Pretty Amazing Guitar style

Subject: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 07:04 AM

I saw this posted on another forum. It is neat to see someone being creative these days. I wonder how he came up with the idea.

Acoustic Tap

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: redsnapper
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 07:24 AM

A very good example and exponent of the genre indeed but it is not new. There are whole conventions of "tappers" these days!

I've tried it with very limited success... it certainly take some mastering.

RS

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 07:32 AM

redsnapper,

I have only seen it done on electrics ala Eddie VanHalen. I have seen people tap acoustics a bit as part of their normal playing, but I have never seen anyone lay their guitar on their lap and do nothing but tap. Are you saying that others are also doing it like this?

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: redsnapper
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 07:42 AM

Steve,

I have not seen it done myself in the way played on the video but have heard reports from a European tap bass convention of a couple of players doing this on acoustic lap-style.

Best regards,

RS

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Beer
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 07:42 AM

Thanks Steve for sharing that video. First time I've seen this done to this extent.
Beer

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Effsee
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 09:14 AM

Anyone interested in this style should check out Preston Reed!
Can't do the blue clicky thig, just Google the name.
Awesome!!

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 09:23 AM

THe jazz man Stanley Jordan has been doing it for 20years on electric guitar.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Brian Hoskin
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 09:30 AM

Preston Reed

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Strupag
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 10:33 AM

Thanks Steve for showing this guy's style.
Check out his website herehttp://www.erikmongrain.com/


Andy

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 11:15 AM

Whilst I would agree that the guitar playing technique demonstrated on the various linked clips is very impressive, I'm not so sure about the quality of the actual music. Very limited harmonically...the tunes I listened to contained nothing much more than highly decorated tonic, sub-dominant & dominant chords (like playing C,F & G or E,A & B) & any enduring melody was conspicious by its absence. For me, these guitarists created a dazzling display, but ultimately left a void where the Music should have remained for me to savour.
                                     Nigel P.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Steve-o
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 12:22 PM

I am in agreement with Nigel- fascinating technically, but not enough music. I saw a guy named Paul Cooper play tap guitar in Paris about 12 years ago (electric), and he was playing Hendrix songs- now that was astounding technically AND musically. This is very interesting, though.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 12:28 PM

slightly reminiscent of the late Eric Roche. I loved Eric's stuff.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: woodsie
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 12:31 PM

Damien Nolan is great at this stuff and he stands up holding the guitar in a conventional way

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: M.Ted
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 01:25 PM

I haven't been able to access all the links above, but generally, my view of tapping is that it is a useful device, but it is very limited, as Nigel points out above--You can't base a whole repertoire on it, because after a few minutes, you've used up all the tricks--and listener interest wanes quickly--

There really is no option for playing sustained notes, and, because the technique is very staccato, harmonies can't be developed very much. Players often stick to one tempo, and that can be the kiss of death--Also, it is a very noisy technique--Stanley Jordan's string noise often came close to the level of the music--

Flamenco guitarists do it, and make it work very well, but they use it sparingly--

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 02:24 PM

I've seen flamenco guitarists do tricks like this, and others equally spectacular. Most impressive, but actually, what it boils down to is a gimmick, not a style or technique. Flamenco guitarists won't build a whole piece around something like this. They'll toss in a short passage to wow the rubes, then go back to regular techniques. What it boils down to is that you can't play any real music with this sort of stuff.

It's nice to know a few little stunts like this and toss them in from time to time, but just remember, it's a bit like a poodle wearing a tutu and hopping around on its hind legs.

Let me put it this way:   once recently when my wife and I ate at a local bistro that occasionally offers entertainment, there was a "classical guitarist" there. Which is to say, he played a classic guitar and he did use classic technique. We arrived in time to hear a couple of pieces at the end of a set. I got to talking with him between sets, and I asked him what the last piece he played was. He told me he'd written it himself. In fact, he said proudly, all of the music he played, he wrote himself.

We heard him do a couple more sets, and it quickly became evident to me that, although technically what he did, he did well, his technique was very limited. There were a lot of fairly simple to intermediate pieces by Sor, Tarrega, Giuliani, Carulli, and others—that I give my guitar students early on—that he simply didn't have the necessary technique to play. So if he were going to perform in public, he had to compose music that he could play. He did bar chords well and he did about three arpeggio patterns. But I never heard him play a single scale-wise passage, not even as much as three or four notes. His pieces consisted of him running bar chords up and down the fingerboard while playing one of his three arpeggio patterns. If there was any kind of melodic line there, it was really hard to pick out. The sad result was that after you'd heard him play three or four pieces, they all started sounding alike. You'd heard everything he could do.

Some wise man once said, "Don't waste your time learning the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 05:21 PM

A "google" on Jon Gomm will bring rich dividends.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: GUEST,(again)
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 06:12 PM

Or Michael Hedges

Preston Reed played the late lamented Melborn once - fantastic gig.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Steve-o
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 07:11 PM

Don- a guitar teacher who writes "bar chords"??!! Please....that's "barre chords".

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 07:29 PM

Well I liked it

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 08:33 PM

As M Ted said "There really is no option for playing sustained notes", and that's a bit limiting.

The other extreme, of course, is to use one of those little battery persnal cooling fans as a kind of bow-plectrum...

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: John Hardly
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 09:15 PM

I know a number of people who play this way. Some have turned it into a very "one-man-band" style -- very percussive. I think that may have been the initial attraction -- rapid-fire notes and rhythm rolled into one -- and that may be why the assumption of "no sustained notes". But it ain't true. The note sustains about as long as the finger stays on the fingerboard. I almost necessitates some kind of amplification, but the notes can be sustained. My young friend Patrick Woods has composed much material around the technique.

I'd have to say that most of what I've heard, with the exception of Hedges and Reed, I don't much care for. But that's not because of inherent weakness in the technique's potential for good composition. I just happen to not care for most of what the modern players are composing.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 10:17 PM

Steve-o, along with my folk music activity, I have been studying classic guitar since early 1955. Over the years, I have taken lessons from four different classic guitar teachers and one flamenco guitar teacher. I have had three years at the University of Washington School of Music and two years at the Cornish School of the Arts studying music theory and literature in order to give my musicianship a solid foundation. In the mid-Seventies, I attended a week-long seminar with Aaron Shearer (look him up) and in the early Eighties, a master class with Pepe Romero (you are familiar with him, aren't you?). I have a large number of guitar manuals and methods which I use for my own edification and practice as well as for teaching, along with collections of studies by Sor, Aguado, Carulli, Tarrega, et al. I have two filing cabinets full of classic guitar sheet music. Some of it, I can actually play. And a few things, I can play pretty well. In short, I have seen one helluva lot of music written for the guitar. And for good or ill, I have been teaching folk and classic guitar out of these methods and using this music for forty-five years. I guess I haven't screwed my pupils up too badly because a few of them are still making livings as professional musicians.

"Bar" is correct. "Barré," which is French and pronounced "bah-RAY," is also correct.   And so is "çeja" (SEH-hah) in Spanish. The traditional wooden capo used by flamenco guitarists is called a cejilla, pronounced "say-HEE-yah" (oddly enough, it means "little eyebrow"). By the way, the word "capo" comes from the longer "capotasto," which means "head note." It is sometimes mistakenly written as "cape d'astro" (or some variation of that), which translates into "head of the star" and makes no sense at all.

"Bar"—as in "let's go to the bar and have a drink," or "the ballet student is practicing her bar exercises," or "let there be no moaning at the bar," or "the full, six-string F major chord in first position is a bar-chord"—is perfectly correct.

Don Firth

P. S. Let me cite two references among the many I have (I just happen to have both of these methods within arm's reach because I'm preparing the next lesson for one of my students—in fact, I just started her on bar-chords yesterday:   The Christopher Parkening Guitar Method, Vol. 1, page 74 and following, and Classic Guitar Technique, Vol. II by Aaron Shearer, page 3 and following.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 12 Jul 06 - 09:25 PM

Another example, but more of a hybrid, here: Kaki King (the video is down below the black & white portrait, and you have to turn off the player thingy at the top so it doesn't come on simultaneously with the video). This one's a favorite of my guitar-playing boss, but I kind of agree with the assessments above.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: 282RA
Date: 12 Jul 06 - 09:56 PM

>>I've seen flamenco guitarists do tricks like this, and others equally spectacular. Most impressive, but actually, what it boils down to is a gimmick, not a style or technique. Flamenco guitarists won't build a whole piece around something like this. They'll toss in a short passage to wow the rubes, then go back to regular techniques. What it boils down to is that you can't play any real music with this sort of stuff.

It's nice to know a few little stunts like this and toss them in from time to time, but just remember, it's a bit like a poodle wearing a tutu and hopping around on its hind legs.<<

Oh, be quiet, you jealous ass.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Jul 06 - 11:48 PM

No reason for me to be jealous, 282RA. Lighten up.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 12 Jul 06 - 11:52 PM

I lost my link somehow: Kaki King.

~ B in T

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 13 Jul 06 - 03:09 AM

Interestingly, it's called "acoustic" , but surely he's "plugged". I bet it would be very difficult to get any real tone or real volume using this style on a purely acoustic guitar. But I did enjoy the clip.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 13 Jul 06 - 03:48 AM

Don is right. If I am playing in front of non-believers, I throw in every trick I can think of to keep their interest. Tapping, excessive golpe etc. Another trick is to speed up the tempo towards the end of a piece, or to supercharge the ending by switching from say soleares to bulerias.
Any tricks at a real pena/juerga would be frowned upon big style.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jul 06 - 03:57 AM

It's interesting for about two seconds, then it becomes apparent it's just a gimmick and the guitarist comes across as smug, self-satisfied and egotistical.

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Ernest
Date: 13 Jul 06 - 04:15 AM

Isn`t it interesting how a melody instrument like the guitar is turning more and more to a mere rythm instrument in modern music these days?
Regards
Ernest

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: redsnapper
Date: 13 Jul 06 - 04:24 AM

Mere rythmn Ernest? I would have thought rhythmn to be equally important as melody.

Wasn't it Miles Davis who said something along the lines of "What you leave out is as important as what you put in" and "I don't play all the notes, just the most beautiful ones".

Best regards,

RS

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: Ernest
Date: 13 Jul 06 - 04:39 AM

Yes it is important, RS: but still I feel it is a loss when players are not able to do melody as well.
Regards
Ernest

Subject: RE: Pretty Amazing Guitar style
From: M.Ted
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 02:04 PM

Guitar a melody instrument? In classical music, yes--but in folk/traditional/pop music it has ever been a rhythm instrument first--melody comes later, and, in most situations, not at all--

Les Paul   and Django made us start to think about the melodic possibilities, but before them, most guitarists were pretty much chunking away at the chords behind a singer or a soloist. And, for the record, the Gypsies who developed flamenco guitar pretty much did it all, first, and usually better--and, as Flamenco Ted points out, they don't think much of the cheap tricks--