Are the new guitarists better than 80s guitarists?

General Music Discussion
#128

I think the world has shifted away from solo guitar, and thats the reason why it seems 70’s 80’s guitarists are more prominent than todays. Today guitarists are either doing super fast shredding or doing fancy stuff that you wouldn’t associate with guitar.

For a guitar, or any instrument to shine you need the backing to support it, and modern music isn’t constructed around the guitar.

Here is a guy who I believe in the 80’s would of been a big name.

He’s got it all, the look, the skill the drive, the flair. But look at his current subs, only 8K
I think guitar is just not appreciated today as it once was. I have my own ideas why, but they come across as offensive lol

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#129

Funny enough, the lyrics on this song, “look at all these little kids, takin care of the music biz”

#130

This is an important point - most musicians I like aren’t guitarists - and they use DAWs, know how to produce music and keep up with cutting edge production techniques.

If you’re concerned with innovation and composition primarily, guitar isn’t exactly the primary place to look. There’s never been any distinct reason it should be chosen over more linear instruments like keys, aside from getting some very particular sounds that guitar lends itself to. In fact, it’s the opposite case. It is not ideal for composition in a general sense relative to keys.

I play guitar because I love the instrument and I love pushing my limits with it, but I write just as often with a DAW and a keyboard or just a piano roll. I’m very interested in learning production techniques and talk to friends and relatives who’ve gone and gotten a degree in sound engineering or do it for fun/as a serious hobby they want to grow. The songwriters I respect the most from all decades are not typically guitar virtuosos, although some stand out in both departments like maybe Zappa (although he wasn’t exactly a virtuoso).

If I think of innovative producers and songwriters, I’m more likely to think of Sufjan Stevens or SOPHIE or Kendrick Lamar - than Joe Satriani

I want to write music that features guitar, because I love the instrument, but I don’t necessarily want to write or listen to strictly guitar centric music.

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#131

:100: on all of this. Most of the music that makes me go “oh, that’s cool” these days isn’t guitar music. And that’s fine. If I had my dream gig, I’d be Nuno Bettencourt touring with Rihanna (or Jennifer Batten with Michael Jackson), not Eddie Van Halen.

And I’m really regretting not paying better attention to piano lessons when I was younger :laughing:

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#132

Modern guitar players are totally different, it feels like more gimmicks are used such as what Tim Henson does for example.

The 80s guitar heros had insane chops along with melody and composition skills. So someone like Jason Becker there has been no equal to as he could actually compose some pretty epic stuff.

I mean when was the last amazing solo that everyone wanted to learn? I can’t honestly think of one. There’s a reason most people are still trying to play cliffs of Dover, Becker, Yngwie etc.

#133

I’m curious if anyone else here really enjoys or has checked out Christian Meunzner’s solo work? I think as far as cool neoclassical compositions go it’s flown very far under the radar.

#135

How about this Obscura piece - you’d be extremely hard pressed to find anything from Malmsteen that’s compositionally and mechanically as complex as this (if you’re unsure, skip to 3:30)

Dean Lamb is on video learning the intro portion of Blitzkrieg by Malmsteen in the course of an hour, and I think his compositions are pretty great. Here’s him casually talking on a livestream while playing

The last song I wanted to learn was probably this Black Dahlia song

How about Dave Davidson?

If nothing else, the overall waterline is vastly higher for guitarists on average - maybe there aren’t as many incredible outliers (debatable) but I’d put down money that there are vastly more players now that can physically play like Malmsteen than there were in the 80’s. As far as composition - I mean if you think the above examples aren’t as compositionally good as many Malmsteen songs I’d just agree to disagree.

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#136

Maybe so. One funny ironic point though:

The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the words “guitar” and “gimmick” in the same sentence is…tapping lol! I’m not knocking EVH, because what he did with it was innovative. But it sure did become a gimmick, and that was manifested in the 80’s.

This might be true. Definitely is probably true. I wonder if it’s just that it’s more visible now though? We have all the social media platforms and youtube. So there’s more opportunity for people to put their stuff out there. Back in the 80’s if you weren’t on a major label or some hired gun with an instructional video, we’d never know they existed. But suddenly, here’s a guy who’s neither of those things, but “here he is!” lol! We can see how awesome he is

How many great players were there in the 80’s that we never heard of?

I take your point though @cmcgee11235 and I do think as far as recording artists go, there are more mechanically capable monsters around now, than ever :slight_smile:

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#137

He was arguably able to play like Jason Becker at 17 - not sure his composition skills were at that level

Also I’m not sure but his cover of this Dying Soul at 15 might be cleaner than at 28

#138

This is the reason I think guitar technique has elevated significantly. The competition, the inspiration, the knowledge… You can see people now doing things you’d never have thought possible just a few decades ago. Maybe they were always there, to a greater or lesser extent, but there was no way for them to be seen or heard.

#139

Just thinking globally on this, how many more people in every country have access to see shredders play and teach for free or very cheap, even sans the 80’s popularity it’s just so much more available? Maybe more importantly than that, the material to learn it is vastly more accessible and mass produced guitars are more cheaply available - Harley Benton guitars are actually pretty good and under $200

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#140

Dude I have the monoprice amp and it is killer, 15 watt to 1 watt attentuator, spring reverb, tube, and series effects loop, for 249.99? It blows the $700 fender blues jr out of the water. i use a dod250 and it sounds so tasty!

so good in fact i almost bought a second one to do stereo effect type stuff for fun.

#141

Also maybe I’m off base because growing up in Southern Ohio there were a fair amount of guitar heavy bands coming out of mine and adjacent cities - but it felt like late 2000s and early 2010s were pretty good for guitar. Like them or not, a bunch of the scene and metalcore bands had pretty ripping guitarists and I had several friends in highschool in the late 2000s that could play some pretty shreddy stuff and looked up to the 80’s guitarists.

I’m not personally a fan of Falling in Reverse but if you listen to the solos on their early stuff it’s pretty damn impressive. Black Veil Brides even - all those guys were trying to have a glam revival in like 2010.

On the heavier side, look at All Shall Perish, Born of Osiris, Sylosis, Arsis etc - they had and have pretty damn ripping guitar solos.

You had Children of Bodom, Avenged Sevenfold and Trivium getting a lot of popularity in the late 2000s as well.

Most of these examples do not reach 80s virtuoso levels, but it felt like all the sudden after not much guitar stuff in the late 90s/early 2000s you had a lot of random young bands with guitarists that could all do tapping, sweeping and alternate picking runs pretty well, and you also had material online for the first time teaching you how to do a standard set of techniques like that readily available.

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#142

Man, if any of those sources had said “hey it’s okay if you can only change strings after upstrokes, Malmsteen and Laiho are the same way” I’d have stuck with guitar a lot more as a teen :laughing:

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#143

True lol, I think most of my learning resources were like, Rusty Cooley videos on chops from hell and I think my best one was Speed Lives by MAB, I spent the better part of a year working with that.

Edit: speaking of we forgot Rusty Cooley

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#144

Oh man! I bought Rusty’s Shred Guitar Bootcamp or whatever it was called waaaaay back in the day. Realmedia format videos :laughing: and I went and bought the Rusty Sampler as soon as it was available here

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#145

Kinda similar generation of guitarists but not as well known - George Bellas was a late 90s Shrapnel Records guy and he had some really cool instructional stuff on his site that I used. I think some of it wasn’t meant to be free he just had the URLs set up in a way I could access them easily by guessing based on the free pages. It’s all behind paywalls now though.

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#146

cesario does a couple covers of george bellas songs, madness! i have to limit my time watching cesario cause he is just soo freakin clean and good! :laughing:

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#147

I worked on the Airborne solo a bit ago as well, I bet if I went back to it I could get a clean take after all the wood shedding on my picking technique. Love that solo section.

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#148

Accessibility is 100% of the of the reason. Not just on the playing and learning aspect but the production as well, EVERYTHING, is just more easily accessible. If todays guitarists are better, its because of this alone, - nobody is physically or mentally more capable but the learning, visibility, and opportunity resources are endless. I also second @joebegly point. how many good guitar players in 80’s were there that we just didn’t hear about for this reason.

Anytime you have a technological leap like this that plugs us all in, you will see this advancement happen. It has its drawbacks as well though.

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