Girl Power

[gfred611]

Well now boys and girls..glad to see everyone is playing nice :-)

 

I think Lee pretty much hit the nail on the head. As a 40 something female guitarist, I have always been conflicted about going the more established (i.e. stable) "singer-songwriter-guitarist" route, or the non-classical instrumentalist route. I remember being especially pissed by the fact that a guy played all the solos on Wynonna's version of "Girls With Guitars"!!! Argh!!!!

 

I have mostly had that "if you can't beat em, join em" attitude and have been doing the singer route, but I still secretly long to be, or want to see a female Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, or Eddie Van Halen. I love Jen Batten's playing and "shredder" rock image, but I really don't want to play hard and fast rock.

 

I guess the REAL question is what does it mean to shred and is rock the only music to shred to?

 

I personally don't think that the Vais, Satrianis, Van Halens and Johnsons of the guitar

world are that way because they are men...they have nurtured their talent, paid their dues and put in the time with their instruments in order to achieve that level of greatness.

 

I believe it would be the same for anyone willing to do that.

 

Gwen

[fantasticsound]

Originally posted by LPCustom77:

...Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that males generally tend to like hardware more than females do. I know two women who play guitar and they are more interested in what they can get out of a guitar than the guitar itself.

 

The guys I know (including me) are just as interested in the axe as they are in what they can get out of it. Neither of the female players I know can even tell you what kind of pickups their guitars have in them. But both of them play very well. In other words the women seem to be more interested in their expression and the men have a greater interest in the technical aspects as well as their expression...

I think there's a lot of merit to this point, though Lee Flier certainly stands as a notable exception to the rule.

 

I think another point in the same direction is that many prominent female guitarists use the guitar as a vehicle for their songwriting moreso than a vehicle for virtuoso performance, and shredding is the ultimate "macho" musical sport. It's hardly surprising to me that few females are into shredding compared to males. But to say that people like Bonnie Raitt, Nancy Wilson, Muriel Anderson or Lauren Ellis don't have a sonic voice, a la EVH or SRV, is silly. They just don't put all their eggs in the basket of their speed at playing guitar.

[Wewus432]

Originally posted by ellwood:

Originally posted by Wewus432:

The only I want to say here ELLWOOD, is your avatar is so big that it's screwing up the page size. You need to reduce that to about one third that size, or find something else.

Ya I know ..I had problem with it this morning and changed servers..it won't reduce in size for some reason...I will quit posting untill I can repair it somehow..thanks for the heads up....Lee

Uh I'm not Lee, I'm Steve, thanks for fixing that. I hate most shredders anyway, male or female. It's all about the music.

[PickPunk]

I hate to side track this even more, but to kind of expand on what LPCustom77 was saying about why more men are drawn to guitar playing...there was an interesting discussion about this on the bass forum (i think it was the bass forum anyway) a while back about how straight men are generally more attracted to guitar playing because of the guitars higher pitched more "womanly voice" and straight women are more attracted to bass because of its deeper more "manly voice". But then by that logic there would be alot more female bassists then there are.

 

I had sort of a side thought about that when i saw this topic, maybe we dont see as many female shredders because men are generally more acceptant of masturbation then women...and shredding is basically musical masturbation .

 

peace

[Dr. Ellwood]

Originally posted by fantasticsound:

Originally posted by LPCustom77:

...Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that males generally tend to like hardware more than females do. I know two women who play guitar and they are more interested in what they can get out of a guitar than the guitar itself.

 

The guys I know (including me) are just as interested in the axe as they are in what they can get out of it. Neither of the female players I know can even tell you what kind of pickups their guitars have in them. But both of them play very well. In other words the women seem to be more interested in their expression and the men have a greater interest in the technical aspects as well as their expression...

I think there's a lot of merit to this point, though Lee Flier certainly stands as a notable exception to the rule.

 

I think another point in the same direction is that many prominent female guitarists use the guitar as a vehicle for their songwriting moreso than a vehicle for virtuoso performance, and shredding is the ultimate "macho" musical sport. It's hardly surprising to me that few females are into shredding compared to males. But to say that people like Bonnie Raitt, Nancy Wilson, Muriel Anderson or Lauren Ellis don't have a sonic voice, a la EVH or SRV, is silly. They just don't put all their eggs in the basket of their speed at playing guitar.

Ok some good points I think. But lets apply some of these ideas to blues players. Do women blues players play with more emotion and expression than a male blues player? Does an interest in the mechanics of your instrument cause a male player to play colder less expressive method than a woman? On another point here mentioned.. I was not aware that male guitar players who write songs and are very technically proficient on their instruments where somehow less creative than women writers who use guitar to write songs? Think of the modern young country players/writers on the scene now. I guess I do not understand the Eggs in one basket comment? I think that if you have the song writing skills with the advanced technical guitar playing skills you should certainly combine these atributes in one marketable basket.

[Billster]

Originally posted by fantasticsound:

I think another point in the same direction is that many prominent female guitarists use the guitar as a vehicle for their songwriting moreso than a vehicle for virtuoso performance, and shredding is the ultimate "macho" musical sport. It's hardly surprising to me that few females are into shredding compared to males. But to say that people like Bonnie Raitt, Nancy Wilson, Muriel Anderson or Lauren Ellis don't have a sonic voice, a la EVH or SRV, is silly. They just don't put all their eggs in the basket of their speed at playing guitar.

Originally posted by ellwood:

Ok some good points I think. But lets apply some of these ideas to blues players. Do women blues players play with more emotion and expression than a male blues player? Does an interest in the mechanics of your instrument cause a male player to play colder less expressive method than a woman? On another point here mentioned.. I was not aware that male guitar players who write songs and are very technically proficient on their instruments where somehow less creative than women writers who use guitar to write songs? Think of the modern young country players/writers on the scene now. I guess I do not understand the Eggs in one basket comment? I think that if you have the song writing skills with the advanced technical guitar playing skills you should certainly combine these atributes in one marketable basket.

I'll step in for Neil and say that he used bad examples of the eggs in one basket comment. Eddie Van Halen certainly has outstanding technique on the instrument, and has also written some great songs. BUUUUUUT, Eddie is pretty unique, and it has nothing to do with his gender.

 

Look at somebody like Ritchie Blackmore, who is an outstanding soloist, but his songwriting is very limited. Dig into his repertoire and compare stuff attributed solely to him against stuff that he co-wrote with Roger Glover.

 

Jeff Beck has written very few real solid songs, but given a good vehicle written by another individual, Jeff's technique and expressiveness shine brightest.

 

On the other side of the coin, Pete Townshend and Keith Richards have both written books of great songs, but no one considers them in the same league as improvisers and soloists like Beck and Blackmore. Good, but not iconic.

 

And to step beyond guitar, Miles Davis re-defined contemporary jazz 4-5 times in his life, but most folks consider his instrumental technique to be not as crisp as Wynton Marsalis. Maynard Ferguson is renowned for his ability to play very high notes and remain in tune (quite a technical trick), but did he create Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, and Bitches Brew, never mind Miles' great quintets of the sixties and his work on Tutu?

 

So possessing outstanding instrumental technique and writing ability is a very rare combination, period.

[fantasticsound]

I should have clarified that, Billster. I absolutely think of EVH and SRV as songwriters who play well, not players who write well.

 

I was comparing only the notion that the non-shredder, technically proficient females mentioned absolutely have a recognizable sonic personality a la EVH and SRV.

 

But I agree, being a fantastic guitar player who can write really good songs is rarer in rock than most people realize. I know he's not a shredder, but take Andy Summers for example. As a member of The Police, his ideas and style complemented Sting's bass playing and pop sensibilities when writing songs. Have any of you heard his first solo album after the Police? Don't bother paying anything for it to hear what I'm talking about. It's some of the worst dreck ever, IMO. Without Sting steering the melodies, Andy's writing and playing style is repetitive.. and redundant.. and uninteresting.

 

Shredders, in general, have greatly disappointed me by the speed at which they play completely boring music. It doesn't get any better at high speed. After a passing interest in several Vinnie Moore tunes from his first album, I completely lost interest. I gave him a second chance with the next album. Yeech! More of the same. Then, Guitar For The Practicing Musician mag began releasing CD's of their contributors. Vinnie was included on the first, which I own. The tune he wrote (IIRC from the liner notes, it was basically on the spot) was relatively simple but interesting. Best thing I ever heard from him.

 

My bad experience of VM was repeated with Tony MacAlpine, Frank (Sweep-picking guru) Gambale and a host of others in the late '80's. Al DiMeola was a bit more engaging, but I found myself bored with his music enough that I stopped buying it after Passion, Grace, and Fire with Paco DeLucia and John McLaughlin.

 

I don't see much creativity there, personally. I see technical virtuosity, but not much to write home about, creatively.

 

And lest you think I don't appreciate technical virtue in music, I do like a small amount of that music, ELP has created wonderful, technical music with passion, IMO, and I adore Nora Jones' half sister, Ravi Shankar's daughter on sitar. Watch the first half of the Concert For George dvd and be amazed at her virtuosity and passion.