Favorite guitarists?

[Ton]

Marty Friedman of Megadeth played fast at times but always with a lot of meaning, he was all about feeling but that never stopped him from building some impressive music theory to add complexity to his leads and making them integrate better with the music. He definately never did any boring-ass pentatonic fiddling(typical rock and metal solos, think Kirk Hammet, Slash, or Angus Young, not to say they're boring just typical). I refuse to call two or three power licks a solo.

Friedman is the shat, I finally got around to checking out some of his solo albums the other day, good stuffs

[riasroC]

My favorite guitarist of all time is David Gilmour from Pink Floyd. That man is a genius.

[Rekuja]

Jimi Hendrix, nuff said

[Tosca]

not here to argue over this but I don't view Hendrix as the best guitar player.. a lot of his style was inpromptu and he would often bend strings until it sounded right.. he also didn't know music (meaning he couldn't read music and didn't know any scales) That statement doesn't discredit him in anyway, just feel he gets somewhat overrated. he is however pretty much the best improvisational/experimental guitarist. My opinion for best overall would be between Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. I'd have to go with Clapton though. Some other greats are Stevie Ray Vaughn, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Tom Morello from Audioslave former fame of Rage Against The Machine is a REALLY fucking good guitarist too.

[ZeikHunter]

i have more love for guys like hendrix, and vaughn, and bb king, just because of the improv. that takes -skill- anybody that practices a riff for hours and days can make it sound good, but to pull off a heartfelt lick on the spur of the moment, thats the stuff dreams are made of.

i had satriani's 'engines of creation' cd but i think it got stolen. greatest music i ever heard. vai is also good shit

and about the 'noise' in the music, not to offend anyone, or call anyone inferior, but experinced musicians, (ie, guitarists that actually can play) learn how to pick out notes faster than other people. i had the same 'noise' phenomenon when i was just starting to play, listening to some malmsteen. i was like, wtf is he playing? now i can hear every note that comes out of his guitar individually, and can see where he's going in regards to a melody or scale. couldnt tell you what it is, but i know hes not just puttin gout white noise.

now, insofar as my favorite guitarists go, most everybody here has covered them, multiple times, so i wont bore you with another list. i am however going to go pick up some more satriani offa amazon

[Tancred]

not here to argue over this but I don't view Hendrix as the best guitar player.. a lot of his style was inpromptu and he would often bend strings until it sounded right.. he also didn't know music (meaning he couldn't read music and didn't know any scales) That statement doesn't discredit him in anyway, just feel he gets somewhat overrated. he is however pretty much the best improvisational/experimental guitarist. My opinion for best overall would be between Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. I'd have to go with Clapton though. Some other greats are Stevie Ray Vaughn, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Tom Morello from Audioslave former fame of Rage Against The Machine is a REALLY fucking good guitarist too.

Lots of popular guitarists don't know how to read music or know anything about scales. Many people nowadays call Mike from Opeth a genius but he suffers from the same thing...

[Tosca]

Yea I wasn't saying Hendrix was alone in that , I just meant to say he's just not the best, well imo that is.

[Young-Al-Capone]

Lots of popular guitarists don't know how to read music or know anything about scales. Many people nowadays call Mike from Opeth a genius but he suffers from the same thing...

It's not hard at all to learn how to read music, especially when you already play or can read tabs. Someone who doesn't know how to read music might be able to make their playing sound good on the surface, but you have to hit all the right notes. If you're not, everyone who knows how to play guitar will be able to call you out on it because it sounds off. That's a major turn off imo and a big reason why I don't like Hendrix as much as others do. It's like trying to write novels without having taked any writing courses. Someone might be able to pull it off, but they'd be 10X better if they understood the basics of sturcture and theory.

Btw, I picked up some live SRV about 2 weeks ago. I'm not a big fan of the blues, but he's one of the best guitar players ever. He really plays all kinds of styles. I'd have to say Page is the best though. Anyone who has seen the live Zepplin dvd with the desert on the cover would probably agree.

[Tancred]

LOL. Jimmy Page is one of the most sloppiest guitarists, especially live. It's safe to say Zeppelin were always stoned when they played live hehe. Have you seen their DVD The Song Remains The Same? I'm not sure if the same one you mentioned but Page screws up a lot. There's this one part where he's playing like 2 guitars using the thing you use the play violins and he's just hammering away nonsense on it for about 10 minutes. The strings are all popping and he's just scraping and sliding random nonsense. It sounded like complete shit too obviously. Don't get me wrong, I love Jimmy Page but his theatrics were the same as Hendrix's. Hendrix played the guitar with his teeth, and Page played it with the violin thing...

[suikofan1986]

david gilmour, specially in comfortably numb

[Josh]

I would have to go with Hendrix, Clampton, Steve Vai, and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

[SnowMouse]

I don't think anyone could disagree that Stevie Ray Vaughan was the best guitar player of all time. He might be a student of Hendrix, but he far surpassed him. Stevie, however, is a guitarist that needs to be seen. It quite hard to say who is the greatest living guitarist, since all the great ones seems to be dead, but I guess it really depends on what you consider great guitar playing. I mean, there are blue, rock, folk etc. all requiring different skills, and all equally challenging to play. For instance, I consider a guitarist like Nick Drake to be qually as great as Hendrix.

[Mr. Kenney]

Kim Thayil of Soundgarden... Listen to Jesus Christ Pose and you'll see what I mean. In no way is he a master like Vai, Vaughan or someone of the like. But, he has a sound nobody else has.

[amling]

Jimmy Hendrix = God
Blond Hammet = Devil

[typical]

Jimmy Page was a great session guy, but was pretty sloppy, and if you know his music, his idiosyncrasies were pretty obvious. I have no problem with a guitarist being sloppy either on purpose or not, it can add a different feel to the playing. Like how some singers will purposely get drunk before recording something. Page was also great at producing some unique sounds, though the violin bow thing wasn't my thing. As I got better at writing and guitar playing, I kind of drifted away from being too impressed with lead players - I think it's more of a rarity when a guitarist can sing well and play complicated rhythms simultaneously, or actually create a unique sound and the writing doesn't suffer. The latter, outside of experimental work, has been tried kind of recently in musical history by guys like tom morello, but I don't think he succeeds. Maybe Doug Martsch.