Anyone else bored to death by mainstream guitars?

RichardT

"If someone can play almost anything from the established repertoire of their instrument perfectly, and with emotion and tone to boot, and very few others can match this ability, then they are objectively one of the greatest"

That's just adding up subjective opinions on arbitrary criteria, bud. Even if 9 out of 10 cats agree, it's not 'objective' by any accepted definition of the word.

darthed1981

gringopig said:

Voting time:

Vote A:


Vote B:


Yes my friends. Time to take sides. Go!

Well given a choice I'll take the pretty lass with the mustang and what looks like extremely nice legs.

What am I choosing btw?

gringopig

.

lysander

RichardT said:

"If someone can play almost anything from the established repertoire of their instrument perfectly, and with emotion and tone to boot, and very few others can match this ability, then they are objectively one of the greatest"

That's just adding up subjective opinions on arbitrary criteria, bud. Even if 9 out of 10 cats agree, it's not 'objective' by any accepted definition of the word.

Edit : damn website ate most of my reply, never mind I can’t be arsed to type again, will just agree to disagree here

Winny_Pooh

Picking on Holdsworth is an ignorant move. He's one of the greatest guitarists ever. It's as silly as saying Django is "gypsy shite" or calling Metheny "elevator music".

Pull up some lame metal shredder if you have to though. 

Jaguars are relatively shitty guitars.
Bless Kurt Vile, Dessner & Win Butler for putting up with them but they'll all be just another band from the pitchfork archives in 20 years time while lonely nerds with guitars (just like the teenaged EVH) will still be spinning Holdsworth. 

TTBZ

Johnny Marr seems to do ok on a Jaguar.

thegummy

darthed1981 said:

Well given a choice I'll take the pretty lass with the mustang and what looks like extremely nice legs.

What am I choosing btw?

Pretty lass?

That's a [hate speech removed] surely, isn't it?

They're even more in vogue with hipsters these days than Fender offsets.

gringopig

.

thegummy

gringopig said:

Winny_Pooh said:

Picking on Holdsworth is an ignorant move. He's one of the greatest guitarists ever. It's as silly as saying Django is "gypsy shite" or calling Metheny "elevator music".

Pull up some lame metal shredder if you have to though. 

Jaguars are relatively shitty guitars.
Bless Kurt Vile, Dessner & Win Butler for putting up with them but they'll all be just another band from the pitchfork archives in 20 years time while lonely nerds with guitars (just like the teenaged EVH) will still be spinning Holdsworth. 

Words like 'greatest' can be bandied about willy-nilly. You may indeed think he is one of the greatest guitarists ever and I say go for it! Believe in your passion!
He is (or was) a guitarist. Let us agree on that. All the rest is personal taste.

Absolutely; there is no level of subjective greatness in music that ever crosses over in to objectivity.

Even the Beatles, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner etc. aren't objectively good, it can't exist for music.

lysander

Again I strongly disagree here, while this is getting a bit philosophical and digressing from the original topic, there are qualities in art and in music that can make it objectively good irrespectively of personal taste.
Saying Mozart, Wagner and the Beatles are only subjectively good is silly - they are universally accepted as incredible musicians.

Whether someone like them or not is irrelevant.

I really don’t like much of Bach, but his influence on western music and his genius as a composer are not even remotely subjective. 

TINMAN82

Winny_Pooh said:

Picking on Holdsworth is an ignorant move. He's one of the greatest guitarists ever. It's as silly as saying Django is "gypsy shite" or calling Metheny "elevator music".

Pull up some lame metal shredder if you have to though. 

Jaguars are relatively shitty guitars.
Bless Kurt Vile, Dessner & Win Butler for putting up with them but they'll all be just another band from the pitchfork archives in 20 years time while lonely nerds with guitars (just like the teenaged EVH) will still be spinning Holdsworth. 

Tommy Emmanuel told us (at his camp last year) he couldn’t stand listening to Holdsworth. I’ll stand with him on this.

Winny_Pooh

gringopig said:

Winny_Pooh said:

Picking on Holdsworth is an ignorant move. He's one of the greatest guitarists ever. It's as silly as saying Django is "gypsy shite" or calling Metheny "elevator music".

Pull up some lame metal shredder if you have to though. 

Jaguars are relatively shitty guitars.
Bless Kurt Vile, Dessner & Win Butler for putting up with them but they'll all be just another band from the pitchfork archives in 20 years time while lonely nerds with guitars (just like the teenaged EVH) will still be spinning Holdsworth. 

Words like 'greatest' can be bandied about willy-nilly. You may indeed think he is one of the greatest guitarists ever and I say go for it! Believe in your passion!
He is (or was) a guitarist. Let us agree on that. All the rest is personal taste.

Reality is not so subjective. When successful people in challenging fields describe someone as a genius, then to some degree you have to acknowledge that a loose consesus exists even if you dont understand or agree. 

So when extremely successful and respected musicians refer to Holdsworth as a genius, then it's harder to dismiss outright. 

(You obviously dont care and that's fine, but respecting absolutely no one's opinion but your own doesn't make for a developmental attitude to life and music)

Litterick

Wonky said:

If you disagree, ask yourself this, do you know who Jason Richardson is, or Jan Zelhrfeld. Or even what type of guitar does Guthrie Goven plays?

From now on, I will demand answers to these questions from strangers in the street. "You, old crone, do you even know what type of guitar does Guthrie Goven plays?" Those who cannot answer correctly and with due respect will be consigned to the Dustbin of History. "Old man, look at my life, I totally believe though that all the young, modern, forward looking, technically advanced player aren't buying guitars from shops anymore. You can now get back to your Minor Penatonics."

RichardT

Consensus - loose or otherwise - is not the same as, nor does it logically imply, objective truth. Not in science, and certainly not in art.

DeeTee

thegummy said:

Pretty lass?

That's a [hate speech removed] surely, isn't it?

They're even more in vogue with hipsters these days than Fender offsets.

This is just ignorant.

thegummy

Winny_Pooh said:

gringopig said:

Winny_Pooh said:

Picking on Holdsworth is an ignorant move. He's one of the greatest guitarists ever. It's as silly as saying Django is "gypsy shite" or calling Metheny "elevator music".

Pull up some lame metal shredder if you have to though. 

Jaguars are relatively shitty guitars.
Bless Kurt Vile, Dessner & Win Butler for putting up with them but they'll all be just another band from the pitchfork archives in 20 years time while lonely nerds with guitars (just like the teenaged EVH) will still be spinning Holdsworth. 

Words like 'greatest' can be bandied about willy-nilly. You may indeed think he is one of the greatest guitarists ever and I say go for it! Believe in your passion!
He is (or was) a guitarist. Let us agree on that. All the rest is personal taste.

Reality is not so subjective. When successful people in challenging fields describe someone as a genius, then to some degree you have to acknowledge that a loose consesus exists even if you dont understand or agree. 

So when extremely successful and respected musicians refer to Holdsworth as a genius, then it's harder to dismiss outright. 

(You obviously dont care and that's fine, but respecting absolutely no one's opinion but your own doesn't make for a developmental attitude to life and music)

It's not about respecting peoples' opinion; it's just that no matter how successful someone is, their opinion doesn't become fact, it's always just an opinion.

Can't say I've ever considered how "successful" someone is when deciding how much I respect their opinion though. How would success even be measured in music? Popularity? Some of the most popular musicians are, in my opinion, some of the worst and some of my favourites aren't very popular at all.

If Ed Sheeran said Kanye West is great, would that be less subjective than when my mate says ACDC are great?

stratman3142

I like the mainstream and understated, and have an aversion to the flashy and ostentatious (e.g. pointy go faster styles). There are great modern guitars that manage to combine ergonomics with classic great looks.

My favourite guitar is a mainstream Strat, but that's with a humbucker in the bridge position, a low camber fretboard, high frets and S1 switching. Which is a different beast from the original design.

lysander

RichardT said:

Consensus - loose or otherwise - is not the same as, nor does it logically imply, objective truth. Not in science, and certainly not in art.

Obviously true for science, but there’s no such thing as ‘truth’ in art to start with - art is created to provoke emotions for other people.
Consensus then becomes a logical measure of quality or success.

johnl

Perhaps people are confusing being an objectively good musician with creating objectively good music? Of course you can be an objectively good guitarist - if you can take graded exams in something then you can be objectively good at it. 

gringopig

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