I think it’s where you see colors or shapes in your head when you hear music. It’s like your senses get cross wired, I think it can also happen with other senses besides hearing. I guess ailment, but dang if that wouldnt be useful for improvisational purposes.
Sounds like life would be rather interesting, where do I sign up! She should have undergone intensive music training growing up! Def use this kind of gift artistically, I guess she is 
Unless she is faking it, because you could theoretically transpose the instruments to the proper key for each song, even if she does do that its still pretty crazy cause she multitasks like a madman!
I mean if Satch himself is saying it then its hard to deny it. Heres a question. Can you show me an activity in life where the the newer generations dont perform
Better than previous generations? I firmly believe we stand on the shoulders of giants before us, with the exception of a few outliers.
I will play devils advocate to myself here: the only way to measure this i guess would be physical technical skill because music production and creativity is pretty subjective. Another counter point is that this isnt like a sport where you develop skills to beat your opponent and have that constant evolutionary cycle. Also, who knows who else was an 80s guitar monster,
Couldve been many many more had there been smartphones to record!
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This is going pretty well Someone wake me up when I need to start moderating 
Please note: it’s a joke! I think we are doing very well with a topic that in other places — say the youtube comments section — would go south pretty fast!
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My issue with this, at least so far as the guitar is concerned, is that we’re still proclaiming certain players as exceptions and outliers, in some cases after nearly half a century.
We can choose to stand on the shoulders of giants or we can choose to stand in their shadows. As far as we’ve come, and as high as we’ve climbed, we’re still in the shadows. Most of us are choosing to stay there.
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I think a lot of us are from the 80’s here. That was an amazing time to come up. But, like Satch said, I feel like we’ve had at least a 10 year revival on technical ability. Certainly there are players that are better than the 80’s, instagram has created a whole wave of unknowns that are incredible. Songcraft aside, purely from a technical facility, there is no denying players are better today.
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Not sure what exactly the shadows represent here? Why cant we have a few outliers and then accept on average the generations improve?
I’m not debating the idea that on average there has been improvement over the generations. There are certainly notable outliers. There are some players who are so giant that even today, none have seen further and none have stood taller.
As a result, many of us come to believe that these giants are of a different caste. We tell ourselves that we cannot climb upon their shoulders, see further and stand taller. How could we, they’re different. They’re special and we’re not.
To us, they become symbols of what we will never be, what we can never achieve. We tell ourselves that this is okay, after all, they’re special and we’re not.
These mythologies that we have created about these giants are their shadows. We fail to realize that these shadows only exist because of the light we shine upon them, and from where we choose to watch them.
By lowering our own statures, we distort our own perceptions. To us they appear even taller than they are. Impossibly tall.
However, we can turn off the lights we shine upon them. We can realize that the are not a different caste. If we stand tall, and look forward, not up, we can find our first holds and begin our climb.
Yet, for many of us, we choose not to. We choose to stand in their shadows. So many of us are so invested in the mythology of our giants that when somebody succeeds in their climb, we can only see how tall they now stand. We tell ourselves they must be another giant, they we different to us. They were special all along.
Choose to climb.
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Allan Holdsworth and Shawn Lane are obvious cases.
In other circles, George Benson and Joe Pass certainly qualify, and certainly have their own mythologies built around them.
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Are you guys baiting me here? Because I could name one guy that literally was the greatest of them all. But it’s a tough crowd here, and no one would agree with my view so I got to bow out of this question. 
Very true, the kids certainly play well but lack context & emotion, this IMHO only comes from playing with other people with real amps. Life struggles not withstanding.
Their tones are are sub par, you can tell it’s mostly digital with super low action, zero vibe, I’m sure there are a few that do have all that sorted out , but none come to mind. I think the musicians of old had grit and struggled to earn their keep.
Talking about character development, the social media performances seem to lack authenticity. I bet Nashville is full or real talent no one will ever hear of since they will end up only playing as ghosts on session work. Probably the smart thing to do till things change.
edit: there are more interesting players but here’s one for example, when was the last time you saw somebody today let their hair down and go balls out, without trying to be perfect. There is authenticity here that is entirely lacking today in the young “pro” space.
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Hey @Tom_Gilroy you know I’m here to learn, not start flame wars 
I’m a great admirer of Holdsworth but I can’t quite call myself a fan just due to exposure. I only own I.O.U. and that’s where my experience with Allan ends. I always thought his technique was phenomenal but what always grabbed me about him was:
- Mastery of composition
- COMPLETELY fresh style/sound
- Amazing improvisational gift
In terms of raw technique, what about him would you say makes him superior to players that (in my naïve ear) have his level of legato chops, like Marshall Harrison or Brett Garsed?
Yeah, please let’s not make this “my guy is better than your guy”. If there’s a player you think did things that no one else has or did them better than anyone, go ahead and list them and specify what exactly stands out. There really is no greatest of all time.
Or if you just wanna rant, let’s continue this in our DM thread because there I am all ears for the GOAT The forum’s been nice lately, I like it better when it’s nice lol!
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I think we should just blame the venues, sound guys and the nanny state, they gentrified it to stifle all the good stuff. Freedom my arse, Assange anybody?
Everything you get over the counter contracts your mind, the stuff they try to keep from us expands our minds, don’t need a degree in rocket science to figure out what’s really going on. And may be this is part of the problem, all the youngsters sound sterile due to being uninitiated to the old ways of the wise 
edit: btw psychedelics have a lot to do with intelligence and it’s evolution. This mycelium stuff wont just study itself 
I wish I had kept track of the Millennial and GenZ guitarists I’ve heard over the past few years… they really are doing some very interesting things and many of them have serious technique.
Are you really looking that hard?
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Here are two tracks from a young guitarist. To me, these short pieces are beautiful, but it took listening to them a few times each. At first I was like, “wait… that’s jive and sloppy”. Now I find myself putting them on loop for hours at a time.
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I think I.O.U. is great. For me though, Metal Fatigue is the album where all of the pieces came together. All the solo albums from Metal Fatigue through to about Hard Hat Area are phenomenal.
I totally agree.
Brett and Marshall are absolutely both technical giants themselves. I’m a huge fan of Garsed and I’ve nothing but the utmost respect for Harrison.
On legato alone, I’d have to say that I don’t think Brett hasn’t ever quite had the capability that Allan had, though I could give it to Marshall. They’re the very few that are even comparable.
Much of it is related to the conversation we had about Jeff Beck. Holdsworth also had such an incredible control over the technical aspects of tone production, note shaping, dynamics, etc.
Aside from his lead playing, his chordal playing is equally ludicrous. His ability to switch between challenging chord shapes is comparable to much of what I see in elite classical guitar playing.
Govan is another of the technical elite, but I very strongly disagree with this.
I didn’t say they haven’t been equaled. I would argue very strongly that nobody has ever been better than Holdsworth or Lane.
However, the idea that they could be matched or exceeded was the whole point of my comment.
I didn’t mention this and I don’t know why, because it’s usually the first thing I think of with Allan. Those chord voicings he uses are absolutely beautiful. I enjoy dissonance though (particularly when sandwiched between a group of otherwise consonant notes), not everyone does.
yeah man! I’ve seen this player and stumbled upon several other really good players… some were doing things that left me with my head on my desk listening