Crank It Up To Eleven! : 01.07.09: Flying Solo
Posted by Sandeep Murali on 01.07.2009
We investigate the origins of the guitar solo and observe how the art has evolved over time.
Hello friends and welcome back to the show where high gain and lip gloss have no co-relation whatsoever. If all you wanna do is mosh to a bunch'a guys who'd out-pink the average Barbie-doll set, then so be it; coz good music is the only requirement to earn your spot in this corner of the interwebz. That aside, I hope you had a great new year and if it went anything like mine, your piss probably has a higher alcohol content than Bud Lite. Which is nothing to be ashamed of.
Talk dirty to me:
James says, "Oh man, that Asian guy is the William Hung of rock. I would totally pay five bucks to see him live though.
Prayers are with your friend. "
James, I suggest you take a look at the guy's channel. He has covered quite a few songs in there and yes, each one is just as smile-inducing as the one I posted. Also, thank you for the support.
CHi has something to say about the two albums I requested feedback on: "Quick review of both Def Leppard's Songs and Whitesnakes Good to be Bad. Def Lep- I listened to the disc twice, I give it a 6.5 out of 10. Nothing special. The new(ish) Whitesnake, is exactaly what you would expect from Whitesnake, the only thing missing is Tawny and a Jag. David Coverdale's voice is still in fine form and the addition of Reb Beach to the everchanging guitarist role is welcomed. If you pick this one up make sure you get the 2 disc set with the live tracks. Lay Down Your Love would have been a huge hit back in 87. This is 8.5 out of 10. "
Thank you for the feedback, Chi. I had a gut feeling that the Def Lep album wouldn't be anything special, hence I decided to skip it. Looks like I was right. The Whitesnake effort on the other hand, looks promising and i'm gonna give it a shot real soon.
Explosions in the Birth grades my column at a stellar "9.2 AMAZING". I'll see you back in the forums, Patrick. ;-)
Jeezy says, "Thoughts for your friend. I just lost my dad to cancer. Hell of a way to ring in the New Year. Hopefully his story ends differently.
I'm going to have to check out that Judas Priest album. I'm a huge fan of concept albums and with all the shitty emo band would make concept albums. Here should be the concept: Trying not to suck. "
Thank you Jeezy and I hope you enjoyed the Priest effort as much as I did. The concept that you laid out pretty much sums up my sentiments towards the said genre. Lets just hope that they discover unsucktacular music sometime in the future. Till then, I'd be happy to live in the past.
Bouquets, brickbats, whatever you got; throw ‘em this way. It's all good.
I Remember You... And your music:
Alright. This week, we are going back in time to discover the roots of a musical element that has become a (mostly) unavoidable part of Rock and Metal music. We are going to take a look at the Guitar Solo and how it has evolved over time. Do keep in mind that this is mostly a review of the artform per-se, so kindly forgive me if I do not delve deeply into the stylings of a particular artist or a band. If you're ready, let's get the ball rollin'.
The origins:
The guitar, in its acoustic form has been around for quite some time. The earliest guitars were reported to have originated in 16th century Spain and was played in a finger-picked fashion. This instrument, which was originally 4-stringed, evolved into a six-stringer, with subtle changes differentiating the classical version and the normal one, which we simply refer to as the "Acoustic guitar". While classical guitar playing paved its own, separate course, the Acoustic guitar found a place in a variety of musical styles as time went by.
In the earlier part of the 20th century, Jazz music was extremely popular and the guitar was among several instruments used in a Jazz band. However, it was mostly relegated to a rhythm role because of one simple reason: The resonating sound from an acoustic was simply not powerful enough to cut through the extremely loud brass and percussion sections! No matter how hard the guitarist plucked his strings, the notes weren't loud enough and he was relegated to playing chords and supporting the main band.
Until the invention of the magnetic pickup, that is.
Several guitarists had experimented by placing a mike in front of their instruments, but since the sound of a guitar was mostly from resonance and not from the strings themselves, the results were far from ideal. With the magnetic pickup, however, the sound could be captured from directly underneath the strings and could then be amplified and projected over a loudspeaker. Guitar players could now play individual notes and still be heard over the rest of the band! Now all that was needed was one performer who'd put the technique on the map. And that person was Charlie Christian.
Charlie Christian, born in 1916, wasn't the first person to play a guitar (or similar instrument) with a pickup. But he is widely regarded as the man who popularized the usage of the electric guitar. Working closely with the Gibson company, perfected an electrically amplified guitar that many other musicians started to use in their performances. Charlie was a master of improvisation and could play a lead to pretty much anything the band could throw at him. He rose to fame playing lead in Benny Goodman's band and with that, the guitar solo was born.
If you listen carefully, you can immediately pick up on the fact that Charlie's guitar playing was built on the leads that the brass players performed prior to him. He played his tunes in a note by note, staccato fashion which fitted in very well into the Jazz scheme of things. But the guitar still was nowhere near as expressive as a legato instrument, such as the Violin. For that, one had to wait for the electric Blues players to come by.
The Blues and further developments:
Blues, as a musical style originated as a melodic way of portraying the hardships faced by the African American community. When the electric guitar was introduced into the equation, players such as the great B.B.King (who himself was inspired by T.Bone Walker, another great bluesman) started to add emotional elements into their playing styles. Techniques such as the finger vibrato (which King is said to have fathered) added a whole new dimension to guitar solos. This, added to the call-response pattern that blues performances employed meant that guitar solos were more akin to conversations now, telling a story to the audience. This marked a major turning point in the history of music as what would later be known as "Rock" largely adopted this playing style and the Blues/ Pentatonic scales and take the art of soloing to unprecedented levels of popularity.
As electric blues became more and more popular, players started to "crank it up to eleven" and beyond. This exposed the limitations of the current hardware (which was barely more than an acoustic guitar with a pickup) as the buzz and feedback generated became ungainly at high volume. Les Paul, a very talented musician, came up with the idea of using a solid body for the guitar instead of the hollow one (one of his prototypes was incidentally nicknamed "The log"). The idea was noticed by Gibson, who then, in conjunction with Les Paul, put into production a guitar bearing his name. The rest as they say, is history. The Gibson Les Paul, Leo Fender's Telecaster (and later, the Stratocaster) and the Rickenbacker paved way for guitar soloing, the likes of which would "Rock" the world for decades to come.
Let there be rock!
There emerged a new type of music bands that utilized these newer, more powerful equipment to create music that was like nothing before it. It had a harder edge to it than electric Blues, was immensely catchy and most of all, it was LOUD. What jazz bands achieved a couple of decades ago with dozens of members in terms of loudness, these bands did with four-five men. The Yardbirds were the pioneers of this new music style and many of the techniques they came up with would be used by guitarists who succeeded them. Incidentally, three men who would later make their name elsewhere started their career with the Yardbirds. Three men called Clapton, Beck and Page.
As guitarists pushed their equipment louder and louder, an interesting thing occurred. The valve tube based amplifiers, at their limits (overdriven), started to distort the signal produced by the electric guitar. At first, this was seen as a nuisance, but lead players soon realized that they could use this as an effect. The distortion, together with the added sustain offered by the solid body guitars meant that they could play blues licks in ways never done before. And this is exactly what bands such as Cream did! Suddenly, the electric guitar was transformed into a screamer and the solos mercilessly attacked the listener's ear drums left, right and bang center.
And the world loved it.
One Jimi Hendrix, who moved to the UK to further his career, took this formula further. Armed with a barrage of effects such as the Wah pedal (Forever to be recognized as a Hendrix trademark), fuzz and lightning fast fingers, Hendrix delivered a virtuoso performance with each solo. The man was not afraid to improvise as can be seen in the world famous clip below:
Feedback and distortion were now permanently added to the arsenal of the typical rock guitarist.
Shortly, the world saw even more advances in the field of soloing. Three bands that went by the names of Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin gave the world three master guitarists; Richie Blackmore, Tony Iommi and Jimi Page (Formerly of the Yardbirds) who laid the foundation to hard rock and metal guitar playing and became inspirations to countless axe slingers that followed them. Every guitarist from there on HAD to learn solos by these maestros to judge his/ or her skill level. The bar had indeed been set pretty high. Also by this time, the art of soloing had become a complex subject with each guitarist using techniques such as vibratos, hammer-ons, slides, bends and pull offs along with their choice of pickups, amplification and distortion to create sounds instantly recognizable as their own. Lead guitar playing was now a tour de force.
We shall continue this discussion next week with developments from there on to the present day. In the meantime, do leave your thoughts on the subject and kindly remind me if I have left anything out.
Never say goodbye:
Slow news week for music. I miss the days when rockstars would get high and do silly things on a regular basis. Oh well, I guess we'll have to make do with Amy Winehouse and Santa Claus for now.
