie king....who can deny that the lead guitar break in led zeplins "whole lotta love" rocks?
so y'all really think that the eagles "hotel california" would be better without the lead guitars on the end?....would "stairway to heaven" be better without the lead guitar on the end?....should skynyrd have left the lead guitar out of freebird and just power chorded through the changes 2 times and ended it? i think jimi's guitar solo of "the star spangled banner" went over alot better than if he had of stood there and strummed the chords and sung it...do you?
maybe chuck berry should have left out the classic signature lead guitar in "johnny b goode"

i believe sid vicious started the low slung guitar look....why shouldn't he...he couldn't play to start with ...so ...it certainly didn't hinder his chops

i took my son to see KORN a couple of years ago and he said "could you teach me to play guitar like that?"..i said "yeah...do you have 5 minutes"...damn, if thats what the guitar world is coming to....im taking piano lessons!
:eek:
 
i think even thinking about whether something is "cool" or not is extremely childish. if current trends are someone's motivation for what they do musically, they are a disgrace to the instrument in my opinion. i can't speak for why there aren't as many solos is songs these days, but please stop being so conscending to younger players and just writing them off as lazy or incompetant. it is being extremely close-minded because everyone approaches the instrument from a different light.

i personally do not solo because i find there are always better ways to fill that "hole", i prefer involving every instrument in that "emotion explosion".

and as much as it is denied, we all know deep down the the primary motivation for guitar solos is to show off, "hey, look at me, damn i'm fast". i think alot of people have just gotten tired of the egocentric, selfishness in music.

and all this stuff about comebacks, i think it's just wishful thinking, why do you need a comeback anyway? why is there that need in people to have their type of music be mainstream? you can listen to it and play and enjoy it either way, or is it the re-assurance you need that "yes, this music is the best in the world". i find it kind of sad...
 
Chris Tondreau said:
Where and when to solo - As great a player as Steve Vai is (he pretty much made the Eat 'em and Smile album by DLR a classic guitar album....), I've often maintained that he single-handedly destroyed Whitesnake. Overplaying like crazy..... everywhere!! I like players like Vernon Reid, Nuno Bettencourt, and Peter Lesperance (Harem Scarem.... check 'em out!!) because they totally rock like crazy on the guitar, but never do it at the expense of the song.
Chris
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Good call on Eat'Em and Smile. If people would get past Roth, that album kicks ass and is a very good example of a guitar being more than just 3 chords and cloud of dust, or big hair shredder neo-classical arrpegios, or tapping for the sake of tapping, blah blah blah.... Big Trouble and Ladies Night in Buffalo have 2 of the best solos for study I've come across in quite some time.

Also, another good call on Nuno Bettencourt. I've only heard Pornograffitti, but it too was a good example of kick ass solos with kick ass song writing and production.

People need to realize that shredding and guitar solos are not the same. Not everything coming out of the 80's was Yngwie shitty songs with blazing solos... Randy Rhodes kicked ass, Neil Schon kicked ass, Rik Emmett kicked ass...
 
lots a cool solo's are out there... and yes hotel california has a great lead... but why is it that EVERYTHING has to have a solo to be "musically"...

Please... To the remark of my guitar skills... i don't play an awful lot of solo's, but the solo's that are played in my band are done by me. I actually think i'm alot better at doing lead work then rythm... kinda embarrassed bout 5that so i'm practising my ass off on the rythm part... perhaps that's a reason for me replying like that...

OH well...

Guhlenn

BTW i never heard of "7string powerchords..." aren';t powerchords ALWAYS 3 string chords?
 
all you close minded clowns that are knocking drop D, and 7 strings, solos, etc., must have some really gay standard and boring music..

I have never heard any of you post anything in the clinic.. I use drop D, dropB-flat, sometimes a 7 string..

and YES, I use it through the whole song..


I guess if you write gay music, (like some of you obviously must,) standard E is fine all the time.. Don't knock the heavy stuff though, just because you are soft..


soft like 'Charmin'
 
JR#97 said:


Randy Rhodes kicked ass, Neil Schon kicked ass, Rik Emmett kicked ass...
Click to expand...

Chris Tondreau and I saw Rik Emmett last weekend.... He was doing an acoustic "unplugged" thing with a few other notable Canadians....
You guys, probably won't know them , but they are legends up here.. well somewhat..... Ian Thomas (Dave Thomas(the actor, not the Wendy's guy's) Brother... David Wilcox, and Murray McLaughlin...

They were all on stage together on stools...

It was great.... Rik was cool....... He has great audience winning-over skills... Im not sure if he was over-using them or the rest were under-using them, but there were times when it appeared tha Emmett was beng a bit of a crowd-hog :D

Great show.. lots of fun.

Great Performance of "Lay it on the Line" Unplugged... Amazing guitar player.

Joe
 
Hey B.SABBATH, you must have a really small d!ck if you feel the need to gay bash everything.

If someone wants to use standard E, but are obviously a fag for doing so, then I guess Clapton, Beck, Stevie, Jimi and a whole bunch of others are gay... that's too bad
 
musikman316,

That is not what I said.. and yes, my dick is small, but that's not what we are talking about here you homo!


I was responding to the close minded clowns in this thread that were looking at alternate tunings like it was a crutch.. It is not a crutch, but another tool.. like you, another tool.. :)
 
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