Guitar Star 2016, Sky Arts

EricTheWeary

Blueingreen said:

Yeah really liked that Tom Anderson.  In fact seeing it reminded me I'd seen the guy before, he demos it in a YouTube vid.  I did think the was a bit of a sexual spark there with Lianne but I hope she thinks better of it - she seems a nice girl and he seems a total dick.  Very interesting player though.

Bizarrely it was also seeing her guitar that made me realise I'd seen Lianne before, on Jools:  just the look of her wasn't enough to trigger the memory until I saw her with that distinctive black and white guitar.  I really need to get out more.

I have no idea what her guitar is? My knowledge of her entirely derived from Guitar Star and Later. 

Blueingreen

No I don't know either, it's just memorable.  Not that I'd have recognised the guitar on its own but as soon as I saw her with it I immediately thought oh yeah I remember who she is now,  the one from Jools with the black and white guitar.

Dave_Mc

sweepy said:

Milos telling the ex Berklee fella to practice his scales, when it was screamingly obvious that he wanted to break away from the sausage factory mentality that sums up Berklee today and find his own path.

Yeah I found it kind of funny that last week miloš was castigating the players for not being practised enough and this week wilko was complaining about the players who practised too much. I'm not that keen on jazz dude (he's a bit annoying, not to mention affected I think- I know we all talk about a lot of the rock players being almost caricatures but if you ask me he is as well) but he did have a point about the "too many cooks" thing. And while I do think he possibly is self-indulgent, it's for other reasons than "not wanting to practise scales". Not wanting to do the "one-size fits all" approach, especially if you've already tried it and it's messed you up (as jazz guy said) is absolutely not self-indulgent, IMO at least. You've got to do what works for you.

miloš is such a coot as well, he's like 33 going on 90. I do sympathise when he complains about volume (I have very sensitve ears too and you don't want to mess with your hearing, you can do irreparable damage in a short space of time), but apart from that he seems awfully set in his ways, like the classical professor last series too. the other judges seem to enjoy music from outside their preferred genre, but the classical ones do seem to just think that classical is all that matters. kind of funny since the show seems to be trying to say that there are a lot of misconceptions about classical music... but then their classical judges and mentors come on and seem to just reinforce those stereotypes. )

I also didn't like the bit where he was telling one of the electric guitarists about technique- yes, technique is important but (IMO) it's a means to an end, plus there are electric guitar techniques which are different from classical. It's just not true that classical technique is always better, in some instances on electric guitar there's stuff you want to be doing very differently from classical.

Blueingreen said:

I did think the was a bit of a sexual spark there with Lianne but I hope she thinks better of it - she seems a nice girl and he seems a total dick. 

Bizarrely it was also seeing her guitar that made me realise I'd seen Lianne before, on Jools:  just the look of her wasn't enough to trigger the memory until I saw her with that distinctive black and white guitar.  I really need to get out more.

Yeah he kinda made my skin crawl a bit there.

And yeah I dunno what guitar she has either, she gets a very nice tone out of it, though.

lloyd

How dull. Guitar's not a solo instrument for me, it needs something with it.

imalrightjack

I can't stand the concept, full stop. It's embarrassing. One episode last year nearly made me put a guitar through the TV.

I like it when a guitarist just plays, in their natural environment (on stage with a band, solo acoustic or whatever) and you can appreciate them for what they do. For example, James Brown (get up!) from Pulled Apart By Horses creates a wonderful tonal palette of textures and dynamics but he'd sound 'crap' if he just got up on stage on his own and made noises. 

Stevepage

watched the first episode the other day. only one that stood out was the guy with the odd tele mutt thing playing with a slide. 

most of the rock guitarists sounded like kids playing in front of the mirror pretending to be a guitar God.

the Jazz category was interesting but not outstanding.

won't be bothering with it.

mudslide73

I've recorded them all... should I watch them or delete? I wasn't a fan last time..

EricTheWeary

I'm pretty much at the level of 'ooh shiny guitars on the telly'  and not taking it too seriously. Surprises me how much offence people seem to take towards it. 

mudslide73 said:

I've recorded them all... should I watch them or delete? I wasn't a fan last time..

scrumhalf

Well, the bloke playng slide guitar has wiped the floor with the others. Admittedly, he doesn't use ten feet of effects, multiple loopers and nor does he feel the need to whack the thing every so often.

EricTheWeary

Just starting this week's,  that version of Satch Boogie is painful. I might take back all the nice things I've said about the show... 

Nunogilberto

The young fella doing Satch Boogie could have done with a backing track or something. He is also an example of why the show needs a rock judge/mentor, like Paul Gilbert, to bring out the best in players like him and pick out the decent players from the guitar shop shredders, who seem to impress the non rock judges... As much as I don't like the percussive acoustic thing, Rebecca's piece was very musical and rightly drew the biggest cheer. As someone has already said though, that Steve won the day with his slide playing - he's the most organic player there I think.

EricTheWeary

Having watched all of the last episode now ( it got better)  I'd agree on Steve the slide player as by far the most listenable to me. 
The quality of the sound from the stage at Koko seemed awful though,  the programme makers need to do that kind of thing better. 

Moss

At Latitude watching the winner

He's not very good

EricTheWeary

The only thing left I have now about this series is waiting to see who the winner is,  so not the only female contestant then. 

guitarcookie1

^spoilers...

Dave_Mc

yeah thanks for the spoiler. i almost didn't come into the thread because i hadn't seen this week's episode yet, but i figured since no-one was eliminated it was safe enough...

EricTheWeary

I'd nearly forgotten this. Just watched the latest. Bit dull, lots of kissing Visconti 's arse. 

Dave_Mc

^ Oh yeah I really like the spontaneous toadying and fawning. Totally spontaneous. I can tell it's definitely spontaneous. The way the contestants ask the questions means it couldn't be anything but spontaneous.

Pointless as the recording studio episode is, one good thing is it showed how much better the rock guitarists might sound with a backing track (and that wasn't even with any drums or bass). He actually sounded pretty good- possibly the pick of all of them, at least in my opinion (granted I'm biased as I'm a rock fan, but so is everyone). Though I'm not sure how ripping off Hendrix (which that mike bradley dude did earlier in the show with the exact same song and didn't get through the auditions ) is being more unique and creative than what he'd been doing up to that point.

(To be clear, I don't much care if they're derivative or not, but don't tell me they're being derivative one minute and original the next when they're doing the exact same thing. I'm not a complete dope (citation needed  ).)

EricTheWeary

Well, that's his shortcoming - the more he copies somebody else the better he is. The slide guitar guy is very good but all within quite a limited range. Based on Moss' spoiler  and the comments in the show the writing is on the wall for the young woman. 

Dave_Mc

I guess, but to be fair he's only 15. It was more that they were criticising him a bit for being derivative, then praised him for being less so when it just seemed that he copied someone else! My big problem is that I struggle to shake off the feeling that they decided long ago who they want to win and structure all their comments (and even the entire show) around that, whether it makes sense or is fair or not.

Agreed about slide guy.

And also agreed about her. It's unfortunate. I did call it long ago that they probably wouldn't let a woman win. I don't think she did herself any favours with the piece she picked- but remember last year? The guy who won tried some other more melodic mainstream/less percussive piece for his recording session, and tony told him to play what he'd played in the auditions instead because he wasn't doing himself justice.

He could easily have done the same for her, surely? That sort of backs up what I was saying in my first paragraph- they give people second chances when they want to. (They also didn't penalise the teenager who won the rock category last year for having to start over when he messed up his live piece.)

I also wonder if they don't want a percussive acoustic player to win this year because one won last year. Understandable, but hardly fair and not her fault. Kind of missing the point, too- I'm not sure fending off accusations of the show not being fair by not being fair is the answer!

Also a bit annoying the way they call the percussive acoustic stuff so "new" and "original". Yeah ok it's fairly new but it's not like nobody plays like that.