This might seem as a dumb question but when learning something, I usually ask myself “what makes a great [profession]? What skills and knowledge are required to be generally considered as a great?”
I’m not sure if I can answer this. It seems easy to conclude somebody to be a great guitar player when listening to him/her playing but I can’t identify any concrede aspects of a great guitar player. Can you?
I guess this could be an interesting and valuable disussion or it could derail into funny off-topic category. Either way is ok with me
I don’t think this is dumb at all. In fact, I think it’s a great question! One that really doesn’t have any specific answer. Seems like you already know this.
I feel this comes down to a subjective opinion. Plenty of people online have been so kind as to tell me I am a shit guitar player and sound like crap. But, most people have told me the opposite. So, it really does seem like a subjective answer when you approach your question.
A certain “feel” seems to be needed in judging a guitar player as great, or at the very least, technically proficient at what they are trying to play. For me, someone like Petrucci seems OBVIOUSLY a great player in terms of his technical abilities VS Kirk Hammett who I feel is fairly mediocre for someone who has been playing as long as he has. Not saying Kirk is terrible, but it just seems to me like he would be more proficient with that material he’s played a crazy amount of times.
Then you have the idea of is the guitar player a great musician. This is where most people would feel Kirk Hammett trumps Petrucci due to the popularity factor of Metallica, plus Kirk has inspired/influenced WAY more guitarists than Petrucci ever will.
Technique, which is not a subjective matter. Good musicians will mostly agree on who has a good technique or not. And I believe good technique can be achieved by almost anyone who is studying regularily the materials of @Troy
After that comes the tone and “feel” which are more subjective than technique but then again, if a player is on a level where you can identify him just by listening to his playing like malmsteen, friedman, vai, govan, becker etc. so his playing is hard to replicate, even if you dont like him I think you can still appreciate him as a great guitar player just for being able to create his own unique character that is standing out from the crowd.
In a more general sense is musicianship, which for me comes down to composition (this includes improvisation). This is the most subjective of the three and it relies very much on personal preference. This is a very strong aspect in defining a a great guitarist because i believe it is the hardest to find/achieve. In this perspective, since you already brought it up, I would say that Kirk Hammet is a great guitarist since I find a lot of his old solos amazing even if his technique or sound are not in parallel with the guitarists I mentioned above. As for Hetfield, you could definitely say that technique wise is not even close to Hammet cause he is 99% rhythm player but I would definitely understand the argument that he is great since his composition are sticking out through the time.
I get asked this question by non-guitarists fairly frequently and I usually say something along the lines of something similar to what you wrote:
Technical Ability
Emotion
Uniqueness
of course with 2 and 3 being highly subjective. I’m sure there has to be some kind of balance among the three? or maybe one of the categories are more important than the others??
In my opinion, a great guitar player is just one who’s enjoyable and inspiring to listen to, so it totally depends on the listener. There are some players who have this effect on many people, so they’re more universally recognised as great. Like Hendrix and Van Halen
Technique definitely seems to be a factor. On the other hand, it does not grant greatness. And sometimes, lack of technique (meaning speed) can be covered by other aspects like few people mentioned “feel”, emotion, uniqueness. Examples: Angus Young and David Gilmour. These two are definitely great guitarists in my book despite the fact that they don’t rely on frightening number of notes per second. I’d add Billy Gibbons to this list. Oh, and Brian May!
On the other hand, perhaps I perceive them to be great because they play in the bands that I love.
I sometimes hear just a couple of bars of some solo/improvisation and it is enough for me to conclude “oh wow, we have a badass here!” Example: in Holdsworth’s Legato topic one member posted a performance of Tom Quayle. That was just instantly awesome (for me) But I can’t really identify what made me feel that.
While I don’t have ambition to make a science out of guitar playing, I surely am not going to be happy with conclusions like magic or (s)he is just talented.
Not having an exact answer to question “what do I have to do in order to be a great guitar player” can be really frustrating. It is also liberating and adventurous.
Technical proficiency is more important than the other two categories simply because it is technical proficiency which enables a musician to articulate the notes he wants to and to articulate them in the way he wants them articulated. Technique is literally what gives the guitarist the ability to produce sound from his guitar. Being very technically proficient gives a guitarist the ability to produce any, or almost any sound he wants to produce from his instrument. No matter how creative someone is, it’s useless unless the guitarist has a level of technique which will allow him to present his creativity in the way he wants it presented. The less technical proficiency a musician has, the more limitations are imposed upon him regarding how well he can express his ideas, or if he’s even able to express his ideas at at all.
Uniqueness is the least important of the three categories you listed. For example, Steve Vai experimented with a guitar with a fretboard designed to be able to play microtones. It’s a very unique idea. I don’t recall any other rock musician experimenting with that idea. As for the number of songs he was able create with the microtone guitar that people seemed to actually like, that number is zero! Here’s another example: I like Ronnie James Dio’s voice. I think he had a very unique voice and he was one of my two favorite heavy metal vocalists. If tomorrow I find out that there was a singer who came along before Ronnie James Dio and his voice sounded extremely similar to RJD’s voice, then I suppose that would make Ronnie James Dio’s voice less unique than I had thought. Would I enjoy RJD’s music any less? Hell no!
Emotion is the other category you listed although it’s not specified whether that refers to the emotion the guitarist feels when composing and performing or the emotion he makes his audience feel when they listen to him perform his music. Clearly the second category is more important. A guitarist could feel a tremendous amount of emotion when he’s playing but if he’s unable to get that his audience to feel all or at least some of that emotion, then of what value is it?
Talent was not listed as a category but is of tremendous importance. Technique without talent results in a technician. Almost anybody can be a technician with enough practice of the right kind, but without talent, it won’t result in any more than a display of mechanics. Talent provides the ability to mentally create wonderful melodies and technique is the vehicle whereby a musician produces those melodies with his instrument. “Music is melody and melody is music.” - Mozart
As time goes one, I think the order of these need to be reversed. 30 Years ago, having exceptional technical abiliity was also “unique”.
With YouTube and online instruction/sharing, high technical skill is getting less rare. Probably more insidious is that the majority of “technical” players are copying (verbatim) the most technically impressive/useful phrases, so there is nothing to differentiate them.
When I did the majority of my playing/learning, I had a minimum of instruction, so much of my time was spent exploring and coming up with my own things to play. I don’t think that happens any more. A kid wants to learn how to play, he starts watching and copying videos.
There is a clear delineation of pre-Hetfield metal rhythm players and post-Hetfield rhythm players. The same can’t be said for Hammett. Metal rhythm guitar was never the same after Hetfield.
Hammett’s was never an amazing soloist over fast stuff in my opinion he’s much better on slower stuff like “Fade to Black” and “The Unforgiven.”
Speaking of Kirk’s solos, do you think he was playing Dave Muscatine’s solos on Kill "Em All or do you think he came up with his own solos for that album? A solo like the one in Hit The Lights sounds so much like Dave Mustaine and so little like Kirk’s solos on the other Metallica albums that I think he was probably playing Dave’s solos.
Regarding the question asked at the start of the thread, I’ve included an answer already but I would add that identity is also a good part of it. By identity I mean that a guitarist has his own style of playing and that you can recognize it’s him even if you’ve never heard the song before just by listening to a few seconds of it, or certainly within 15 or 20 seconds. Yngwie, George Lynch, EVH, and Criss Oliva all have this. B.B. King had it too.
But I can’t really identify what made me feel that.