guitvai1 said:
Wow, great site! Lot's of licks to learn and practice. By the way his playing was better than average. Even if it had of been Vai or Malmsteen playing the licks some joker would say they weren't that good.
If you cant tell the difference between this guys playing and Vai, there is no point in arguing. By the way, there are a ton guitar players that can play Yngwies songs, and there are surely quite a few that can play some or most of steve stuff.
What makes Steve special is his talent as a musician, and the fact that he acvhieved a master piece more than 15 years ago with PAW. And what makes yngwie so special was that at the moment Rising Force was released (more than 20 years ago) he was out of this earth.
There were a bulk of great guitar players that came after Malmsteen/Satch/Vai, that were amazing, but they could never reach their level of popular recognition mainly because they were either just late in the shred era.
Want some examples besides Shawn Lane and Rusty Cooley): Blues Saraceno, MC Alpine, Jason Becker, Brett Garsed (i think thats his name), Greg Howe, Steve Stevens, Vinnie Moore, Richie Kotzen, Michael Lee Firkins, Mattias Eklundh..... the list can go on forever. This guys barely make it in time to enjoy some succes (well, Bret Garsed and Mattias Eklundh are more recent) and some of them have way more chops and musical talent than malmsteen or satch. You may say that Jason Becker and Shawn Lane never really got the chance, but there were and are many more.
Some of them, to my personal tastes, just excell in the "virtuosity dept" like Rusty Cooley or Richie Kotzen, but the others are also very acomplished composers, or devolped a unique style of playing.
So when a guy has a pretty good pick technique, average tapping and legato chops, and poor sweep picking, his is just your average "good" guitar player. But as I said its great that he did what he did. I think the site is really cool and worth the while.
Im aware that its very hard for novice or someone on an intermediate level to be able to tell the difference between guys such as Greg Howe, Alan Holsworth and Shawn Lane but there is a difference. A lot of people would even find hard to notice how huge is the technical gap between Vai and Satch for example (and it is REALLY huge). It happened to everbody that plays the guitar.
And, Im sure there are a lot of people like myself that can really play at this guy level or better, and dont even care because they see nothing special about it.
May be if I had a unique style like Blues Saraceno, Greg Howe, Michael Lee Firkins, or Mattias Eklundh, or great composition skills I would really try to make something with music. But I have neither. I just can play pretty fast and pretty accurate, but not nearly as fast and accurate as Shawn Lane or Rusty Cooley.... and thats about it. So I bet there are a ton of people out there that can really play but feel in a similar way and the just enjoy themselves playing the guitar as a hobby.
As I said, Im quiting my job and moving back to argentina. I will try to make some sort of "Ibanez register" for argentina, and start a fusion band, I may eventually upload some clips or videos for the first time in my life (im turning 30 in less than a month). If someone find them interesting, thats cool and if you feel they are just average, or crap, then you ll be free to speak your mind.
Just my 2 cents