Guitarist

Montage of guitarists. The guitarists pictured are named on the image page.

Guitar players in the city centre of Buenos Aires.

A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar by singing or playing the harmonica.

Techniques

The guitarist has several ways of playing the guitar depending on the type of strings (see Nylon-string guitar or Steel-string acoustic guitar) and including the guitar pick, fingernail, and/or fingertip (see fingerstyle guitar).^[1] It involves techniques derived from other stringed instruments such as 'legato playing' and various harmonics.

Art

While music is an art form in itself, playing an instrument such as the guitar has long been a popular subject for painters. One of the more famous examples is the painting Degas's Father Listening to Lorenzo Pagans Playing the Guitar by Edgar Degas, which was painted sometime between 1869–72 and is currently owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.^[2]

Notable guitarists

Despite perceived tendencies in mainstream music diffusion, to Rock music and electric guitar, notable guitarists arrived from other genres and different variations of the guitar instrument.

Rock and jazz

Several magazines and websites 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

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine published a list called The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. This list included 100 guitarists whom the magazine editor David Fricke considered the best, with a brief introduction for each of them.^[3] 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 #50 of the list.

In describing the list to readers, Paul MacInnes from British newspaper Johnny Marr, Phil Keaggy or John Petrucci.^[5]

In 2011, Rolling Stone updated the list, which in this time was chosen by a panel of guitarists and other experts with the top 5 consisting of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Jeff Beck. Artists who had not been included in the previous list were added. Rory Gallagher, for example, was ranked in 57th place.^[6]

The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time is mentioned in many biographies about artists who appear in the list.^[7][8][9]

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.^[10] 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,^[11] this publication by Guitar World was criticized for including no female musicians within its selection.^[12]

TIME and others

Following the death of Les Paul, TIME website presented their list of 10 greatest artists in electric guitar. Like 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, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.^[13] Gigwise.com, 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.^[14]

Other genres

There are many classical guitarists listed as notable in his/her epoch.

In recent decades, the most "notable classical and cross genre" guitarist was Paco de Lucía, one of the first flamenco guitarists to have successfully crossed over into other genres of music such as classical and jazz. Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar",^[15] and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists.".^[16][17]

See also

References

External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons