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This week we had a guest electric guitar player sit in with the band. What is it with guitar players and distortion? In every song no less.

What happened to a good clean sound and tasteful leads? And ending almost every song with the "da-da-da-harang" strum.......that gets old in a hurry. Not sure the drummer appreciated it when he was told by our new player, "Hey dude, you were off a beat or two in that last song." I wanted to say, "Um no, it was your horrible guitar playing."

Anyone else have this experience?

For the most part I have been the "director" in most every band I have been in. I have had TONS of issues with drummers (no more than the usual expected however) and issues with bass players who thought they had been imparted some musical gift beyond normal.

I am glad to say that while I have played with guitarist that had no clue or was unsure of their "place" I have not suffered the frustration you have.

Although...I have run into quite a few that felt they were much better than they actually were.

Glad he was just a guest. I was roped in with a bass player for three years that was destructive to the power of my current band. He is gone. Thank all that is good.

Solo

My wife and I have had nothing but bad experiences with guitar players.

Problems like:

I'm the leader of the band!
Can't keep time (even tried to say the sequencer was playing in time).
Playing stuff that was completely different than what we practiced.
Acting like they owned all the girls in the audience.
Always turned up way to loud for the music.
Was always messing with their sound settings during the show.
Always practicing new solos and scales at practice and having us wait until they "figured it out." I mean every practice, all practice cause they were too big on their ego to have time to do it at home.

This list scratches the surface. We decided no more guitar players.

RVNOak wrote:Always turned up way to loud for the music.

Was always messing with their sound settings during the show.

Always practicing new solos and scales at practice and having us wait until they "figured it out." I mean every practice, all practice cause they were too big on their ego to have time to do it at home.

We heard a lot of that last week. I'm wondering how much longer we'll have to "enjoy" this experience.

My advice:

Kill him!!!

...don't look back and forget about a guitar player. The only way we will even consider a guitar player is if they are really good on stage and don't display the aforementioned qualities. Right now, we won't even audition. Something about gargling sulfuric acid seems more pleasant than the drama of dealing with the "god complex!!!"

I can only speak of my experience in the Studio which I found really tough as there's noting worse than a Guitarist with a God complex standing in front of a multi track recorder.

Worst case, I had to record the same idiot laying down quite a number of tracks (can't remember exactly how many) where after which the song ended up as nothing other than distortion.

Wasted my time too as the rest of the band finally plucked up the courage to tell him he had ruined the song.

As for drummers Give them a box of mic's and they will use them all on amping up just 1/3 of their kit. Then come looking for more.

Regards.
Sharp.

Sharp wrote:the song ended up as nothing other than distortion.

Lots of our songs sounded muddy because of distortion. I finally said something to our lead singer and he had a chat with the new guitarist.

On the last day of playing, the result was tolerable (sort of).

Synthoid, glad you're making some sort of progress with your guitar man.

I have to say that, with the exception of one real prize prat who seemed to think that his solos began at bar one and continued to the end of every song, I haven't had too much aggravation from guitarists. Inveterate knob twiddlers they are, and incessant tuning, well, that's a given, but I think it comes down to thorough auditioning. I mean, if a guy just wails it through a tryout, well, there's your first clue. Leopards don't change their spots and all that.

I have no problems with guitarist on my recordings.. Just record guitar myself
My advice is: learn it!

cheers

kmar

OMG, I've had bad experience in the past with guitarists...
But I guess it's a quite common fact that in a band keboard player and guitar player(s) come to the "final battle" of distorsion and volume...
Lorenzo could agree so much with us, ahah!

There's no dispute about the matter: When there's a guitarist in the room, you will NEVER hear the keyboards in the mix. You may as well not bother.