Emmanuel Sansone shred 2022 Mercury

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG9Fc3VLojA

Nah, if you seriously want best actual guitarist you can't go wrong with the cream of the crop like Ron Thal aka Bumblefoot

or Matthias IA Eklundh

All three of those guys suck big donkey balls, not an original voice in the group.  If it weren't for Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen these gentlemen wouldn't have a voice between them.   What happened to individual style?

Best Actual Guitarist ?   I don't think you can get much better than Ulrich Roth, with Ron Jarzombek, Holdsworth and a handful of others right behind.

Those were just two clips. If you checked out their albums you'd find the two i suggested have mastered it all: metal, blues, jazz, flamenco, prog and are about as original as guitarists get for adding their own stamp. In fact they not only play guitar, they play all the instruments and make their own guitars from scratch.

As a multi-instrumentalist myself, i guess i hear things you don't. Of course Steve Vai was an influence but if you play that game then you can go all the way back centuries when the guitar was invented. I could post another 20 songs of each of those guys, each radically different than the next but anyone who wants to explore further can do so ;)

I do love all those guitarists you mentioned but they are a bit one-dimensional to be considered a top notch guitarist in the 21st century.

BTW Steve Vai isn't as original as everybody thinks either. Neither he nor Eddie Van Halen invented hammer on tapping. This guy did as far back as 1965. I do love Vai but he's inconsistent.

^ Everyone knows that, at least everyone here does---  doesn't mean EVH and Hackett and Vai didn't push the instrument forward.

siLLy puPPy wrote: Atavachron wrote: All three of those guys suck big donkey balls, not an original voice in the group.  If it weren't for Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen these gentlemen wouldn't have a voice between them.   What happened to individual style? Best Actual Guitarist ?   I don't think you can get much better than Ulrich Roth, with Ron Jarzombek, Holdsworth and a handful of others right behind. Those were just two clips. If you checked out their albums you'd find the two i suggested have mastered it all: metal, blues, jazz, flamenco, prog and are about as original as guitarists get for adding their own stamp. In fact they not only play guitar, they play all the instruments and make their own guitars from scratch. As a multi-instrumentalist myself, i guess i hear things you don't. Of course Steve Vai was an influence but if you play that game then you can go all the way back centuries when the guitar was invented. I could post another 20 songs of each of those guys, each radically different than the next but anyone who wants to explore further can do so ;) I do love all those guitarists you mentioned but they are a bit one-dimensional to be considered a top notch guitarist in the 21st century.

^ i disagree but then i've consumed every morsel Bumblefoot and Eklundh have dished out. They are highly creative on top of mastering every conceivable traditional guitar style. In fact they are as creative as Mr Bungle in their chameleonesque way of integrating all genres into a unified field.

BTW i just noticed that it is lame that video of the Italian guitarist doesn't say his name!

It is Vittorio Camardese and he went unnoticed in the 1960s with his cutting edge hammer on style and still remained unknown despite Van Halen making the style popular.

BTW, BEST guitarist means accomplished and doesn't really refer to originality. The most original music is outside of the rock paradigm these days.

QUOTE : Everyone knows that, at least everyone here does---  doesn't mean EVH and Hackett and Vai didn't push the instrument forward.

RESPONSE: Well that is my exact point. I agree with you and the same applies to Bumblefoot, Buckethead, Eklundh and a whole bunch of other modern guitarists.

Buckethead and Bumblefoot are great, but I hear original voices in both.   Satch too.   You are one of the few guitar/tech experts on this site, you know a unique player when you hear one just as I do.

watching 'Cintaku' now...  is that one of Uli Roth's Sky Guitars he's playing??

Alll true but the style was perfected in the 60s by Vittorio as far as i know. Roy Smeck wasn't even the first. Tapping goes as far back as Paganini on the violin. It's really an incremental increase over centuries that led to what is now common in neoclassical guitar wizardry.

I'm a Shawn Lane fan as well. He's amongst the handful of modern guitarists who are on my list. I just find his music a bit sleepy and not full of the energetic overdrive that Bumblefoot and Eklundh offer. While technically proficient he sat comfortably in the easy listening section of the jazz-fusion world for the most part.

Bumblefoot and Eklundh on the other hand can effortlessly fuse classical, metal, prog, jazz, flamenco, gypsy swing, clever lyrics, songwriting, bizarre originality and the element of surprise without flinching.

There are hundreds of excellent guitarists in the world of technical metal as well which is where the most innovative progression of all musical styles is moving forward in the 21st century.

Now how can anyone not recognize these guys are totally unique creative guitarists?

I might be a bit old fashioned, but my preference still goes towards Michael Karoli and John Weinzierl who were able to improvise and move along so well for a long time. I don't like to compare them, but John McLaughlin would fit well here, and I might even consider Manuel Gottsching who has even done long improvisations with Klaus Schulze, something that most guitarists won't even consider. 

The freedom to move around, not just a chord or two, and without a "structure" will add a lot more to the music than we think, although in many of the examples here, it is almost about how many chords/notes you can share/do within a specific setting or amount of time, which for me, is pyrotechnics not the guitar touch or ability.

As I like to say, somewhat cynically, there are hundreds of guitarists in the streets of Madrid, or Barcelona that can out do many of these folks, if they ever went electric ... but I'm not sure that they will ever be given a proper ear for us to appreciate beyond that technical guitar playing of so many of these folks ... I prefer the "less technical" and the more emotional and feel free form in this instrument.

To the OP. Yes he's decent if shred is what you dig. Not original though, sounds a lot like Satch to me. "Guitar solo of the decade"??? 

omphaloskepsis wrote: Steve Howe.

In the world of prog, Steve Howe is #1 in my book 4 sure

Yeah all those guitarists you listed are great too. In fact we are spoiled with an unprecedented riches of musical talent in all of human history. We have NEVER had so much access to so many brilliant musicians as we have in the last couple of decades. Despite all the f.u.c.k.e.d up s.h.i.t. on the world, i feel blessed beyond measure to live at a time when music is a never ending stream of creativity.

Buckethead was mentioned above but he's not my absolute favorite even though i've reviewed every album. His cream of the crop though does put him firmly in my top 10 modern guitarist list though if i were to make such a thing. I also love avant-garde guitarists ranging from Trey Spruance, Fredrik Thordendal, Fred Frith, Adrian Belew etc. I just find adding speedy shredding on top of talent the icing on the cake

Like Robert Fripp.

 

Hard to argue against Jimi Hendrix. According to the Van der Graaf Generator article in Wikipedia:

 

 

The whole "emotion" debate is a whole other can of worms.

EVERY musical expression evokes some sort of emotional response.

So that means you have to clarify what gives you emotional pleasure.

Personally i find even the most abrasive dissonant technical w**kery emotionally stimulating.

I would assume like most you mean a catchy melodic underpinning to the composition.

So it boils down to which emotion one is seeking at any given moment :)

The emotion you feel from an instrument is a personal thing indeed. 

Maybe not the best, but certainly deserves to be much better known than he is: Roman Bunka.

He also plays the oud, a fretless Arabic lute: