Is guitar technique finally mature?

Is technique for piano and violin fully mature, where there is nothing left to be discovered? I believe so… for example, did any new violin technique come after Paganini? (No?)

I believe that electric guitar technique is mature, where all of the techniques exist today, but there was mysticism about picking that remained until Troy dispelled it, but now everything is clear. Thanks, Troy, for writing what I think is the final chapter about electric guitar technique. Finally, everybody can finally study effectively and not waste their time.

1 Like

Is the Italian language “mature” or did Mussolini just force everyone to speak Florentine, creating “standard” Italian?

There will always be change, and we welcome it. We’re not about enforcing a standardized technique. We’re more about showing you all the different ways that can work, so that if you want to use them, you can do so with more clarity. But guitar will always be a lot more varied than classical instruments because the culture is about self-teaching and lots of people still use whatever they come up with on their own. That’s cool.

As you can see from a selection of recent threads on topics like pickslanting versus picking motion, we are still pretty confused as to how these things work and how to present them, especially to beginners. So there’s a lot of work to do and there is definitely nothing “final” about anything we have done.

4 Likes

Not final in the sense of enforced, but final in the sense of documented. Evolution is to be expected (let’s say that hybrid picking becomes more popular, etc.), but I think the techniques are done, and this is why: The left hand seems to have been mature for centuries, the right hand learned to tap like the left (at some point, I don’t know the history), picking with fingers seems to have been mature for a long time as well, and the last thing left was picking, but if one knows about the idea of “trap” and “escape” (quite profound, and I didn’t know about Gypsy Jazz, etc.), one can deduce UWPS, DWPS, 2WPS, etc. (as all of these are obvious by symmetry once one sees the first one). So, is anything left other than lots of practice and trying to find what works best for a particular musician? I doubt it… presumably conservatories can now teach metal guitar and should be able to pump out excellent instrumentalists, and people trying to play like their favorite shredders don’t have to invent anything or be lucky. I still remember when EVH came out, and how I was blown away by the tapping: I think that was the last time I saw anything “new” [not commonly known] in guitar, perhaps excluding MAB’s various techniques (like playing with crossed arms, etc., but this is of questionable musical utility). Anyway, perhaps a new technique will emerge tomorrow with a fresh guitarist, but I will be greatly surprised if that happens.

1 Like

I missed something “new,” and that was people playing like Stanley Jordan (and this was probably only possible because of amplification, hence the ancients were presumably unable to have invented it).

Eh, except you have guys like Michael Hedges doing that sort of stuff on acoustic guitars, too.

I personally hope guitar technique isn’t “mature.” I want to see the limits of what you can do on a guitar pushed some more.

Not really! It’s one thing to know the concept of a pickstroke escaping or being trapped. It’s quite another to know what physical motions players are actually doing in the real world. I would suggest we don’t actually know a lot about that yet. There is enormous variation in how these things are achieved in a physical sense and therefore there are still lots of unknowns as to which things we see are even the same as or different from other things we see.

I’m not familiar with Michael Hedges, can you kindly send a video where he is doing that? I looked a bit but found him playing conventionally and gave up on my search. Regarding maturity, it isn’t bad, remember that all we have is 12 notes—and that has been going on for centuries—and we get everything from Bach to Max Martin, and countless music in-between!

Michael Hedges is kind of the “kitchen sink” approach to guitar - there’s kind of a lot going on here and this is definitely not a pure two-handed touchstyle compensation… But there are elements of that in his approach here:

And re: 12 notes… I don’t agree. For one, how those notes are used has evolved wildly over the years, from the relatively strict counterpoint of Bach to the extremely loose harmonies and open room for exploration you see in, say, Miles Davis, all the way out to the rigid rules-based approach of twelve tone theory. And, for another, we have entire genres that are based around attempts to blur some of the lines between those notes; I may have gone down the technique rabbithole since, but I first cut my teeth as a guitarist playing blues, which is all about the spaces between the chromatic notes.

Hedges is beyond good. Without doubt one of the best to ever play the instrument.

The extremely precise muting needed to make that song work like it does is something mesmerizing.

What a composer.

I think this is of interest to you then.

I agree with you that I cannot draw you a pie chart of how popular each technical variation is, but after being exposed to the ideas about escape that are so wonderfully exposed in your videos, I can easily derive many mechanical approaches. I was thinking, if I was presented this highly leading question before having seen your videos, would I have been able to solve it? I’m still not sure, and will never know: “if an escaped pick is defined as being able to hit an arbitrary string with a simple (linear or gently curved) motion, and given that it is possible to escape on either (a) alternate pick strokes or (b) every pick stroke, what types of techniques make this possible?” If I could send messages to my younger self, this, in addition to lots of stock market advice, would have gone back. :grinning:

It sounds to me that you’re playing with 12 notes [per octave], like everybody else, except you’re talking about which notes out of the twelve you choose: That’s exactly my point, 12 notes is enough (unless you’re into “microtonal” music).

That guy (above) is awesome. But he seems different than Stanley (in the sense of technique), in the sense that Stanley often doesn’t seem to “pull off” with his picking hand, but tap up/down directly. (I know that Stanley says that his guitars are nearly impossible to set up, requiring perfect fret leveling.) I’m very possibly wrong, however, as I don’t have a good eye to infer what other people are really doing, hence I love to have it explained (and you can see why Troy’s videos are so addictive to me). I’m not a fan of Stanley’s music, but he’s interesting because of his high intelligence.

I meant my response to be an example of highly advanced techniques that seem to be pushing the limitations of what we think is possible on guitar. Two handed tapping is extremely difficult, but the idea is that you’re playing the guitar as a piano essentially, while the video I posted showed two handed tapping, percussion using the guitar body, and the usage of tuning and detuning the guitar to create a melody.

Wasn’t an upgrade in technique required for a lot of modern compositions especially the atonal works from the Second Viennese School?

Well, no - blues IS microtonal, for example.

And I still don’t see how from the belief western music is composed exclusively with 12 chromatic tones (which again I don’t fully agree with) you can say that there’s no sense in further guitar technical innovation. Nor do I see why this question really matters - if it happens, it’s going to happen whether or not you think it’s possible… though I’d certainly say it stands to reason that it’s not the guys saying “there’s no room for further innovation” who will be doing it. :wink:

Where would be the best place to find tab for this? Not this exact version but at least the right chords. Thanks!