'best' guitar player (from a keyboardist perspective)

[Al Quinn]

Tommy Emmanuel is the best acoustic guitarist I’ve ever heard (and seen live). Absolutely amazing! Listening to him from a pianist’s perspective, I’m blown away by his ability to play multiple independent layers so flawlessly live on a six string.

 

For Jazz George Benson kills me. The guy always sounds amazing. Such a soulful, sensitive, and exciting player.

 

For Rock Stevie Ray Vaughan is probably my favorite. His passion and energy are so powerful.

[jazzpiano88]

I think my favorite is Pat Metheny.

[allan_evett]

2 hours ago, Steve Nathan said:

Well, I'm a keyboardist, and from my perspective, Duke is still one of my all time favorites.

 

Thanks for that, Steve!  Sweet, soulful mastery...Going to listen to more of Duke's playing.

 

I've enjoyed listening to Tommy Emmanuel for years, along with many of the others mentioned. One of my favorites is G.E. Smith. First saw him on tour with Hall & Oates in 1985.  In additional to Darryl Hall's 2-keyboard rig - plus another Prophet-5 across the stage - there were apparently 20+ keyboards/sound modules in an offstage, extensive MIDI rig  - covered by an additional keyboardist. Even with all that, G.E. Smith's guitar work blended beautifully.  The guy is a highly-skilled player who knows what to play, and when. 

[rogs]

I'm a little surprised to see that  - so far anyway! - Joe Pass hasn't had a mention....

I was lucky enough to see him perform live  - with Oscar Peterson -  here in the UK, back in the '70s.

If only could even think like that- yet alone be able to play it!.... 

 

[Outkaster]

Terry Kath

[DaveMcM]

14 hours ago, marino said:

There's no "best" of course, but if forced to pick one, Allan Holdsworth could be considered the main title contender, from anybody's perspective. An obvious choice you might say, but that's what my ears are telling me.  

 

With the occasion, I would also like to signal a young kid from Sicily that has definitely caught my attention lately. His name is Matteo Mancuso, and he plays electric guitar with his fingers, no plectrum. He started about 5 years ago doing fresh arrangements of fusion tunes, and now he's experimenting with different styles and approaches. He's still growing and working on his first album, but he's already been praised by Al DiMeola, Steve Vai and other heavyweights.

 

 

A friend recently made me aware of Matteo Mancuso. Yeah, he is really something. It's so cool to see players come up with unconventional techniques. I saw Stanley Jordan doing a solo concert years ago, and at one point he was playing arpeggios with his left hand on a stand-mounted Casio MIDI guitar and soloing with his right hand on his strapped-on guitar. Pretty cool.

[HSS]

Here's a shout out to the ladies.  Here's one of my favorite acoustic folk / bluegrass players and vocalists, Molly Tuttle.  IMO her three solos at ~25", 1'05", and ~2' 05" are top shelf.

 

 

[Stokely]

Lots and lots of good ones, as I get older I appreciate melodic and subtle stuff over the mind-blowing technical chops (for any instrument including drums).  Some of the best parts are the ones you hum along to without realizing or thinking about how hard or how easy they might have been to play, they are just "the song".

That said, I think the most technically amazing performance I've ever seen is by this teenage girl covering a Steve Vai song.  She plays with emotion and feel to go with simply unbelievable chops--she hadn't been alive long enough to practice enough to get this good, she's a prodigy (who apparently dropped out of public playing unfortunately).
The song builds and builds, some of the stuff she is doing is unreal. I know Vai did it first, but still!
 

 

[Mills Dude]

I'd have to put Allan Holdsworth at the top of the pyramid. His approach to the guitar was so unique, sure he could shred but he could do so much more.  I was always amazed by the amount of expression he could squeeze out of a single note.  Then there's his chordal approach by plucking and the chord shapes he was able to make along with an unorthodox approach to harmony. He was famously unable to read, not sure how true that is but it was part of the lore of him eschewing traditions.

 

I vividly remember the first time seeing him live, simply gobsmacked watching him pluck those chords on 'Shallow Sea'. The guitar frustrated him, so he went full bore with the ill fated Synthaxe for a bunch of years until it became untenable. I wasn't a big fan of the Synthaxe but he claimed it allowed him to express himself in a better way. There are and have been imitators but he was the pioneer. Bill Connors did a few records, which I think are great, where he basically tried to sound just like Holdsworth.

 

Other than him, so many great guitarists I could listen to all day -- Metheny, Gilmour, Scofield, Mike Stern, Scott Henderson

[Morrissey]

That's quite a contraption she's mounted to the guitar to film her picking hand.

 

25 minutes ago, HSS said:

Here's a shout out to the ladies.  Here's one of my favorite acoustic folk / bluegrass players and vocalists, Molly Tuttle.  IMO her three solos at ~25", 1'05", and ~2' 05" are top shelf.

 

 

 

[HSS]

FWIW...  Django Reinhardt was undoubtedly the most dapper guitarist with the best pencil thin mustache ever.  

 

https://youtu.be/gdZXAq2V0Lg

[KuruPrionz]

From a keyboardists perspective, I would nominate Bob Casale, the guitarist for DEVO. 

Keyboard oriented band. I thought their drums were all electronic until I saw them on the Whip It tour. Entire band was tight, clean and had it going on. 

Yes, they brought the crazy. 

Bob passed on in 2014, so it goes. 

[hrestov]

Trey Anastasio

[Morrissey]

Ooooh... elaborate please.  I'm a big jam band fan but someone like Trey didn't occur to me in this context.  Maybe the parameters of this thread aren't super well-defined but insofar as the topic is, while sitting in the keyboard seat, which guitar player do you want on stage with you, I'm not sure any of the jamband heavyweights -- Trey, Jerry Garcia, etc., would be my first choice.  As an audience member, I definitely love these guys but -- controversial take(?) -- as a keyboard player I'm not so sure they are at the top of my list compared to other guitarists named in this thread.  It may be that guitar styles in other genres appeal to me as more complementary to the keys.    

 

45 minutes ago, hrestov said:

Trey Anastasio

 

[Shamanzarek]

James Taylor has what he calls a pianistic approach on guitar. He fingerpicks playing some chords with a reverse fingering from what most guitarists typically use. He will finger an A chord shape with his first finger on second fret C# of the B string, second finger on second fret A of the G string, and third finger on second fret E of the D string. He often hammers onto the C# or lets it off briefly. He also plays E chords backwards and on D chords puts his first finger on F# often doing a hammer on. Of course he sometimes uses a capo so an A chord shape might sound as a C chord and so on. Here is a tutorial for "Fire and Rain" which I've studied for a year or so. At first the reverse chords were very difficult but now I've pretty well got the hang of it and practice this song every time I sit down with the guitar.

 

[cphollis]

For me, it would be Steve Morse when Dixie Dregs were at their prime.  They were coming through Santa Cruz on a regular basis, and I would just stand there all night with my mouth open.  Great compositional skills as well.

[hrestov]

1 hour ago, Morrissey said:

Ooooh... elaborate please.  I'm a big jam band fan but someone like Trey didn't occur to me in this context.  Maybe the parameters of this thread aren't super well-defined but insofar as the topic is, while sitting in the keyboard seat, which guitar player do you want on stage with you, I'm not sure any of the jamband heavyweights -- Trey, Jerry Garcia, etc., would be my first choice.  As an audience member, I definitely love these guys but -- controversial take(?) -- as a keyboard player I'm not so sure they are at the top of my list compared to other guitarists named in this thread.  It may be that guitar styles in other genres appeal to me as more complementary to the keys.    

 

 

Most guitar rock player play alone, Trey Anastasio play togheter the other musicians. It’s not common in a rock context. As a keyboard player I want always interplay, not a flat accompainment to a solo. 

 

I was talking about rock context, in the contrary in a jazz context there is obviously much more interplay. But I don’t like too much the sound of guitar in jazz context. And its difficoult to play with piano togheter. Only hammond have a good feeling with guitars. 

 

 

[Sam Mullins]

acoustic: Willie Porter

rock: Nels Cline

jazz: Julian Lage

 

https://youtu.be/W5zZJ3wuYt0

[stoken6]

11 hours ago, hrestov said:

And its difficoult to play with piano togheter. Only hammond have a good feeling with guitars

Agreed. I've had some success with Rhodes+guitar - provided the material lends itself to the Rhodes timbre.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[zukskywalker]

I’ve got some work to do to catch up on all these great guitar players. Thanks. I too was going to mention Stanley Jordan. Caught his show at Blues Alley and it was incredible. You could tell that the majority of guys in the club that night were guitarists that got a little overconfident when Stanley started his show humbly. And being a one man act his meter was his alone and it kept on changing which was a bit troubling at first but when he fell into his groove it was otherworldly and the audience guitarists began to slump and squirm. Stanley’s hammer style of playing kicked in and he’s  a multi-instrumentalist on one instrument.Simply amazing,

but then there’s that other guitar that was mounted on a mic stand on the other side of the stage. Halfway through the show Stanley casually walks over to the second guitar and mid song he reaches over and starts playing that guitar at the same time! Utterly unbelievable and the music was almost unfathomable. All of those judgmental guitarists were flattened and I had to just laugh as Stanley ripped through Eleanor Rigby on Two guitars at once.(playing 4 parts by himself)

[Steve Nathan]

I suspect no one else would ever post this here, but John Huey is technically playing a (Steel) guitar so I'm posting it.  This is what great Country music sounds like. Dawn Sear's beautifully tasteful vocal and John Heuy's incredible solo and a band of players that know how to support a song without showing off.  I love this performance.  We lost two giants when we lost Dawn and John.

 

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Steve Nathan said:

I suspect no one else would ever post this here, but John Huey is technically playing a (Steel) guitar so I'm posting it.  This is what great Country music sounds like. Dawn Sear's beautifully tasteful vocal and John Heuy's incredible solo and a band of players that know how to support a song without showing off.  I love this performance.  We lost two giants when we lost Dawn and John.

 

Thanks for sharing Steve, that was amazing. Somehow, this is the first time I've heard Dawn or John, they are both incredible. 

I'm from Fresno, CA (100 miles north of Bakersfield) and I've heard lots of "smack talk" about country music but you won't find a better band or better players than the ones in the video you posted. You know this but that's a pedal steel guitar, more or less a portable orchestra and by far one of the most intricate, expressive and difficult instruments to play. John is brilliant, that was beautiful - all of it. 💖

[The Real MC]

I am in the wrong forum.  I should be discussing best keyboard players in the Guitar forum.

[KuruPrionz]

2 minutes ago, The Real MC said:

I am in the wrong forum.  I should be discussing best keyboard players in the Guitar forum.

Guitar players like keyboard players who play guitar!!! 😇

Kidding, this is a good thread. In the end, it's not the instrument, it's the player. That gets forgotten too often. 

[NewImprov]

I don't believe in there being "best" musicians on any instrument or in any genre, but I have my favorites. The guitarists I tend to gravitate towards are the ones that think like sound designers, that are using timbre along with note and rhythm choices to create expression. So my favorites are, in no particular order: David Torn, Terje Rypdal, Eyvind Aarset, Robert Fripp, Nels Cline, Allen Holdsworth, Bill Frisell, etc.

[Ed A.]

Definitely Jeff Beck.

 

 

[Redknife]

So many come to mind and many greats mentioned. Scofield is the one I find myself saying “wow this song would be awesome if Scofield were playing”. I think not mentioned yet would be Al Di Meola. David Gilmour, Holdsworth, Beck, Steve Vai particularly with Zappa, and John Petrucci. All have integrated well with keyboard players and I can do deep dives on any of their libraries.

[Piktor]

On 12/7/2022 at 8:29 AM, Mills Dude said:

I'd have to put Allan Holdsworth at the top of the pyramid….

The guitar frustrated him, so he went full bore with the ill fated Synthaxe for a bunch of years until it became untenable. I wasn't a big fan of the Synthaxe but he claimed it allowed him to express himself in a better way.

I actually like the way that Holdsworth played synthesizer with the Synthaxe and some of his patches. Maybe not some of the dated fm stuff so much. For example, Distance vs. Desire form the Sand album is gorgeous. I believe that he used a breath controller too. 
 

When I first saw the thread, I must have misunderstood the question. I thought that the op was asking what we considered to be the ideal characteristics of a guitar player that we would want to play with. I love and admire many guitar players for different genres and different reasons, but that does not mean that I would necessarily want to play with all of them. I’ll leave that for some other thread, I guess. 

 

Just to add some of my favourite slide players to our list: Derek Trucks, Sonny Landreth, Joey Landreth, Ariel Posen, Rye Cooder, Jerry Douglas (dobro)….

To the degree that I play guitar, I seem to be drawn to the beauty of the expression of slide on string, especially when the player makes it sound like singing to me. 

 

[Shamanzarek]

Paul Simon's acoustic fingerpicking has such a full sound with a lot going on. In the 60s he and Garfunkel rarely had backing musicians and the guitar was the only instrument on stage. Paul was known for the instrumental "Anji" which gave him a chance to show off.

 

[Tusker]

I'd like to add one of my favorites, Danny Gatton. A great example of his phrasing is Harlem Nocturne.