What Makes A Guitar Player?

You might well ask. The age of the guitar hero seems to be well and truly over although there are still large numbers of people interested in listening to, rather than playing, the guitar. Real enthusiasm for the electric and acoustic guitar blossomed in the 1960's and 70's when everybody had a friend who sat in his bedroom all day and night practicing the guitar. Indeed this willingness to devote all of your time to a musical instrument is one of the principal ingredients of a guitar player. During these long hours spent alone with your guitar you acquire musical knowledge. You learn esoteric terms like "pentatonic scales" and "CAGED" finger patterns. Not only do you learn these terms but they actually become part of you. You can live and breathe chords and scales. You also learn to read written music. Guitar tablature might be your first portal into the world of learning music from a sheet of paper, but you will probably also learn conventional sheet music. Why would you learn to read sheet music if tabs are quite easy to read and give you a quick way of learning songs? Because the theoretical side of music becomes interesting. It's a thing of beauty, and you discover it in your bedroomy world of the sound of guitar notes and the smell of old socks. The other thing you discover through relentless practice is technique. Your fingers show that they can do things you don't even know about. The intelligence in your body has taken over and left your head brain for dead. You pick up your instrument and the hours of practice pay off in the way your body can translate dots on a page to music. Improvisation also grows from learning scales and chords and putting them into practice. Your first clumsy efforts at using other people's riffs and licks to help you in letting go and experimenting with making music spontaneously gradually transform into a daily ritual you can't live without. So here is a list of guitar players. Although you can probably name a hundred great players from rock or blues, I've put together a list from many different styles of guitar playing: Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton led their fans into the age of the guitar hero. Jimmy Page was a legend from very early in his career when he played guitar on many iconic songs of the nineteen sixties as a session guitarist. Paco De Lucia led a new age of flamenco playing in the seventies and still commands attention when he appears on stage. Julian Bream battled many difficulties to share the limelight in the idiom of classical guitar with his more flamboyant friend, John Williams. Improvising using only two fingers on his left hand, Django Reinhardt introduced jazz fans of the nineteen thirties and forties to the sound of acoustic instruments with his Hot Club Quintet. Stevie Ray Vaughn mesmerized his followers with his inventiveness and depth of feeling in his electric guitar music. And, finally two icons of the early sixties electric guitar scene - Hank B. Marvin whose warm overpowering sound made teenage boys wish to make guitar music, and Dick Dale who fired the imagination of young people with his frenetic surf guitar. I hope this little essay on what drives the novice guitar player and the wonders to be found in the practice of guitar playing has been enjoyable and has given you some insight into what a guitar player is made of.