A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as , , , and . Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar by singing or playing the harmonica, or both.
Techniques
The guitarist may employ any of several methods for sounding the guitar, including finger-picking, depending on the type of strings used (either nylon or steel), and including
strumming with the fingers, or a
guitar pick made of bone, horn, plastic, metal, felt, leather, or paper, and melodic
flatpicking and finger-picking.
The guitarist may also employ various methods for selecting Musical note and chords, including fingering, thumbing, the barre (a finger lying across many or all strings at a particular fret), and Slide guitar, usually made of glass or metal. These left- and right-hand techniques may be intermixed in performance.
Notable guitarists
Rock, metal, jazz, country and blues
Several
and
have compiled what they intend as lists of the greatest guitarists—for example
The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by
Rolling Stone magazine, or
100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by
Guitar World magazine.
Rolling Stone
The first in this list is the American guitarist
Jimi Hendrix, introduced by
Pete Townshend, guitarist for
the Who, who was, in his turn, ranked at #10 in the list.
In describing the list to readers, Paul MacInnes from British newspaper The Guardian wrote, "Surprisingly enough for an American magazine, the top 10 is fair jam-packed with Yanks", though he also noted three exceptions in the top 10.
In 2011, Rolling Stone updated the list, which this time was chosen by a panel of guitarists and other experts with the top 100 consisting of Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Keith Richards and Tony Iommi.
The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time is mentioned in many biographies about artists who appear in the list.
Guitar World
Guitar World, a monthly music magazine devoted to the guitar, also published their list of 100 greatest guitarists in the book
Guitar World Presents the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time from the Pages of Guitar World Magazine.
Different from the
Rolling Stone list, which listed guitarists in descending order,
Guitar World divided guitarists by
music genre—such as "Lords of Hard Rock" for
hard rock artists or "Jazzmen" for
jazz players. Despite the appearance in other magazines like
Billboard,
[ Billboard, vol. 117, n° 49, pp. 67] this publication by
Guitar World was criticized for including no female musicians within its selection.
However,
Guitar World recently published a list of "Eight Amazing Female Acoustic Players", including
Kaki King,
Muriel Anderson and
Sharon Isbin.
Time and others
Following the death of
Les Paul,
Time website presented their list of 10 greatest artists in
electric guitar. As in
Rolling Stone magazine's list, Jimi Hendrix was chosen as the greatest guitarist followed by Slash from Guns N' Roses, B.B. King,
Keith Richards,
Jimmy Page, and
Eric Clapton.
, an online music magazine, also ranks Jimi Hendrix as the greatest guitarist ever, followed by Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Keith Richards and
Kirk Hammett.
Other genres
The classical guitar is traditionally strung with gut or nylon strings for the treble notes, and wound strings for the bass. Often adorned with mother-of-pearl inlays, the instrument was once primarily played using the fingertips alone. Over time, however, guitarists began to use a combination of fingernail and flesh to achieve a clearer, more expressive sound, and allowing for many different changes in sound quality (or timbre). This guitar tradition dates back at least to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when a four course instrument was popular among aristocrats. In the early nineteenth century there the guitar enjoyed a surge of popularity when composer/performers such as
Fernando Sor, Napoléon Coste,
Mauro Giuliani, and many others published thousands of pieces for the concert hall and home gatherings. The classical guitar enjoyed another period of popularity in the twentieth century when recordings amplified the relatively quiet instrument. There are many classical guitarists listed as "notable" in their respective epochs.
One of the most renowned flamenco guitarists in recent decades was Paco de Lucía. Flamenco music is a popular traditional music associated with the Andalucia region of southern Spain. It is characterized by intricate syncopated rhythms intimately informed by a gypsy dance style. Flamenco guitarists also often accompany flamenco singers performing "cante jondo" (deep song). De Lucía was also one of the first to have successfully crossed over into other genres of music such as classical and jazz.[*]
The cuatro guitar is a family of Latin American string instruments played in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and other countries. It is derived from the Classical guitar. Although some have viola-like shapes, most cuatros resemble a small to mid-sized guitar. In Puerto Rico and Venezuela, the cuatro is an ensemble instrument for secular and religious music, and is played at parties and traditional gatherings.
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