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In your opinion what is the hardest style of guitar playing?


jnurp

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The thing about being a great jazz player is that to be one, you must also be a great blues player.


Jazz and blues are inseparable, IMO.



They are seperable, but then you get a jazz player with crappy note choice and phrasing, IMO. :cop:

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I'd say classical. I'm no good guitar player by ANY means but I think that just being able to work in a philharmonic orchestra requires some serious music knowledge and work. And I'm not talking about just being backed up but, you know, actually functioning in it...

 

 

There aren't many guitarists in philharmonics. It's a rarity to see a classical guitar in an ensemble of that size

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hmm... jazz springs to mind first because it is so dense harmonically. you gotta know your {censored} to play over those chord changes.

 

flamenco stuff blows my mind. that stuff is totally insane, especially in the hands of someone like Paco DeLucia or Vicente Amigo. when i hear them play, i can't believe that they're playing the same instrument i pick up every day and play "stranglehold" on.

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y'know.. i think difficulty is more about the level of commitment to the music of WHATEVER style it is you're playing, more than the difficulty of any particular style. i used to play in a band who played REALLY slow sustained music-- and honestly, it was harder than playing fast and choppy because we had to NEVER choke notes, and the next note COULD be.. seriously.. 3 seconds, 5 seconds down the line. it wasn't hard from the point of view of being technically difficult with a score full of whole notes.. but from the point of view of having to actually HOLD something cleanly a lot of times... it was pretty demanding... and trust me.. you hear a LOT of your tone when you play like that... so we had to really focus on stuff that fast chugs don't.

anyhow.. for me, i'd have to say fingerstyle rags are some of the most demanding things i've ever done... and crosspicking with a flatpick for country and bluegrass stuff. and playing slide well...

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I think all styles of music have their own sets of challenges. I respect anyone who puts the time into their preferred genre and makes it sound good. I wouldn't ask Brad Paisley to play me a Tech Death riff and I wouldn't ask Karl Sanders for a Country lick. I have no doubt either could play them but they're both so good at what they do that it wouldn't be natural for them to be doing that.

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When you look at the minimum level of training/technique required to be considered at least average in your field, then I would say classical, followed by jazz. Just to be on the radar in the classical world, on ANY instrument, especially a solo-oriented instrument like classical guitar, requires a level of skill, precision and dedication that very very few possess. Jazz is very close behind with the level of theoretical knowledge required (usually), but there's a lower threshold I think because it's group-oriented and you can focus on a more limited skill set and still succeed.

 

But really I think it's a question with no answer... or rather, I think the answer is none of them. All genres - or even restricted further to individual playing styles within the same genre - have skills and that others don't and lack skills that others do. For example, you couldn't likely get a fantastic jazz player to sight read a 4-voice Bach fugue, and you couldn't likely get a great classical player to comp over crazy chord changes (though there will be exceptions on both sides, as always). It's really apples and oranges.

 

Also it depends on what criteria you're evaluating them on - physical dexterity? Endurance? Emotion? Ability to connect with the listener? Potential/requirement for creativity? Amount of theory/knowledge required? Et cetera et cetera.

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Who are the most talented guitarists; Jazz players, metal, rock, neoclassical, classical, country???



It's a good question because unlike many other musical instruments the technique required for diffrerent musical styles with guitar is dramatically different. It's pretty rare for example for metal shredders to be able to grasp the concept of chicken pickin', in the same way classical guitarists find the idea of using a pick a complete anathema....probably one of the reasons why the guitar is such an incredible instrument.

Therefore it depends on your current musical style e.g. shredders would probably say chicken pickin or flamenco as it's a pretty alien technique to most of them, whereby I guess some country or jazz guys might consider the stuff Gilbert does as frankly impossible.

I remember John Williams (arguably one of the greatest classical guitarists ever) saying that the guitar was the easiest instruemnt in the world to pick up but the hardest to master.

As an aside Andy Wood seems to be pretty fluent in many different styles including country and shred which by its very nature means I have enormous respect for his playing. :wave:

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Playing crazy jazz runs is a learned skill, i dont think the blues is a learned skill, its either in you or it isnt, which makes it so rare.

 

Learned skills can only take you so far; in the end it always comes down to whether it's in you or it isn't. Just try to tell me that John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Django Reinhardt, etc were just doing something by rote... no way.

 

And by the way, those blues guys had to learn something too; you know, how to bend notes and play a pentatonic scale... oh and at least two or three chords:poke::p

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[YOUTUBE]mmWLV9qy030[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]S_qzLH3FgxM[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]2Dnewv_TOLI[/YOUTUBE]

the last video is just unbelievable, the tone, the feel, everything...
try watching other interpretations to get a feel just how incredible this one is.
Also try listening to the original version of the first song, oracion by manolo sanlucar.

[YOUTUBE]ucGwXyW0brI[/YOUTUBE]

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For me, flamenco is the hardest. I do attribute some of that to the fact that it is a totally different style of playing than I'm used to, so I think if you learned guitar playing that style it would be much easier. So, other than that I'd say classical and some jazz pieces where nothing repeats. That takes a lot of practice and memory.

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