Jimi Hendrix

If you guys like Hendrix's "groovy stuff" buy Morning Symphony Ideas. It's a post-humous Hendrix album compiled of some of his jams. Check it out here- http://www.daggerrecords.com/disc3.html It has samples and such, and you can order it online. Trust me, it's worth it. The version of "Room Full of Mirrors" is amazing. "Keep On Grooving" and "Jungle". I'm not gonna list it all, but RFoM and KoG are the highlights.

He wrote songs about mermaids and flying saucers AND he played with his teeth? WHOOO!

Feel the influence flow down through the generations!!!

For one, I would rather listen to Clapton and Brownie "flounder" through a set than listen to some of today's stuff any time :lol: Those guys...Clapton, Allman, Hendrix...there will never be anyone like them again. It's about all I listen to, and (my my hey hey) it is here to stay.

Hendrix never did it for me.

I've always thought that Beck and Page and Clapton and a few other guys were just better.

Now, don't get me wrong, a few of his songs really were fantastic works of art, but I can't sit and listen to Hendrix for hours at a time, whereas I can pull up Jeff Beck on my iPod and just hit play and 3 hours later still be grooving.

Now, that said, I completely understand why people think so highly of Jimi. As a performer he was simply amazing. He was utterly captivating on stage. He was a master of controling and using feedback, and there have been few people in history who could work a whammy bar like he could.

He may not have had great "technique" by book standards, but he was clearly a masterful musician who developed his own techniques which he had down cold. So when someone says that Satriani is a better "technical" player than Henddrix, I think that "technique" in that perspective is being looked at incorrectly.

Satriani is really really fantastic at specific things which happen to also be things deemed to be worthy of being taught as proper technique. But Hendrix was also really really fantastic at specific things . . . they just happen to be things than so few other people have figured out that it's not taught that way.

He (Hendrix) is almost always playing (and singing) off-key (one of the reasons I have a hard time listening to him). But he does make it work musically, and he uses that to maximum advantage. It gives his music a down-to-earth feel to it . . . where you sense that the notes are not what's important, but rather the other aspects of his playing that most people toss into the vague category of "emotion" . . .dynamic control, tonal control, vibrato, slides, etc.

To say he's not technical is to restrict technique far to much. Being able to use a whammy bar to achieve a desired effect is a technique.

So who's better? It depends on what you like. Satriani, Hendrdix, and Yngwie all reside in the palace of the guitar gods. If you like the classical shredder style, then Yngwie is your man. If you dig the bluesier/jazzier shredder than it's Joe. If your cup of tea is the blues rock world, then it's Jimi. But at that point what's being said is not a comment about the people being named, but about the listener.

i loved hendrix back in the day, i'n his time, he was the best, in his time, but to sit there and say that he is a better guitarist than malmsteen, vai
or satch, is absurd. he had nowhere near the knowledge of guitar as satch, vai or malmsteen, thats why you never hear the word "virtuoso"
when the name hendrix is mentioned and the other three are wold famous virtuoso's, and by todays standards , hendrix isn't.

Gotta disagree, there, Rocker - although Jimi wasn't my cuppa tea, virtuoso is a word that can DEFINITELY be used to describe him.....

Satriani, Vai, Malmsteen.....they may be great guitarists, but they'll NEVER come close to having the same kind of influence Hendrix had. He didn't just influence a whole generation, he changed the way EVERYBODY thought about guitar....he explored the boundaries, stepped over them, and created a whole new way of looking at/listeningto the guitar....

Satriani, Vai, Malmsteen.....great guitarists, maybe, but they'll NEVER have the same influence that Jimi had.....he was a one-off, totally unique guitarist - look at people like Kevin (plus all the numbers!) - Hendrix is his hero, hell, Kevin's mum and dad were probably only just out of nappies (Diapers) at the time of Woodstock.....

I'm not his biggest fan, but I can see how far-reaching his influence was....and believe me, that influence will last as long as people carve wood into double-cutouts and throw electromagnetic coils into them.....

Love him, loathe him, or somewhere inbetween - you can NOT deny the influence Jimi had on a whole generation, and 40 years on, people are still listening - he must have had somthing!

:D :D :D

Vic

^^Good point. (My mom was 11 in 1967 and my dad was 13 in 1967 if you wanna get even more specific, heh).

The thing is. Hendrix's legend will withstand the test of time. The other guys on the other hand, I doubt it. Hell, even your idol (Paige) will be a legend for a long time since Led Zeppelin is one of the greatest bands of all time.

Guys like Mozart, Beethoven, Hendrix, Elvis, Lennon will always withstand the test of time, forever and ever.

And the reason they'll stand the test of time? Simple - the music.

Hendrix, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Stones - they'll still be household names 40 years from now. They made timeless music - it appeals to kids now, 40-45 years after it was made. They were innovative - they were of the time, yet beyond the time - they all took music a step further along the road.

Creativity - that's the key. Those artists - and bands - along with people like Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, Clapton and Page were innovators. And if they weren't creating any new genres, they were pushing back the boundaries of the old music....

40 years from now, Malmstein, Vai, Satriani and the rest of the shredders - brilliant though they may be - will be just a footnote in Rock'n'roll history.....

I'll be 90 then, and arthritis and rheumatism aside, I hope to be the oldest rocker in the nursing home....get bck to me in 40 years time, and I'll say "I TOLD YOU SO!"

:D :D :D

Vic

vic,

were not talking about influence's, we are talking about ability, sure hendrix, page and clapton are huge influene's, and god knows i
love jimmy page, but he is not in satriani, vai or malmsteen's league, seriously, i mean., i know everybody likes to bash shredders, but
can anybody sit there and tell me that playing like vai and malmsteen is easy? and please don't use the " i play with feeling" cop out.
all i'm trying to say is people should not bash what they can't do, and if you ask the top players in the world, who the best pure guitar player is out
of those four, i'll bet you wont hear hendix very often.

Wait...PURE guitar player? Hendrix. He's probably as pure as it gets.

Speed? Well prob one of your guys.

But speed does not make great music. It can, I mean, Hendrix was fast during his time. Clapton was 'fast' until Hendrix came around. But playing a scale faster than a speed of light doesn't make you better than anyone, it just makes you faster.

See here-

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3vlAPYdv5e8

Vai and Malmsteen completley butcher this song. Satriani on the other hand is amazing here. And as an aside I'll say Vai's voice sounds really great here.

kev,

man, i think its great that you have a love and respect for jimi, god knows he has earned it and deseres it, but guitar playing has become
like a science now, its not fair to compare the greats from yesteryear to the ace's of today, they can't hang, they didn't have what we have today 8)

kev,

man, i think its great that you have a love and respect for jimi, god knows he has earned it and deseres it, but guitar playing has become
like a science now, its not fair to compare the greats from yesteryear to the ace's of today, they can't hang, they didn't have what we have today 8)
But that's what we're doing.

Guitar has become a science in a way, that's true. But there are still things out there we can 'master.' What happens when Roger Mayer (the man that created the fuzz for Jimi and the octave pedal) creates that effect for 'the #1 guitarist in the world' and that man masters it, creates something new and people dig it? Or if someone just comes up with that amazing riff. Besides, can music theory really solve everything? Sure it can teach you a whole lot. But at the same time, it doesn't teach you that incredible riff...or that incredible tune you hear in your head. Theory can't teach you that.

You could make a point that guitar has become too much of a science, and less of a spiritual thing. Just play what you feel. Right?

kev,

man, i think its great that you have a love and respect for jimi, god knows he has earned it and deseres it, but guitar playing has become
like a science now, its not fair to compare the greats from yesteryear to the ace's of today, they can't hang, they didn't have what we have today 8)

BS.

Plenty of guitarists today put on records of guys of yesteryear and sit in awe. Even conservatory trained guitarists do this.

I completely missed that in his post. Funny how times are just recycled. Hendrix used to sit in his flat and listen to Mozart and Beethoven to learn. Now people do with Jimi, Clapton, Pink Floyd, Sabbath.

Yea, sorry. But that's completely wrong. You bring the 100 best guitar players in the world. And if you gave them some pill that took away all their bias, or their humbleness that they may have, I guarentee most of them would admit that the pioneers of the 60s and 70s are the best there were, OR they'd admit 'without them, I wouldn't be playing this style of music. There's no way."

Whether you want to talk about technical skill or innovation, sorry...but it's connected. It's tough to seperate the two.

kev,

i don't see how you call that butchering, if thats butchering i would like to be the bloodiest butcher in town

kp,

really? i can think of one guitar player from back in the day that makes me say, " how did he do that" and thats jeff beck