What Makes a Guitarist Great?
My brother, who I consider a music aficionado, and his friend asked me this question. Just to be clear, we’re talking about lead guitar and we’re talking about great not good. There are a lot of good guitarists in the world, but let’s kick out the jams and talk about greatness.
I’m a guitarist, and a lead guitarist so I’m probably a good person of whom to ask this question.
I also like to look at the components of things so I welcome the challenge of putting this question into an objective light.
Feeling
First off, I want to say that the currency of music, like any other creative art form, is feeling. Great creative art makes people feel. This is not to discount the value of inducing deep thinking and heightening the senses. However, guitar playing that does not catalyze feeling is like a cartoon rather than a movie.
Dexterity
The second thing I consider is Dexterity. Whether you know the names of the notes your playing or the theory that relates those notes to each other, you’ve got to be able to play the notes, and those notes are usually strung together as scales. So, a good lead guitarist would have had to have wood shed in the past, playing scales up the yin yang to the point where he/she can do it in their sleep. As a teenager I use to run scales on my un-amplified electric while watching late night TV. The scales became second nature. I’m talking about muscular memory.
Interior Voice
Having said that, now I need a way to counteract that mechanicalness that I’ve drilled into my playing. I find the best way to do this is by “singing with my instrument”. This is something I learned from Bill Douglas when I attended Naropa Institute in Boulder, Co. You can hear it in many great players, even drummers. It’s like they’re infusing their instrument with the music that is inside of them. It tends to make the playing more lyrical and heart felt. It also is responsible for great tone.
Tone is a quality of a note that when you consider the true potential of a sound can make that note a portal to the entire universe. A good musicians can make a cheap instrument sound good by the attention and soul they bring to each note.
Going Beyond
Interior voice is also a way of keying into another important aspect of great lead guitar playing: the ability to play beyond the body, the ego, beyond our humanness. Two guitarists that come to mind are Jimi Hendrix and Jerry Garcia. If you compare Garcia to Warren Haynes, the guitarist from Government Mule who stepped into Jerry’s shoes after he died, you can see clearly what I’m talking about. Haynes is a very good guitarist, very solid. However, it’s as if he’s stuck in his own body. The music never goes beyond his body, his mind, his ego.
Keep in mind we’re talking about great guitar-ing here. This is like the caboodle of the kit and the caboodle. Humans are partly divine. That’s what the HU means, it’s Egyptian for Divine. So for me a great guitarist is going to have some degree of cosmic in their playing.
Dimensionality
Along the same lines but from a different perspective is the idea of dimensionality.
It is the tendency for a lot of musicians to play along with the band. Ostensibly this makes sense, however, this leads to most of the members of a band playing in the same dimension. Truly great musicians know how to listen to what is going on in the mix and come up with a part that adds another dimension to the music. That’s why trios like the Police sounded so big. I call this Strategic playing. I think of it like the night sky. How do you get a band to sound like the whole night sky? This is how. If the drummer plays one constellation and the bass player picks another constellation on the other side of the sky and the guitar player picks a third away from the other two, they will form a triangle. All the area within that triangle will get included in the mix. If the triangle is big enough it will seems like they’re playing the entire night sky. Same thing with music. By choosing diverse dimensions and creating strong relationships between them, the area in between gets pulled into view.
Improvisation
Dimensionality can be applied to improvisation. The ability to pick a melody out of the ethers and spontaneously add it to the mix can be a magical skill. A lot of musicians jam by stringing together licks that they have already worked out. The true definition of improvisation, in my book, is to go in as a blank slate and receive the music of the spheres. This refers back to what I previously said about going beyond. It requires a kind of meditative skill.
Listening
Again, along the same lines but different is the guitarist who can choose a part that adds dimensionality but not need to necessarily be out on top of the music. The musician who can, one, grab that melody out of thin air, two, listen to what every other player is doing and three, weave his part into the texture of the improvisation, is indeed a great guitarist.
Innovation
Innovation is another trait of a great guitarist. Whenever I experience a creative artist doing something differently, whether they are doing it greatly or not, they get points on my score card.
Rhythm
One more point I want to make is regarding rhythm. There is an unspoken assumption that the drummer is the true master of rhythm and everybody else follows him. Well…..what if all the players in a band have a great sense of rhythm and they all responsible for this and don’t rely on anyone else to carry the ball. Then, what you get is a dynamic interlocking grid of syncopated funky music that grabs the attention of anyone hearing it.
Silence
This element goes along with going beyond, listening and improvisation but deserves special mention. You’ve heard it said that the silence between the notes is as important as the notes.
Two musicians come to mind. Stevie Ray Vaughn and Miles Davis.
Miles Davis was a very influential and interesting musician. He brought many musicians into their greatness. There’s a story about how he guided the great percussionist Airto ( pronounced Eye-Ear-Toe) Moreira. When Airto joined the band Miles told him to stop playing and just listen, literally. The next session Airto asked can I play now? Miles said just listen. This went on for an entire month. At the end of the month Miles said “Now you can play”. In an interview Airto reported that his entire musical perspective had changed.
Stevie Ray was always a good guitarist. He played fast with a lot of energy and soul. However, later in his career when he cleaned up from his heroin addiction, a new element enter into his playing…. silence, the kind of silence that you can find in BB King’s playing, where there’s listening between the lines that begs curiosity and anticipation in the listener.
Theory
I include this element last because there are great guitarists who do not know theory, at least not very well. However, a musician who’s ear is trained and knows theory, can hear what to play and know how it will sound without even playing it, without even having an instrument in their hands. This can make for a most magical musical experience.
Chart
There’s a vlog that goes along with this blog with me demonstrating on guitar what I’ve been talking about in the article.
I hope this exploration has given you some insight into the components of great guitar-ing so that when you’re listening and/or playing, you might find yourself with a different perspective on what makes a guitarist great.
Rock On!
You can watch videos by Christopher Macor about guitar-ing here and here.
If you would like to experience more of Christopher’s explorations into the components of things join his Facebook Group Welcome to the Shift Show.
If you would like to download other charts such as the one above, then go here.
This is Christopher’s website
