Orgasmic guitar solos?

What are your favourite guitar solos?

Current Favourite: The short solo in Patterns in the Ivy II by Opeth

Other favourites:

Nottingham Lace by Buckethead

Windopane Solo 2 by Opeth

Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

Freebird- Lynyrd Skynyrd

Stairway to Heaven- Led Zeppelin

Man in the Box- Alice In Chains

Shine on You Crazy Diamond- Pink Floyd

I'll probably be the only one to mention Tom Morello, playing "SoulPower" on Like a Stone.

Freebird - Lynnrd Skynnrd

Since I've Been Loving You - Led Zeppelin

Money - Pink Floyd

Tom Morello playing "SoulPower" on Like a Stone.

TheSystemLord1

Same.

Mine are Run to the Hills, The Trooper and Number of the Beast (Iron Maiden); I Don't Wanna Stop, Bark at the Moon and Paranoid (Ozzy Osbourne); Beast and the Harlot and Bat Country (Avenged Sevenfold); and Cowboys from Hell (Pantera). They are quite orgasmic.

We could probably count Cliffs of Dover and YYZ because they're both basically one really long guitar solo. :?

I hate guitar solos as much as I hate bravura showpieces in the cIassical tradition. They're both the same kind of meaningless fluff.pianist

[QUOTE="pianist"]I hate guitar solos as much as I hate bravura showpieces in the cIassical tradition. They're both the same kind of meaningless fluff.SuperVegeta518

No, it's not sarcasm. Bravura-based 'melody with background accompaniment' music bores the hell out of me.

Blackened by Metallica

Bulls on Parade by Rage Against the Machine

Phantom of the Opera by Iron Maiden

Floods by Pantera

Orgasmic is a good way to describe it (not in a ghey way).

I hate guitar solos as much as I hate bravura showpieces in the cIassical tradition. They're both the same kind of meaningless fluff.pianist

Meaningless? I didn't expect someone so intelligent to say something so ignorant. Elitism maybe?

Other than that, I got nothing. A lot of the solos I like are written to sound like part of the song they're in, not a mini-song while the rest of the band plays in the background.crucifine

That's the kind of music I like too. It's the interaction between instrumentalists that makes music really come alive.

[QUOTE="pianist"]I hate guitar solos as much as I hate bravura showpieces in the cIassical tradition. They're both the same kind of meaningless fluff.Kritical_Strike

Meaningless? I didn't expect someone so intelligent to say something so ignorant. Elitism maybe?

No, it really is meaningless from a compositional perspective. Solo-dominated music where the accompaniment is nothing more than simplistic, metronomic background noise tends to rely on virtuosity to 'wow' people instead of moving them. It is the easiest kind of music to compose (by far) because you need not worry at all about interaction, balance, or counterpoint. Most of this writing ends up being nothing more than an "I can play scales and arpeggios really fast" show. And make no mistake - it's not just the popular music of today that employs this. Plenty of music by composers like Liszt or Paganini would fall into the same category, and I despise it just as much.

[QUOTE="Kritical_Strike"]

[QUOTE="pianist"]I hate guitar solos as much as I hate bravura showpieces in the cIassical tradition. They're both the same kind of meaningless fluff.pianist

Meaningless? I didn't expect someone so intelligent to say something so ignorant. Elitism maybe?

No, it really is meaningless from a compositional perspective. Solo-dominated music tends to rely on virtuosity to 'wow' people instead of moving them. It is the easiest kind of music to compose (by far) because you need not worry at all about interaction, balance, or counterpoint. Most of this writing ends up being nothing more than an "I can play scales and arpeggios really fast" show. And make no mistake - it's not just the popular music of today that employs this. Plenty of music by composers like Liszt or Paganini would fall into the same category, and I despise it just as much.

So by "meaningless" you really mean to say it "lacks any skillful composition". But when you say "meaningless" you sound as if it has no meaning, yet many solos that you may deem to be unskillful really do have meaning, and convey emotion, and are far from meaningless.

It's just your choice of diction was "unskillful"....

[QUOTE="Kritical_Strike"]

[QUOTE="pianist"]I hate guitar solos as much as I hate bravura showpieces in the cIassical tradition. They're both the same kind of meaningless fluff.pianist

Meaningless? I didn't expect someone so intelligent to say something so ignorant. Elitism maybe?

No, it really is meaningless from a compositional perspective. Solo-dominated music where the accompaniment is nothing more than simplistic, metronomic background noise tends to rely on virtuosity to 'wow' people instead of moving them. It is the easiest kind of music to compose (by far) because you need not worry at all about interaction, balance, or counterpoint. Most of this writing ends up being nothing more than an "I can play scales and arpeggios really fast" show. And make no mistake - it's not just the popular music of today that employs this. Plenty of music by composers like Liszt or Paganini would fall into the same category, and I despise it just as much.

So by "meaningless" you really mean to say it "lacks any skillful composition". But when you say "meaningless" you sound as if it has no meaning, yet many solos that you may deem to be unskillful really do have meaning, and convey emotion, and are far from meaningless.

It's just your choice of diction was "unskillful"....

Kritical_Strike

Yes, you've got it. Meaningless in the context I used it refers to its contruction. When you don't do anything but write a solo and slap noise under it, there's nothing of compositional interest there at all. And you've also got to bear in mind that my comment was obviously my own subjective opinion. Music without substance really is meaningless to me. I'm not even wowed by the virtuosic displays more often than not, because I know that the technical demands of such works are often not nearly so great as people believe them to be. There are exceptions, of course. Liszt's Totentanz really is a technical beast... but it's a piece that does nothing at all for me when I hear it.

That's exactly the kind of song he hates. It's more like Paganini's Caprices than anything else, excluding that one Busdriver song.crucifine

Hmm... based on that, I don't think I'll bother taking a look at the suggestion.

[QUOTE="Kritical_Strike"]

So by "meaningless" you really mean to say it "lacks any skillful composition". But when you say "meaningless" you sound as if it has no meaning, yet many solos that you may deem to be unskillful really do have meaning, and convey emotion, and are far from meaningless.

It's just your choice of diction was "unskillful"....

pianist

Yes, you've got it. Meaningless in the context I used it refers to its skillful contruction. When you don't do anything but write a solo and slap noise under it, there's nothing of compositional interest there at all. And you've also got to bear in mind that my comment was obviously my own subjective opinion. Music without substance really is meaningless to me. I'm not even wowed by the virtuosic displays more often than not, because I know that the technical demands of such works are often not nearly so great as people believe them to be. There are exceptions, of course. Liszt's Totentanz really is a technical beast... but it's a piece that does nothing at all for me when I hear it.

The guitar riff in mr. Brightside...

Just repeated over and over and over...

G#, C#, D#, C#... over and over

I love it.

Off topic - What are your opinions on Jazz? It has been called the "musician's music" while classical lies in the hands of its composer (apparently).Kritical_Strike

Yeah - that's a pretty good way of describing it actually. This is because so much of jazz is based on improvisation, whereas cIassical music is more about interpretation of what the composer wrote. CIassical music is very specific when it comes to composition, jazz is not. It's a type of music that bears much more resemblance to Hindustani cIassical music than Western cIassical music. I have a lot of respect for the musical abilities of jazz musicians, but I don't particularly enjoy listening to it or playing it. It can be a fun little diversion from time to time, but I wouldn't make myself a career as a jazz pianist. The constant use of unresolved harmony and colour chords just doesn't sit well with me, and I find that it often gets 'stuck' in a particular musical idea which continues on for the entire piece. And like guitar solos, the genre is very solo oriented (it needs to be), so it's not as well suited to someone who prefers interplay.

Honestly, though, I find jazz solos are more 'listenable' than rock solos (or especially metal solos). There's a clarity of musical purpose in these solos that you don't find in the solos of the other two genres. It's tough to describe exactly what contributes to this clarity - but I think the instruments themselves have a big role to play in that.

Microcuts by muse. Listen to it with headphones on; blows my mind.Ninja-Vox

You win. That's gotta be one of the best songs ever, everything about it is so awesome. I wouldn't really count it as a solo though.

Rush - Working Man

Awesome song w/ a great solo by a band that should be given much more credit.

I'm gonna have to go with "Sorrow" by Pink Floyd. "Comfortably Numb" by the same (especially the live version from P*U*L*S*E) is a close second.

Yeah, I like Pink Floyd a lot.