Guitar Solo #3 "Prelude" by Miles Davis

Today's extended guitar solo is from Miles Davis' album Agharta - I can't reccomend this album enough, people. But what you hear in the solo posted above (begins around the 11:30 mark) is the importance of tone. My gawd! The tone! I'll stick my neck and just make the claim - this is the most evocative and passionate guitar tone I have ever heard. It's like Jimi Hendrix on acid!

So, first, how does he do it? Well the "he" in this case is Pete Cosey, and he does it with the help of a very expensive boutique guitar effects system called the EMS Synthi A. It's become clear to me after decades of deciphering this solo that Cosey is using at least two expression pedals. An example of an expression pedal is the wah-wah, (listen to the beginning of Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile" that's a wah-wah) which adjusts the guitar signal's tonal content, emphasizing treble frequencies when pushed toe down, and cutting the treble and boosting the bass with the heel pushed down. Moving the foot on the pedal makes for very expressive, vocal-like sounds (much of the variety in the sound of our voice is created by opening and closing our mouths as we speak). So Cosey has a wah pedal he's employing here, but he's also got something which seems to affect the phase of his guitar signal.

Listen to 14:37-14:40! OMFG! This is one of those rare instances where his tone is so locked in that it sounds good no matter what's he's doing. Here's the important part to take away from all this: Pete Cosey has this INSANE tone but he's not just masturbating with it, he's adding something musically to the entire collaboration. Too often, when guitarists get a bunch of effects, they just start making noises, oblivious to whether or not it adds to the music. Cosey's too clever to fall into that trap. He finds a way to make the form and content of his guitar solo feed off of each other. The tone inspires notes which inspire tones - until everyone paying any attention is covered with chicken skin!

Now, there are some drawbacks to Cosey's system: namely since you're manipulating two expression pedals at the same time, you need to be sitting down. In fact all the Miles Davis videos of performances from this era, feature Cosey sitting down. For years I listened to this solo. Blindly imagining the man and the gear that produced it. Now in the digital age of instant access to history through YouTube, I've come to realize how inaccurately I imagined all this. But it doesn't take away from this, my favorite guitar solo.

Guitar Solo #2 "Meet Ze Monsta" by PJ Harvey

The guitar solo (which runs from 2:33-2:53 above) in PJ Harvey's "Meet Ze Monsta" is a master class in minimalism.  In the rapid fire delivery of the single note we can hear, in their most basic form, the two elements that comprise the guitar solo: passion and note selection. In future posts we can examine how note selection can evoke different types of moods. But what's key to look at here, is how much can be accomplished with the passionate delivery of a single note, which makes the rest of the band: the bass, the vocals and drums, much more distinct. As Ezra Pound said, it's not the thing that's interesting, but the thing's relationship to other things - I'm paraphrasing.

If there's anything to learn from this guitar solo, it's the importance of arrangement. Listen to how the rest of the band sets up the dynamic shift into the solo: they pull back for a bit at 2:12, right after the whistle (is that a dj scratching a record at 2:23?), just bass and drums, and then - is that a keyboard? or an organ tone that comes in at 2:27? then - BOOM! - the whole band is back, in perfect unison, pummeling the shit out of this riff. And on top of it is this dentist drill of a guitar note, filling your cavities. Really it's the power of the two tones together: the organ and the guitar, but the juxtaposition is awesome, the rapid-fire staccato of the guitar over the single, sustained tone on the organ. All of which serves to emphasize the power of the rest of the band.

The best guitar solos make the song better. They are mistakenly thought of as personal vehicles to rock and roll glory, and in that regard the guitar solo is one of the most egotistical aspects of rock and roll (and that's saying something!). In this song we see the power of the guitar solo turned inward - or something - so it's not about exulting the guitar hero's orgiastic and masturbatory energies, at least it doesn't have to be. A good solo sometimes emphasizes the power of the entire collaboration. Sometimes, with a little restraint you can end up rocking even harder. Those are just two of the mysteries that haunt rock and roll.

Guitar Solo #1 - "Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol

So here's my new blog, where I'll be analyzing a guitar solo every day, or almost every day - telling you what makes a solo good, or bad, or prophetic, or just face-melting. Today we'll start with the guitar solo in Billy Idol's ode to sexual excess, "Rebel Yell" (runs in video from 2:31-2:54). This solo seems like a good place to start as it weds two disparate elements in guitar soloing: joining fretboard shredding with emotive noise techniques.

See, there are guitar soloists like Eddie Van Halen: virtuosic spazzes, who play very simple fretboard patterns incredibly fast. Generally their solos lack the harmonic content of a player like Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, whose solos are often memorable enough that they can be sung note for note.  These solos are burning with intensity, and dexterity, but the soul, the emotional content of the solo is sometimes absent, or, in some cases, emotionally stunted. On the other hand you have guys like Thurston Moore and Robert Fripp who create walls of sound with unorthodox playing techniques, and what makes these guys good is that even their most out, skronking solo, is still laden with emotion, passion.

In Steve Steven's solo from "Rebel Yell" we hear the spazzing fretboard wizardry, but, and this is what makes the solo kick ass for me, there are these intense emotional moments in the solo created by unorthodox playing techniques. At 2:41 and 2:53 we get some whammy bar action - I heard one of the guys in Night Ranger call it a "wang bar" which is a better name for it than I could ever come up with. Anyway these wang bar dives are not only musical (while still being spazzy); they're also passionate and communicative as musical elements. Idol wisely uses these dives as musical transitions dynamically from wall of sound to soloed drum fills.

"Rebel Yell" is a classic radio rock song, turning up on countless oldies stations. But, if you look closely, you can see the way the song reveals the conditions of late capitalism, in which the media-saturated populace becomes a kind of over-stimulated nymphet aroused to such a state of ecstasy and desire that she can only articulate her desire for "more, more, more" as she writhes seductively on the floor. She is desire personified, and, in America. in late capitalism, desire is sacred.