As a guitar player who wants to kick ass it is often the norm that one has to spend time watching, learning, and stealing from players that are collectively thought of as ‘great’, ‘bad-ass’, or awesome. For me it included a journey of taking lessons in a variety of styles. My first foray was in classical guitar. I took lessons from someone who was taught by Segovia. Segovia is sometimes thought of as one of the greatest classical guitarists of all time.
The great thing about that was the discipline. The first thing Todd said to me was, “I don’t want to teach if you don’t want to learn.” Powerful words that struck me. From that moment on I was practicing. Practice, practice, practice. I had a schedule that was upwards of 8 hours plus a day of practicing. Combine that with an ability of being good with hands and ears and it amounts to getting good fast. As “they” say good old fashioned hard work.
In my quest to be as good as I can be I tend to dig around for who the great guitar players are, at least when I was learning. Now I tend to dig around for great musicians period. Do we ever stop learning? Probably not, but the focus sometimes shifts. Anyway, some of my favs are standard to everyone, Hendrix, Page, Satriani, Howe, Lynch, Moorse, many more, and Vai. I delved head deep in to Vai because I respect Zappa. I read old articles on Zappa that praised Vai, so I got his records, some of his lessons from old guitar magazines and even the movie Crossroads. No, not the Britney Spears disaster. An older movie called Crossroads. I’ve mentioned it on the blog before.
So while I’m taking a break, from a long mix of a song yesterday, today at the beach, enjoy this carefully planned out duel between the devil’s guitar player – played by Steve Vai. And Ry Cooder who is playing the parts for Ralph M. This is known as a Head Cutting thing between guitar players. Should you ever sell your soul to the Devil, you best be a damn good guitar player. Otherwise you’re in for a long ride.