Micheal Angelo Batio Vs. B.B. King: Shred Or Is Less Is More?
There are a lot of guitar aficionados who are partial to shredding and shredders. It all started when Van Halen released their debut album in 1978. Until Eddie Van Halen came on the scene, nobody had ever played guitar like that, and it got the attention of just about everyone who ever paid attention to the guitar.
Since then there has been a steady stream of players who have embraced Eddies techniques and took shred to all corners of the guitar aficionado earth. It is indeed impressive what some of the very best shredders have accomplished. It seems impossible that anyone who has ever even considered picking up a guitar would not be impressed by Steve Vai , John Petrucci, or Joe Stump, let alone Michael Angelo Batio, who can play his double guitar with more technical skill than most of us will ever achieve with a single guitar. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at this:
Whether you are a metalhead or not, it’s hard not to be impressed by that. That guy has spent a lot of time practicing! It’s kind of like training to run a marathon.
But I like to think of music as an art rather than a sport. For me one of the negative consequences of the popularity of shred is that too many younger players are trying to play faster than they can and more mechanically than they should. The focus is almost completely on technique, and rarely if ever on good old fashioned soul.
Of course technique is extremely important, but if you want to be a really great musician you need to spend more than a little time thinking about artistry. Why do you play the guitar in the first place? What do have to say with your music? What do you have to offer that nobody else does?
And don’t fool yourself into believing that playing simple is easy. In some ways it’s harder than shredding something like “The Flight of The Bumblebee.” It’s hard because you have to chose those notes well, you have to play them just so, and you have to have soul. You also have to choose where to put the space, the absence of sound is also part of the music. You have to phrase your lines oh so carefully, you gotta squeeze it, tickle it, caress that guitar just so. You gotta make it whisper, sing, laugh, cry and scream.
One of the great masters is B.B. King. With the most simple materials he can make you laugh or make you cry. When B.B. King plays you know that it’s coming straight from his heart. Listen to this:
Now nothing in his playing is technically that difficult. But his phrasing, his choice of notes are all his own. And you may not know it, but B.B. King is widely accepted to be the first guitarist to use vibrato. He was trying to approximate the sound of a bottleneck guitar style. And still to this day, although his influence has been literally worldwide, nobody can really sound like B.B. King.
For me, a player like Michael Angelo Batio, is impressive, but when I want to really hear something with some depth, something that speaks to the soul, I’ll take B.B. King.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 8:53 am and is filed under The Art Of Guitar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
