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Sloppy Page


McSeven

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I am trying to wrap my mind around people saying that Jimmy Page is a Sloppy player. I think his playing is fantastic.

If he is Sloopy, then who else is, as that might give me an idea of what they mean?

Mc7

He actually calls himself a sloppy guitarist.

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I am trying to wrap my mind around people saying that Jimmy Page is a Sloppy player. I think his playing is fantastic.

If he is Sloopy, then who else is, as that might give me an idea of what they mean?

Mc7

IMHO -

Sloppy: Page, Richards, Townsend, etc.

Not Sloppy: Rhodes, Vai, Satriani, Malmsteen, etc.

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IMHO -

Sloppy: Page, Richards, Townsend, etc.

Not Sloppy: Rhodes, Vai, Satriani, Malmsteen, etc.

I guess Rhodes and Vai and the rest, always sound like they are from the future. I do now see the differnece though. Page/Richards and Townsend persoanlity comes out of thier playing. They have a keen sense of the blues.

MC7

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I am trying to wrap my mind around people saying that Jimmy Page is a Sloppy player. I think his playing is fantastic.

If he is Sloopy, then who else is, as that might give me an idea of what they mean?

Mc7

I take it that you don't play guitar. Or if you do, then you have only been playing for a short period of time.

The more you play guitar, the more you understand how sloppy Jimmy is. Not just him, but many famous guitarists are pretty sloppy. But what makes them great is what they did with what they had. Yes, Page was sloppy, but, he was very inovative and creative. He was a great song writer.

How good a guitarist is is also relitave to the time in which they were famous. For the 60's and early 70's, Page was very exceptional. But every generation has better guitarists, trying to push the envelope of what has already been done. For instance, look at Mr. Malmsteen on guitar.

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Pat Metheney is great techically but music i find boring

Page is sloppy technically but his playing is passionate

I personally enjoy a lot of those jazz players like Pat Metheney, because they can be very creative. But technically brilliant players in general I do find boring if they aren't that creative. Like, most of those metal guys I find extremely uninteresting... B.B. King can make one note sound better than 25 notes played by any of those shredders. Its all about feel!

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I personally enjoy a lot of those jazz players like Pat Metheney, because they can be very creative. But technically brilliant players in general I do find boring if they aren't that creative. Like, most of those metal guys I find extremely uninteresting... B.B. King can make one note sound better than 25 notes played by any of those shredders. Its all about feel!

Have you heard " Friday Night in San Francesco"? by Di Meola, Maclughlin and De Luca?

Great work technically and very passionate

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Pat Metheney is great techically but music i find boring

Page is sloppy technically but his playing is passionate

that's why i listen to Page and other sloppy guitarists day and night and never get bored just get lost in their great music...while with others i feel like they are using the same solos over and over again, if you learn one you learn all ,you can play it on each of their songs and no one will notice...just be quick

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I personally enjoy a lot of those jazz players like Pat Metheney, because they can be very creative. But technically brilliant players in general I do find boring if they aren't that creative. Like, most of those metal guys I find extremely uninteresting... B.B. King can make one note sound better than 25 notes played by any of those shredders. Its all about feel!

I love Pat Metheny! He's great in concert (as an aside). Page isn't technically "perfect" but that's what I love about his playing. He's got so much passion and soul and emotion which sometimes technically proficient players lack.

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I take it that you don't play guitar. Or if you do, then you have only been playing for a short period of time.

The more you play guitar, the more you understand how sloppy Jimmy is. Not just him, but many famous guitarists are pretty sloppy. But what makes them great is what they did with what they had. Yes, Page was sloppy, but, he was very inovative and creative. He was a great song writer.

How good a guitarist is is also relitave to the time in which they were famous. For the 60's and early 70's, Page was very exceptional. But every generation has better guitarists, trying to push the envelope of what has already been done. For instance, look at Mr. Malmsteen on guitar.

Malmsteem has not had nearly the influence Page has. You will find that a ton of people would rather listen to Page than Malmsteem. All of his stuff sounds the same. The only people, with few exceptions, that listen to Malmsteem are geeky guitar players and that is not a good thing. You know what you call a girl at a Malmsteem concert? A waitress

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I am trying to wrap my mind around people saying that Jimmy Page is a Sloppy player. I think his playing is fantastic.

If he is Sloopy, then who else is, as that might give me an idea of what they mean?

Mc7

Music is about feeling, not precision. You will find that most "precision" players are rather boring and tend to not take chances live. Most Newbie guitar players latch on to the 'precison' players thinking they are the best but if you ask the typical layman they will tell you they have no interest in them. Making mistakes live is not a bad thing, the good players know how to recover from those mistakes and thats when the magic can happen.

I would so much rather see a guitar player improvising and taking chances and making mistakes as he/she is trying to get an emotional lift from the listener and hope to inspire you. The precision player is simply just trying to impress you which doesnt do anything for me and most people in general.

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Sloppy, well, yeah. Jimmy has also said that what he has as a guitarist is a 'non-technique'. But all this is only one side of the story. I find the tendency to apply a general epithet like "good technique" as a standard of judgment rather odd, because it's perfectly meaningless anyway. What you can have is good technique for this kind of thing, or good technique for that other type of thing - technique in general refers to no real music, but to a non-existent abstraction. Why is that even interesting?

In short: insofar as you can talk about technique in these general terms it doesn't give you an applicable standard of judgment for music anyway. If that's how you apply it anyway, then what you have is a technicality fetish. :lol:

Jimmy should not be underestimated either. He has a quite varied non-technique - he has been influenced by so many different things and they come together in his playing in a way that is really unique. He is one of the great original stylists of the rock guitar.

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Sloppy, well, yeah. Jimmy has also said that what he has as a guitarist is a 'non-technique'. But all this is only one side of the story. I find the tendency to apply a general epithet like "good technique" as a standard of judgment rather odd, because it's perfectly meaningless anyway. What you can have is good technique for this kind of thing, or good technique for that other type of thing - technique in general refers to no real music, but to a non-existent abstraction. Why is that even interesting?

I can understand what you are saying.

You can say Page has slopy conventional technique but brilliant unconventional technique so in the end it is meaningless. What counts is the impact of the music on the listener

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First I think you have to define sloppy. Does that mean being incapable or playing with precision or does it mean having a loose feel because the music calls for it?

One thing to remember about Page's work in Zep is he was going for a specific sound and it wasn't always played sloppy. Since much of it was rooted in blues it's important to remember that blues by definition is pretty loose, even the more technical players like Otis Rush and Freddie King would be considered sloppy compared to todays technical players. Another big factor is influences. While there were some very technical players as far back as just after the turn of the century I don't hear those player's influence in Jimmy's playing as much as I do the raunchier blues guys. When I listen to Jimmy playing I hear snippets of Otis Rush and Scotty Moore not Charlie Christian and Lonnie Johnson.

Another thing to remember is popular modern rock guitar playing has roots that came after Jimmy's time. Things like the Floyd Rose and much of the effects shred type players use now are not of Jimmy's time. Also important to remember is Jimmy's playing in Zep isn't necessarily all he was capable of, Jimmy Page can't be measured by Zep alone. He did TONS of studio work in London in the 60's. Lots of the big pop hits of the day have Jimmy Page playing on them. He was capable of FAR greater precision than his playing in Zep would indicate.

That said he could be pretty wobbly live, sometimes it happened during songs that weren't intended to have a raunchy feel. It seemed to get worse as he got older, his playing became and still is somewhat stuttered, he's lost some fluidity. I'm not going to speculate why because every player has a prime. Even some of the fastest and most precise shred guys are slowing down now, even Vai seems slow compared to todays mega shredders. Players learn from the generation before and take it to new places. Because Jimmy's bag was blues not jazz he took his playing and turned it into a hotrodded version of blues and ethnic music, had he had difference interests he may have gone in a different direction.

Personally I don't place a lot of value in music that's technical for the sake of being technical. There are players I admire that are very technical but they use what they have in a way I appreciate. It doesn't mean it's better or worse than something that is easier to play. Honestly I don't find the technical stuff to be all that difficult. I've been playing more than 30 years and I can sweep arps, tap, play fast and all the other stuff that gets technical types wet. I also play A LOT of blues and I find it's harder to get into a Jimmy Reed groove and make it sound like authentic Jimmy Reed than it is to play a Van Halen song. If you know who Reed was you know he wasn't a technical player but what he did is freakin' tough to duplicate.

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I can understand what you are saying.

You can say Page has slopy conventional technique but brilliant unconventional technique so in the end it is meaningless. What counts is the impact of the music on the listener

Yeah, agreed. I mean, if you think about it, technique in general, whatever the context, is always good or bad relative to ends. That's no different in music, but music is a creative realm basically, so you have to keep in mind just what it is that the musician is trying to achieve. Led Zeppelin was a new kind of music, and that variegated, and also quite loose, style was simply means to that end. You can't really imagine it differently - it was an essential part of the whole idea.

Doesn't mean Jimmy had to be drunk or worse all the fucking time on stage. <_<

Just joking. :)

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Oh, excellent post, danelectro! I would merely add that the style he developed in LZ is inconceivable without 'the apprenticeship' of the session years. To me, he has the basic sensibility of a rockabilly player, but with a really strong blues feel, and fingerpicking derived from acoustic folk is often incorporated into his playing - and a lot else besides.

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Malmsteem has not had nearly the influence Page has. You will find that a ton of people would rather listen to Page than Malmsteem. All of his stuff sounds the same. The only people, with few exceptions, that listen to Malmsteem are geeky guitar players and that is not a good thing. You know what you call a girl at a Malmsteem concert? A waitress

Exactly my point. I'm not sure about the waitress insult though... that was rather odd.

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I'm the same way. It really doesn't matter to me how long you studied guitar or how fast you can play or how many fancy tricks you know to make the guitar do this that or the other. To me, what kind of emotion do you wrench out of the notes?

I'm more impressed with passion and artistry than technicality.

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I'm more impressed with passion and artistry than technicality.

It's kind of the same thing in my book, you have to be technical to play with passion and artistry, guitar playing is rarely due to happenstance. Some players just choose different ways of going about it and listeners respond differently as well. I know guitarists and music fans that hear and feel great emotion in a guy a Malmsteen and I understand that, just because the player is striped back isn't a guaranty it sounds more emotive to the end user. Like anything in music guitar playing, technique and the interpretation of is subjective. I approach it from a different angle, I judge a player by their influences. If you know what they were brought up on it's a lot easier to understand where they are coming from and to my ears every guitarist has obvious influences. The only time it gets tough for me to hear it is when I go back to the beginning of recorded music. For example I have no idea where someone like Geeshie Wiley is coming from because I've never heard someone play like her before her. But for everyone else post 1930 or so hearing their influences is pretty obvious. It really doesn't have anything to do with how modern times are now either, for every player out there trying to take what Jason Becker did into 2010 there is a player trying to get back to Blind Willie Johnson and everything in between.

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