the greatest guitar god of all time
ever since the guitar was invented, there were people whose techniques were phenomenal in their time. one generation learning for the previous, the guitar now has evolved to be as versatile as any other instrument. what really done it were 2 things, IMO, andres segovia, who proved that hardcore insane deadly chord progressions and sufficient soloing proves the guitar to be a worthy classical instrument that can rival the piano, and the invention of fingertapping. eddie van halen i believe was the person who first perfected it(if im wrong, please say so), who now made the instrument much more versatile and more of an adversary compared to a piano. then one generation after came people like allan holdsworth and steve vai who revolutionized finger tapping. holdsworth is so good at it, he doesn't even need to pick the first note. his fingers bang against the board hard enough to fret the sound. also, he has perfected 4 finger tapping, meaning 4 fingers of the LEFT hand. steve vai's way of fingertapping is occasional throughout his songs unlike holdsworth, but when he fingertaps, he REALLY fingertaps. using normally 3 fingers of his left hand and the middle or ring finger of his right, he can harmonically shred his guitar to pieces. picking is still a necessity though(sweeping is a damn good reason for using a pick), but IMO a shredder, who pickes at ridiculusly fast speeds, i believe is a waste of time. all shredders i know of can be mind boggling, but it's just a scale or an arpeggio goin up or down really really fast. you can accomplish the same with a slightly different tone with fingertapping, and be more varied and harmonically versatile as you bang the strings up and down the fretboard. speed at a cost of musical complexity, although michael angelo still scares me. since you have two hands fretting notes, a great distance of the board can be covered. listen to holdsworth and vai and you'll understand. so, you might ask, whats the next step? well use more fingers! granted that your right thumb and index finger are out of the game with the pick, you have the potential of 7 finger tapping. stretch the fingers out like holdsworth, and acquire the ambidexterity like angelo, and you can play the guitar like a piano, but more beautifally. you can skip octaves, and switch arpeggios half way through 3 times a second to produce music exceeding the classification of scales. you would be able take it a step farther, put down the pick, since you're not going to be using it if you got that far, and bang away with 8 or 9 fingers! you'll be playing two different solos, one at the bottom of the fretboard, and also up high, as you take in consideration the harmonies, string occupancy, octave skipping, and almost solely finger hammering(as opposed to pulls and tapping). then, you can upgrade to a fretless double neck V guitar like some guitarrists do(thereby eliminating the problem of string occupancy for simultaneous hammering), but use such an instrument to the fullest potential. you can throw in chords here in there by slamming multiple fingers at the same time, and create polychords, multi-octave chords, and simultaneous chords and solos. that's the challenge of the future guitar god. but musical experience MUST equal technique, or you'll end out sounding like a shredder on crack and caffine with a seizure. ofcourse, such musical experience would make you a modern day mozart, basically. just hope u dont lose a finger.