Vinnie Vincent - Virtuoso?

General Music Discussion
#1

What do you think of Vinnie Vincent’s lead guitar playing? He sounds incredibly fast and he sounded that way at a time when there were only a handful of guys who sounded that fast - guys like Chris Impellitteri and MAB. For whatever reason, Vinnie Vincent never seemed to get the credit or the status you would expect of a heavy metal guitar player who could play that fast in the 1980s. There was even a rumor that in the recording studio the recording engineer sped up the tapes to make his solos sound faster than they really were. I don’t believe this rumor to be true but nevertheless it was a widespread rumor that apparently a lot of people believed whether it was true or not. I think they believed the rumor because it was just too hard for them to believe somebody could actually play that fast. It was hard enough to believe somebody could playas fast as Yngwie Malmsteen! Yet Vinnie Vincent sounded even faster!

I’d love to see a Masters In Mechanics interview with Vinnie Vincent so we could find out what technique he uses to develop such incredible picking speed. What’s your opinion of the guy? Do you think he’s a virtuoso? What do think the reason is for him never reaching higher status in the rock music world as a true guitar hero?

#2

IMO he’s a fraudster who sped up his playing to make himself seen faster. If you watch some of his live solos with Kiss he’s quite sloppy.

#3

So it’s true that he really had his solos on the Vinnie Vincent Invasion albums sped up? I have the album Creatures Of The Night by KISS which has Vinnie Vincent on lead guitar and he hadn’t yet developed his incredibly fast style yet (judging by what’s on that album anyway). When he released his first Vinnie Vincent Invasion album he sounded incredibly fast on that, much, much faster than I’d heard him play in KISS. That first Vinnie Vincent Invasion album was where I believe the rumors of him speeding up the tapes in the recording studio began.

#4

I think his solos fits the overall vibe of 80s over the top aestethic. It goes well with that kind of music and ideas. It is a great study for that particular aestethic but does not hold up for a study of clean mechanical practice. That is my take on it anyway.

#5

Use the search feature on the forum. I’m pretty sure there was a previous discussion on Vinnie and that his playing was sped up on at least the first VV solo album. Not sure of the second one though. You can also see his instructional video on YT (linked here somewhere)…

#6

See Vinnie’s live 1988 solo here, lots of tapping and legato…and some trem picking. Not as fast and clean as on those solo albums.

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#7

As mentioned we’ve talked about this before:

Yes, sped up on occasion, and obviously so. If you come from the cassette four-track generation, all those machines had the speed slider, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that experimented with this for solos. The sound is obvious - it’s like the guitar version of the “Chipmunks” voice effect. It does a formant-shift kind of thing to the tone which sounds cool and it’s all over Vinnie’s records.

Yes also sloppy. Unclear if he could tell, or didn’t care, or maybe even liked that - who can say. However, I still think it’s clear Vinnie had skills, and was also going for some unique jazz-influenced sounds. If he had tried to slow down and clean up, and that’s a big if, could have been someone we talk about in a whole different [edit: whole different way] way.

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#8

I wonder if it’s sped up against his own wishes. I know the album producers are very unreasonable… and they mighta said… what sells now? ‘speed.’. Even MAB said the Nitro producers just wanted him to play outrageously fast. (but the difference was… he could actually do it)

Kinda like Billy Joel’s ’ Cold Spring Harbor’ in 1971, where the producers ‘sped up’ his voice. Making him sound higher-pitched. He sounds ridiculous in it, and he always says he hated that they did that.

#9

I can’t say for sure, but I suspect it’s Vinnie’s doing. There are comments in the other thread about the challenges surrounding filming Vinnie’s REH video, and the only producers there are the video people like Roger Hutchinson (the REH in REH). Edit: Meaning, the comments on the other thread imply that there was some weirdness regarding the filming, and the strange factor of the speeding up some solos and not others fits that. Again, just a guess. But the intro solos on that tape are completely mimed to sped-up album recordings. Later on in the tape is a non-sped-up solo section. The whole thing is really odd, I’ll give you that.

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#10

Oh God for a moment I thought this thread was about Jacky Vincent :joy: that guy though is shredtastic.

#11

I was watching that live show I posted and it’s pretty good entertainment and Vinnie has a decent enough tone.

#12

After seeing the live guitar solo that aliendough posted of Vinnie Vincent, I’m inclined to believe he probably did have at least parts of his solos sped up in the studio. What I’d like ti ask you @Troy, is how could they do that and still have the sped up parts be in tune with the parts which were not sped up and also be in the same key? Speeding up a tape, as you know, raises the pitch. If he’s playing over a song in Aminor and plays a solo in Aminor, the sped up parts could be in A sharp minor, B minor, Cminor, or somewhere in between two if these keys. So how would they have solved that problem?

Also, you said that the sound of sped up lead guitar is obvious - kind of like the Chipmunks voices. Is it obvious only when it is used on a lick that is already played in a high register of the guitar, say 20th position on the high E string and by being sped up the notes then sound higher than any notes with are available on a standard 24 fret neck? So is it obvious only because you hear notes being played which don’t exist on a standard guitar? Or is it obvious for some other reason? For example, if a lick were played at the 5th position of the guitar and speeding it up made it sound as if it were being played at the 8th position, those are note which are still well within the register of a standard guitar. Would there still be something about the sound of it being sped up which would be obvious besides it sounding incredibly fast? The pitch wouldn’t give it away, so unless you;re saying the speed would give it away, what is it that would tip off the listener that he’s hearing something that’s been sped up?

BTW, you mentioned Vincent’s playing being sloppy. Just out of curiosity, would you say it is more sloppy than Chris Impellitteri’s playing in his debut album from back when he played extremely fast but not as clean as he would later become? My estimation is that Chris Im[ellitteri’s playing, even at its fastest, was never as sloppy as Vinnie Vincent’s fastest playing but I’d like your opinion. Thanks!

#13

Thank you for posting that. Wow, I’ve gotta say a little bit of that goes a long way! :slight_smile:

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#14

You slow the whole tape machine down so the song plays back slower. This drops the pitch. You tune your guitar to the new pitch and record what you want. When you speed the tape back up to standard pitch, the solo speeds up. This is how Prince did the guitar on “Erotic City”, and all his gender-bent vocals that are still in tune with the song.

Re: sloppyness I don’t know how you’d rank but I supposed you could come up with a way. For our purposes around here, these are equivalent examples of players not quite having their technique figured out yet at that point.

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