Twiddling

Whatever you want to call it a twiddler is still a twiddler by any  other name. The kid in the youtube video is no better than the average 16 year old kid who goes up into his room after school and plugs in his guitar and lets her rip and sounds like Ywinge Malmsteen mark II. Just go down to the local music store and you`ll see they`re  a dime a dozen trying out every guitar effect in the book just so they can sound better than they really are. I asked the guy in the sheet music department in my local music store why they have so much metal guitar tab and fake books and he said unfortunately that`s what most kids want to learn which is sad. I also love McLaughlin`s playing but you have to dig into albums other than the Mahavishnu stuff  or his even own solo recordings to here him doing some more "musical" playing. I saw him on Johnny Carson back in the eighties doing  the jazz standard Cherokee with the full orchestra and anyone who says this guy doesn`t  or can`t swing should have seen this. During his Dixie Dreggs days Steve Morse said something like this in Guitar player magazine about being criticized for laying  fast   " Usually guitarists who criticize other guitarists who can`t play fast are jealous because they can`t play fast themselves". Fast or slow music has to have some purpose or meaning. I still think Lemmy is kind of right.

^ true, so this guy has some sense of humor ... still, I don't think that it's necessary to use the word in reviews or to describe "real" recordings.

^ do you really think this makes a difference? Imagine you're a musician, you practice 5 or more hours a day, record a song or even simply publish a video of yourself practicing on youtube to get some kind of feedback ... do you really think that in that situation it would make a big difference if people said "stop the w**kery" or "you're a w**ker - get lost"? There's a subtle difference, but I think both statements are insulting.

Now ... the word "fiddling" is also not very polite, but at least it's more to the point: "too many notes".

^ even if you think that the music is mindless, pointless, stupid or dull ... still no reason to call the musician a w**ker.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ there are few things people can say about music that disgust me ... this is one of them. IMO people saying that aren't worthy of listening to good music, as they are instrumental in destroying music itself.

I call it w**kery.

Reminds me of Nigel`s guitar solo in  the first Spinal Tap Movie I think this is exactly what Lemmy means by "twiddling". But I wonder what he would think of a more traditional "twiddler" such as Wes Montgomery or Joe Pass?

Brock has even admitted that  he was no guitar hero. Lemmy also said he was very easy to work with musically. His synth work is also simple but freaky. Malmsteen has to be the king of twiddling. My wife is a music teacher and has her doctorate and from time to time I get her to evaluate some of the crap that I listen to ( she even wrote a review here once) and she says that  Ywinge just hits the notes. She demonstrated the difference between twiddling and music to me on our piano with a piece of classical music. She played the passage as it should be played and then she played it as fast and hard as she could to demonstrate twiddling. It`s weird I liked the twiddling better.

I`ve heard short bursts of twiddling from Brock on some live Hawkwind recordings but nothing appraoching the twiddling skill of guys like McLaughlin or Malmsteen. I`ve got a Motorhead compilation and I checked for twiddling but couldn`t find any . In another interview some time ago Lemmy even drew comparisons between Motorhead`s music to that of the Beatles.

As much as I like Lemmy, Hawkwind and Motorhead, I'm sure if he had the ablity to 'twiddle' his attitude would be different..