Guitarist

A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar by singing or playing the harmonica.

For the UK magazine, see Guitarist (magazine). For the American magazine, see Guitar Player.

Guitarist Gretchen Menn of rock tribute band Zepparella performing at the 3rd Annual Malibu Guitar Festival in 2017.

Guitar players in the city centre of Buenos Aires.

Techniques

The guitarist may employ any of several methods for sounding the guitar, including finger picking, depending on the type of strings used (either nylon or steel), and including strumming with the fingers, or a guitar pick made of bone, horn, plastic, metal, felt, leather, or paper, and melodic flatpicking and finger-picking.

The guitarist may also employ various methods for selecting notes and chords, including fingering, thumbing, the barre (a finger lying across many or all strings at a particular fret), and 'bottleneck' or steel-guitar slides, usually made of glass or metal. These left- and right-hand techniques may be intermixed in performance.

Notable guitarists

Montage of guitarists. The guitarists pictured are named on the image page.

Rock, heavy metal, jazz and country

Several magazines and websites have compiled what they intend as lists of the greatest guitarists—for example The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine, or 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by Guitar World magazine.

Rolling Stone

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine published a list called The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. This list included 100 guitarists whom the magazine editor David Fricke considered the best, with a brief introduction for each of them.[1] The first in this list is the American guitarist Jimi Hendrix introduced by Pete Townshend, guitarist for The Who, who was, in his turn, ranked at #10 in the list.

In describing the list to readers, Paul MacInnes from British newspaper The Guardian wrote, "Surprisingly enough for an American magazine, the top 10 is fair jam-packed with Yanks," though he also noted three exceptions in the top 10.[2] The online magazine Blogcritics criticized the list for introducing some allegedly undeserving guitarists while forgetting some artists the writer considered perhaps more worthy, such as Johnny Marr, Al Di Meola, Phil Keaggy or John Petrucci.[3]

In 2011, Rolling Stone updated the list, which this time was chosen by a panel of guitarists and other experts with the top 5 consisting of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Jeff Beck. Artists who had not been included in the previous list were added. Rory Gallagher, for example, was ranked in 57th place.[4]

The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time is mentioned in many biographies about artists who appear in the list.[5]

Guitar World

Guitar World, a monthly music magazine devoted to the guitar, also published their list of 100 greatest guitarists in the book Guitar World Presents the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time from the Pages of Guitar World Magazine.[6] Different from the Rolling Stone list, which listed guitarists in descending order, Guitar World divided guitarists by music genre—such as "Lords of Hard Rock" for hard rock artists or "Jazzmen" for jazz players. Despite the appearance in other magazines like Billboard,[7] this publication by Guitar World was criticized for including no female musicians within its selection.[8] However, Guitar World recently published a list of "Eight Amazing Female Acoustic Players," including Kaki King, Muriel Anderson and Sharon Isbin.[9]

TIME and others

Following the death of Les Paul, TIME website presented their list of 10 greatest artists in electric guitar. As in Rolling Stone magazine's list, Jimi Hendrix was chosen as the greatest guitarist followed by Slash from Guns 'N' Roses, B.B. King, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton.[10] Gigwise.com, an online music magazine, also ranks Jimi Hendrix as the greatest guitarist ever, followed by Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Keith Richards and Kirk Hammett.[11]

Other genres

The classical guitar is strung with gut or nylon strings on top and wound basses for the lower strings. It was often ornately decorated with mother of pearl. Many early classical guitarists played with their finger tips only but later guitarists play with a combination of finger nail and flesh to project a clear sound and allowing for many different changes in sound quality (or timbre). This guitar tradition dates back at least to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when a four course instrument was popular among aristocrats. In the early nineteenth century there the guitar enjoyed a surge of popularity when composer/performers such as Fernando Sor, Napoléon Coste, Mauro Guiliani, and many others published thousands of pieces for the concert hall and home gatherings. The classical guitar enjoyed another period of popularity in the twentieth century when recordings amplified the relatively quiet instrument. There are many classical guitarists listed as notable in their respective epochs.

One of the most renowned Flamenco guitarists in recent decades was Paco de Lucía. Flamenco music is a popular traditional music associated with the Andalucia region of southern Spain. It is characterized by intricate syncopated rhythms intimately informed by a gypsy dance style. Flamenco guitarists also often accompany flamenco singers performing "cante jondo" (deep song). Paco de Lucía was also one of the first flamenco guitarists to have successfully crossed over into other genres of music such as classical and jazz. Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar",[12] and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists.".[13][14]

References

1. "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Rolling Stone. 2003-09-18. Retrieved 2011-12-01.
2. MacInnes, Paul (2007-02-13). "Who are the 100 greatest guitarists of all time?". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
3. The Theory (2003-08-28). "The Top 100 Guitarists According to Rolling Stone". Blogcritics. Archived from the original on 5 June 2013. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
4. "100 Greatest Guitarists: Rory Gallagher". Rolling Stone magazine. Archived from the original on 23 November 2011. Retrieved 31 December 2012.
5. Clement, Vivian (2007). How to Succeed As a Female Guitarist: The Essential Guide for Working in a Male-dominated Industry. Alfred Publishing. p. 1. ISBN 0-7390-4304-8.
6. Jeff Kitts, Brad Tolinski (2002). Guitar World Presents the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time from the Pages of Guitar World Magazine. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0-634-04619-5.
7. Billboard, vol. 117, n° 49, pp. 67
8. Leonard, Marion (2007). Gender in the music industry: Rock, discourse and girl power. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 38. ISBN 0-7546-3862-6.
9. "Eight Amazing Female Acoustic Guitar Players". Retrieved 2015-10-04.
10. "The 10 Greatest Electric-Guitar Players". TIME. 2009-08-14. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
11. "The 50 Greatest Guitarists... Ever!". Gigwise.com. Retrieved 2010-01-14.
12. • Chapman, Richard; Clapton, Eric (2000). Guitar: music, history, players. Dorling Kindersley Pub. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-7894-5963-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
13. Koster, Dennis (1 June 2002). Guitar Atlas, Flamenco. Alfred Music Publishing. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-7390-2478-2. Retrieved 4 March 2013.
14. "Paco de Lucía, Master Flamenco Guitarist, Dies at 66". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-03-26.

External links

• Media related to Guitarists at Wikimedia Commons