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If that moment in Sweet Child O' Mine when Slash kicks on the wah and runs up the fretboard doesn't give you chills... well...

Applejinx 9y ago
But that's a real PART. It's kind of like the Jay Graydon solo in Steely Dan's 'Peg'. Yes, you can have a bunch of exciting notes doing things, but it can't be just any bunch of notes: fast or slow, content matters.
- KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
  Absolutely, content matters, and so does context. Take the solo in Living Colour's "Cult of Personality", a gibberish mess of seemingly random notes; he abuses that instrument like it owes him a lot of money! It works perfectly in the song however, so I suppose it's all a matter of taste. p.s. Aja is an absolute classic :)
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    Here's the problem with talking about guitar solos, especially saying, "I hate guitar solos, in the general case": Everyone immediately thinks of their favorite guitar solo, and gets defensive. How am I supposed to argue against a Vernon Reid solo? Vernon Reid is a brilliant musician. I've loved his playing since I was a kid. He was one of my earliest musical heroes, and unlike a lot of musicians I liked when I was a kid, his playing (and the music of Living Colour) holds up extremely well to adulthood listening, even as someone that's got years of musical training since the first time I heard it and loved it. I might even enjoy some of their songs more today because I understand the depth of it. If we could have the geniuses without the wankers, I'd have a lot less disdain for guitar solos (though even the Vernon Reids of the world usually have a few pointless rambling solos on record out there). But, we don't. Every wanker who ever picked up a guitar has shared their gifts with anyone who'd listen...sometimes, the world has been unlucky enough for it to have been recorded and somehow become a hit, and now we all have to hear that goddamned Freebird solo every now and then, no matter how hard we might try to avoid it. Wankers outnumber geniuses by orders of magnitude. The sheer weight of guitar solo mediocrity in this world is staggering.
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      But thats true about almost anything that the people who know how to do something are miniscule compared to those who doesn't. Whether it's design, UX, business, entrepreneurship, football, tennis etc. Hardly an argument for anything. So you are really back to what you like not an actual argument against guitar solos.
      - SwellJoe 9y ago
        Sure, I've never said this is objective. I hate bad guitar solos and most guitar solos are bad. So, I said I welcome the death of the guitar solo as a medium of transmission of shitty ideas into my brain by mediocre musicians. But, I disagree with your comparison to "design, UX, business, entrepreneurship, football, tennis, etc." Those are the thing. You can't have design without design. You can have design without the blink tag. You can't have UX without UX, but you can have UX without mystery meat navigation. You can't have business without business, but you can have business without telesales. You can't have entrepreneurship without entrepreneurship, but you can have entrepreneurship without "Why should a programmer get so much equity? It's my idea." You can't have football without football, but you can have football without that John 3:14 guy (who is in prison for multiple kidnapping charges, BTW). You can't have tennis without tennis, but you can have tennis without the tennis community's infuriating refusal to acknowledge Serena as the GOAT. You can't have etc without etc, but you can have etc without people who misspell it "ect". There are things that make UX bad; mystery meat navigation is one of them. There are things that make songs bad; guitar solos are often one of them. What I'm saying is that guitar solos are the unnecessary, usually unwanted, but too often present, part of an otherwise potentially good thing. They make songs worse in a lot of cases.
        ThomPete 9y ago
        You keep talking as if its objective, its not. Guitar solos are to some what they care about. So sure you have the right to your opinion but its highly subjective not some rational argument. UX is not objective its contextual. Something being intuitive only means the context is understood.
    - deleted 9y ago

Applejinx 9y ago

But that's a real PART. It's kind of like the Jay Graydon solo in Steely Dan's 'Peg'. Yes, you can have a bunch of exciting notes doing things, but it can't be just any bunch of notes: fast or slow, content matters.

KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
Absolutely, content matters, and so does context. Take the solo in Living Colour's "Cult of Personality", a gibberish mess of seemingly random notes; he abuses that instrument like it owes him a lot of money! It works perfectly in the song however, so I suppose it's all a matter of taste. p.s. Aja is an absolute classic :)
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  Here's the problem with talking about guitar solos, especially saying, "I hate guitar solos, in the general case": Everyone immediately thinks of their favorite guitar solo, and gets defensive. How am I supposed to argue against a Vernon Reid solo? Vernon Reid is a brilliant musician. I've loved his playing since I was a kid. He was one of my earliest musical heroes, and unlike a lot of musicians I liked when I was a kid, his playing (and the music of Living Colour) holds up extremely well to adulthood listening, even as someone that's got years of musical training since the first time I heard it and loved it. I might even enjoy some of their songs more today because I understand the depth of it. If we could have the geniuses without the wankers, I'd have a lot less disdain for guitar solos (though even the Vernon Reids of the world usually have a few pointless rambling solos on record out there). But, we don't. Every wanker who ever picked up a guitar has shared their gifts with anyone who'd listen...sometimes, the world has been unlucky enough for it to have been recorded and somehow become a hit, and now we all have to hear that goddamned Freebird solo every now and then, no matter how hard we might try to avoid it. Wankers outnumber geniuses by orders of magnitude. The sheer weight of guitar solo mediocrity in this world is staggering.
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    But thats true about almost anything that the people who know how to do something are miniscule compared to those who doesn't. Whether it's design, UX, business, entrepreneurship, football, tennis etc. Hardly an argument for anything. So you are really back to what you like not an actual argument against guitar solos.
    - SwellJoe 9y ago
      Sure, I've never said this is objective. I hate bad guitar solos and most guitar solos are bad. So, I said I welcome the death of the guitar solo as a medium of transmission of shitty ideas into my brain by mediocre musicians. But, I disagree with your comparison to "design, UX, business, entrepreneurship, football, tennis, etc." Those are the thing. You can't have design without design. You can have design without the blink tag. You can't have UX without UX, but you can have UX without mystery meat navigation. You can't have business without business, but you can have business without telesales. You can't have entrepreneurship without entrepreneurship, but you can have entrepreneurship without "Why should a programmer get so much equity? It's my idea." You can't have football without football, but you can have football without that John 3:14 guy (who is in prison for multiple kidnapping charges, BTW). You can't have tennis without tennis, but you can have tennis without the tennis community's infuriating refusal to acknowledge Serena as the GOAT. You can't have etc without etc, but you can have etc without people who misspell it "ect". There are things that make UX bad; mystery meat navigation is one of them. There are things that make songs bad; guitar solos are often one of them. What I'm saying is that guitar solos are the unnecessary, usually unwanted, but too often present, part of an otherwise potentially good thing. They make songs worse in a lot of cases.
      - ThomPete 9y ago
        You keep talking as if its objective, its not. Guitar solos are to some what they care about. So sure you have the right to your opinion but its highly subjective not some rational argument. UX is not objective its contextual. Something being intuitive only means the context is understood.
  - deleted 9y ago