Guitar Hero

The guitar is one of the most unique instruments because of its incredible diversity. If there is a genre of music, there’s most likely a specific guitar style to fit perfectly with it. The reason behind this is that the guitar is a hybrid instrument. It combines the quality of a “natural” instrument with the power of computers and technology. I stretch to use the word “natural” to define an instrument, because all instruments are essentially manmade tools. However, when comparing digitized music and sounds to instruments utilized by humans themselves, “natural” seems to fit in quite well.

Guitars can connect to amplifiers, which are simply large boxes that take the sound of the guitar and make it louder, or “amplify” it. Since this sound must first be translated to an electrical signal and sent through a wire to the amplifier, computers (and pedals) are able to alter the sound. This is where the digital world combines with the natural world. Once the sound is converted to a signal, it can be bent, pulled, twisted, and reshaped to create any sound the artist wants. It is even possible to mimic that of a completely different instrument. This creates infinitely many possibilities for tones and styles to be created with the guitar, and it’s this reason that the guitar’s diversity can fit in with any genre of music.

As I said earlier, each genre has its own style. Basically, a genre defines a set of boundaries that the tone produced from the guitar must fit in to. Heavy rock songs usually distort the signals to produce fuzzy, crackly, screaming tones, which are perfect for the loud and hard tendencies of rock music. Funk songs require an entirely different tonality. In your mind, try to think of any funk song. More likely than not, you’re thinking of an upbeat, clean, “wah” type of guitar sound. The sound comes out as smooth (or clean of crackling and fuzz) and usually intentionally wavers from the desired note.

Believe it or not, jazz has its own standards for guitar as well. When most people think of jazz, they don’t even hesitate to remove the guitar from the overall sound. This is probably because the most popular jazz hits don’t FEATURE the guitar, but just because the guitar isn’t featured, that doesn’t mean the guitar doesn’t play a critical role in the group’s mix. In jazz, rhythm is the key component. A guitarist is recurrently found laying down the time along with the bassist and the drummer. The good guitarists are the ones who are able to venture out from the simple time, create improvised rhythms, and still maintain a solid sense of the beat.

Now I suppose you want to know who these “good guitarists” are. In my opinion, one of the greatest guitarists of all time is Pat Metheny, the front man of the “Pat Metheny Group”. He created one of the most unique and distinct sounds in all of jazz guitar history. Imagine what it would sound like if Carlos Santana was born in New Orleans and produced records in the 40s with the biggest jazz giants of the time. That’s what Pat Metheny sounds like. I’m assuming everyone knows of Santana. His songs have instantly recognizable, no matter who is singing. Santana usually finds popular singers to lead them on a single hit, while Carlos accompanies them with his distinct guitar tone and style. As soon as he starts playing, simply because of the specific recognizable way the sound is altered, Santana can be identified with whoever he plays with.

Pat Metheny provides the same amount of recognition with the sound that he produces. The only difference is that Santana and Metheny are working with two completely different genres, yet somehow they both manage to produce the distinct, amazing sounds that they do. Out of all of the songs I have on my iPod, as soon as the guitar starts playing on a Metheny chart, I instantly know what I’m listening to (I tend to throw my iPod on shuffle and see what it spits out at me).

Besides the distinct sound Metheny can produce, he also accomplishes a few more outstanding things. Distinctness isn’t everything. The noise from a dying cat can be considered distinct, but in no way does the awful sound qualify as decent music. Metheny is able to form the most creative solos out of nowhere, while maintaining a sense of rhythm within the band. He successfully manages to act as the rhythm section and metronome of the band, while being the leader and front man of the entire band.

Word hardly imply anything when describing music, unless the reader has a trained background in the field. Therefore I found a couple videos that demonstrate what I mean with Pat Metheny and his group:

This video displays Metheny’s incredible ability to lead his group, while still providing the pulse required to keep the song alive. Not only does it show that, but it shows how amazing of a player he really is:

This one immediately sets a groove with Pat acting as the rhythm section, giving 8^th note clicks on his guitar with a catchy rhythm. This allows the rest of the band to ease into the song, and it gives the keyboardist space to add his intro solos leading up to Metheny’s real entrance at about 3:45. Don’t mind the large hair, if it’s really that bad, just close your eyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn3zIBBmXiU

Hopefully you’ve been able to pick up on the ingenuity of Metheny’s playing, along with his amazing ability with improvisation. If not, then you probably can’t even tell the difference between this and this.