Do you think guitar solos & improvisation will return to mainstream music?

Will guitar improv ever make the mainstream again?

  • Nah, shut up and listen to the lyrics & composition.

    Votes: 7 30.4%
  • Someday the younger kids are gonna play as many notes as Al DiMeola.

    Votes: 16 69.6%

  • Total voters
    23
I reject the premise of the question that it somehow would be good if it was.

Would Kanye's latest hit single be better if it had Josh Smith, Plini, or Emil Werstler playing all over it? To me, no, it would still be insipid love songs about himself.

The great thing about what the internet has done is the "long tail", we can find, and share, what we enjoy. The niches are large enough to support more artists than ever. Musicians who would have long ago given up and gotten day jobs like me (I'm not bitter, nope, not one bit ... but seriously, getting out of the biz when I did was probably really good for me).
 
All that just to say "I can't keep up with kids these days" and that you make bad lunch decisions?:rolleyes:

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OK Grandpa, we'll break out the slowhand records for ya and have a couple of cans of Ensure handy if you get thirsty or lightheaded........

..... and c'mon man, live a little, go get a cheesesteak or something!!:p

A wise man once said, "Too many words leads to misunderstanding and contention."

Too many guitar notes leads to not being able to comprehend the feeling, groove, or story the musician is trying to tell.
 
I sort of skimmed the thread but didn't see this alternate idea thrown out, so here's my take.

Where does the money come from? Live shows. It doesn't come from album sales or streams, it comes from the live performances and merch sales.

Having seen some of what live shows look like nowadays from "mainstream" performers (seeing Coachella headliners, saw Muse recently), these shows are massive and as Billy Corgan put it, need to rival top Broadway performances. That's why top mainstream performers charge $100 for nosebleed seats - you're getting an experience that takes many big rigs and buses to haul from city to city, and 50 road crew to set up every night.

Performances like this leave no room for improvisation. They're extremely scripted moment to moment. Light shows and stage graphics are all synched up to a click track. Especially in pop music, most of the music is pre-recorded. Do we really think that will change any time soon? I really don't. There's too much money in it for it to be any different.
 
i don’t know if the audience necessarily wants a dark stage full of dancers with a giant tv in back, that’s just what you get these days, like it or don’t, and if it takes weeks of development and 50 rigs to make the magic show watchable, maybe the kids just want to hear ed sheeran and matt healey and not a pumped up beyonce/muse spectacle.

I sort of skimmed the thread but didn't see this alternate idea thrown out, so here's my take.

Where does the money come from? Live shows. It doesn't come from album sales or streams, it comes from the live performances and merch sales.

Having seen some of what live shows look like nowadays from "mainstream" performers (seeing Coachella headliners, saw Muse recently), these shows are massive and as Billy Corgan put it, need to rival top Broadway performances. That's why top mainstream performers charge $100 for nosebleed seats - you're getting an experience that takes many big rigs and buses to haul from city to city, and 50 road crew to set up every night.

Performances like this leave no room for improvisation. They're extremely scripted moment to moment. Light shows and stage graphics are all synched up to a click track. Especially in pop music, most of the music is pre-recorded. Do we really think that will change any time soon? I really don't. There's too much money in it for it to be any different.
 
you're getting an experience that takes many big rigs and buses to haul from city to city, and 50 road crew to set up every night.

I hear you man, sadly all the light shows and dance crews are only over fluffed packaging surrounding some very attractive but semi talented performers. To me, those type of performances have become a bad cliche that the music world is living, rivaled only by the Matrix of pre programmed drums and synths that holds the worlds ears hostage.

I really don't. There's too much money in it for it to be any different.

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Personally, I struggle with this in a lot of the projects I get involved in. I come from a very metal background, and while I was never a full-on shredder, there WERE shred elements to my playing, including neo-classical lines. Now that I am doing a lot of work with singer-songwriters, the concept of the "guitar solo" is different. An artist will often want me to play lead on top of the WHOLE song - around the vocal lines, creating counter melodies that support the key and tension of the song.

So, am I soloing? Sometimes there are even spots where I am playing a melodic fill - but it'll be 4 bars at the most.

Then in the music I do with my own song writing partner/vocalist we do have guitar solos, but some songs they feel forced - I even though I WANT them there. As a guitarist I am wondering if every song NEEDS me to showcase my "skills". Again, I struggle because I grew up in the era OF the guitar solo - EVERY song had one. The approach/attitude we tend to take is "Will the solo support/create tension that created to help propel the vibe of the song?" There have been a couple of times we've cut a track, gotten it completely done, listened to it and realized the solo took away from the song. It was a distraction to what we were trying to accomplish with the song.

In my "solo" music, anymore, I am doing more with experimenting with textures and utilizing the piano as the focal instrument. Surprisingly, it looks like my first solo album (5 of 8 songs done) is going to have almost NO guitar at all. So far one track has a clean guitar arpeggiating the chords under the melody. Have I become bored of the guitar? Maybe. I do know that as a writer I don't find my skill level in a place that pushes my creativity anymore. It might be time for lessons again, but I am finding challenge and fulfillment in writing with other instruments, so maybe the guitar has taken the backseat.

But back to solos in the mainstream. I think music goes in cycles. To me, it feels that we are in a 'modern disco' phase. So, following that logic, up next is the return of hard rock/pop metal. There are already groups on the fringe of the mainstream, and you have your modern 'monolith' bands like Metallica, etc - so it's not like things have totally died. It'll come back around. Unfortunately what seems to be missing in guitar oriented music these days is playing with "taste". Bodia gave a ton of great shred examples that are current - and yeah, that's out there, but it's not gonna appeal to a "pop" fan...and while we may not want to accept it, pop fans determine what it "mainstream".
 
i think your singer has the right idea — constant soloing over he whole song, like a proper lead guitarist. sounds like a great blueprint.

on the flip, put your detracting solos in separate tracks like a hip hop skit, then put out a solo compilation when you have 90 minutes of them.
 
I have to admit, I've never been impressed by what I've heard from her before. Not that it was bad, just that it wasn't anything like that! That was pretty cool. I didn't know she could play like that.
 
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