Twiddling

Just saw an interview with Lemmy. He was talking about Hawkwind and when asked who he would like to collaborate with if he had a choice he said Jeff Beck before his twiddling days. He also referred to other jazz and prog rock guitarists as twiddlers. I looked up the definition in the Oxford dictionary and it defined twiddling as ..."Playing in a nervous or purposeless way. Rapid or intricate series of musical notes. " I think he`s right in a way if he really knows the definition of twiddling. Is he?

thing is, Jeff Beck still rocks, twiddler or not. You go see him today or five years from now and he'll be rippin the blues, rock, fusion, whatever he feels like, and like no one else.

    

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

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.

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.

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?

I call it w**kery.

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.

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