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Weird guitarist technique?


KuruPrionz

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In person, what is the weirdest guitarist technique you have ever seen?

 

I saw a guitarist at an open mic night playing impressive (and "normal sounding") fingerstyle steel string guitar.

If you had only heard him you might not have any clue that something was very different.

 

He had a guitar that was strung right-handed. He was playing left handed.

So his thumb was doing what fingers would usually do and his fingers were doing what a thumb would usually do.

He was very smooth and played familiar pieces.

 

I spoke with him afterwards since I am left handed and play right handed. I am always curious about unusual dexterity.

It turns out he was right handed!!!! He just started that way and saw no reason to change.

 

What'cha got?

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Reeves Gabrels playing guitar with a vibrating dildo in Tin Machine.

 

I saw Tin Machine live, but don't recall the dildo? Maybe not at the D.C. show.

 

I recall Trey Gunn laying one of his Warr Touch Guitars flat on its back, and playing it somewhat like a Hammer Dulcimer, by tapping at the strings.

 

I've also seen Jonsi from Sigur Ros using a bow on his DIY Les Paul, but honestly, his technique consists largely of sawing away at the Guitar strings. Fun, but not especially innovative, nor particularly weird.

 

"Monsters are real, and Ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." Stephen King

 

http://www.novparolo.com

 

https://thewinstonpsmithproject.bandcamp.com

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I've also seen Jonsi from Sigur Ros using a bow on his DIY Les Paul, but honestly, his technique consists largely of sawing away at the Guitar strings. Fun, but not especially innovative, nor particularly weird.

 

An idea I'm betting he got from Page, who used it prominently in the instrumental section of Dazed & Confused.

 

In his pre-Wilco days, Nels Cline used a number of implements & preparations, most notably various sizes of egg whisks.

 

An old bandmate of mine once, very memorably, took a power grinder to his Squier Strat during a set. The spray of sparks is an image indelibly burned into my mind.

 

Scott Fraser
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We are off to a good start!

 

Anybody see Jeff Healey live? I didn't but I did catch his first television appearance. Was washing dishes with the TV on and I heard guitar.

I had to go see who it was and there was Jeff, sitting in a chair, pummeling his Squire Strat from above with both hands and just blazing away.Seems his left thumb was his primary lick/riff executor. Amazing.

 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Think we saw him opening for the Allman Bros. some time back. His overhand technique looked like a variation on a Lap Steel technique.

"Monsters are real, and Ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." Stephen King

 

http://www.novparolo.com

 

https://thewinstonpsmithproject.bandcamp.com

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Think we saw him opening for the Allman Bros. some time back. His overhand technique looked like a variation on a Lap Steel technique.

 

I would love to have seen Jeff Healey!!!

Thanks for sharing. There are many guitarists who play overhanded like that but few who could rip out licks with their thumb the way Jeff did.

 

 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Slightly beside the point, but the show I wish I'd seen, for weird technique to end all weird techniques . . .

 

I'd read about Elliot Sharp performing a show some years, really some decades, back, in NYC (Knitting Factory, perhaps?), where he had gathered a number of Samples of his own Guitar playing in a Mac, processed and arranged them using MAX software, and then played them with a mouse. A concert of Experimental Guitar Music, by a premier Avant-Guitarist, with the Guitar itself physically absent: just brilliant.

"Monsters are real, and Ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." Stephen King

 

http://www.novparolo.com

 

https://thewinstonpsmithproject.bandcamp.com

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