The more I go out and see live bands, the more I realize that a lot of the younger (some of them my age, actually) guitar players out there are just burning through the fretboard, playing a thousand mph and throwing everything but the kitchen sink every chance they get. Yngwie sounds like David Gilmour by comparison.
 
But comes the rhythm part and the simplest things seem to be a complete mystery to them. I'm not even talking about complex chord voicing - just,  practically anything that's not a power chord. Song after song after song, I spend my entire evening going:  "Nope". "That's not how they play it". "Close but no cigar - try again." "Dude, where's that 7th?!"
 
It's hard for me to believe that people with such mad skills can be so completely mistaken when it comes to rhythm guitar. My guess is that they simply don't care - the song is just a pretext to "shred", so they don't care for the rest.
 
It's kind of funny that after hearing that first solo, I'm devastated, thinking that I'm not worthy of ever touching a guitar again. But after 2 or 3 songs, the guy has said all he had to say in the first solo - all the sweep picking and the fast runs and tapping assorted with a copious amount of squealing and pinched harmonics. And I go from devastated to bored to death because the guy onstage is just vomiting the same solo song after song after song. Just adding more and more squeals and pinched harmonics...
 
Don't get me wrong - I grew up wanting to be the next Randy Rhoads, to be a great lead guitarist. Rhythm by itself did not seem quite glamorous enough for little me. If you had an option, you'd be Angus before you'd be Malcolm. The rhythm guy was regarded as the guy who wasn't talented enough to play lead. (Of course, I know better now...)
 
But it was still absolutely crucial to master rhythm. Playing lead was out of the question unless one mastered rhythm. Even the archetypical modern guitar hero Eddie Van Halen played incredible rhythm guitar. Same with Rhoads. Same with Hendrix.
 
I guess guitar players are just like the rest of them people. Nowadays, it's all about feats. You have a few minutes to wow an audience and a jury, who are both completely desensitized. Lead singers can't sing harmonies. Lead guitar players can't play rhythm parts. It's all about fireworks.
 
The sad thing is that those people are missing an opportunity, playing to an audience that doesn't exist, playing for people who are too busy checkin-in on their iPhones and taking selfies to even pay attention for an entire song. Most of the time, there is an actual audience in the room, people that would love to hear music... Maybe some day. 
 
 
 
 
 

I've noticed that a lot of the superfast players lack feeling in their playing as well. I guess there's no time for feeling when you're playing 50 notes per second.

Just because you can doesn't mean you need to. I go out of my way not to "hotdog". Play what the song needs kind of thing. I've brought this up before in posts. Sadly no one notices until you start playing 50 notes a second.  I mean the people IN the band. I can play a Mozart piece on my guitar and I get yawned at but the sec I do some thing like eruption they say" what a player". Now I play what I like and don't care what any body thinks. I don't play live anymore. This is all true in the forums too. Most think I'm a BOOB here and that's fine with me. 

bayoubill
Just because you can doesn't mean you need to. I go out of my way not to "hotdog". Play what the song needs kind of thing. I've brought this up before in posts. Sadly no one notices until you start playing 50 notes a second.  I mean the people IN the band. I can play a Mozart piece on my guitar and I get yawned at but the sec I do some thing like eruption they say" what a player". Now I play what I like and don't care what any body thinks. I don't play live anymore. This is all true in the forums too. Most think I'm a BOOB here and that's fine with me. 

I think anyone who's been around here for a while knows what a fine guitarist you are Bill.
 
I've said it many times before but I'd far rather listen to a guitar player 'serving the song' than one who's grandstanding with scant regard for what's going on in the tune.

Walking around NAMM last January, it struck me how many booths featured yet another "deedly-deedly-deedly" guitarist. After you've heard a dozen of them going at it, you need to listen to some Dave Gilmoure or Les Paul to recover, and to reassure yourself that the guitar is still a melodic instrument.
 
I'm waiting for Schechter to come out with the world's first two-string guitar made just for power chords. It'll be shaped like an AR-15 with a glossy black finish and skull accents.
 
BTW, it's not only guitarists who struggle with this phenomenon. As a keyboard player, I, too have to constantly choose between taste and flash.
 
Hardly anyone in the audience appreciates a thoughtful rhythm part that complements other instruments, or an interesting melodic lead. But they go nuts when I play something so fast no one's ears can possibly keep up with it. The temptation is always present to say "f*ck it" and just play the same blazing-fast solo over and over again.

I blame Youtube for this. For quite a few years now, a kid can go online and learn all these fast lead playing techniques step by step. It's all they want to do. Not an original note or style in their heads. Very rarely do they practice with a metronome or drummer. It's just "let me see how fast I can sweep pick". When I started my son on guitar that's what he gravitated towards too. I sat him down in the studio and tuned up my strat, cued up "Can't you hear me Knockin" and had him listen to what a cool (imo) rhythm guitar part sounded like. He walked in the next day wanting to learn a few Metallica songs rhythm parts. He can now sit in with just about anybody locally and hang with either rhythm or lead parts. Ya gotta be well rounded

Ah yes, the "stunt guitarists" as Frank Zappa would call them. All fur coat and no knickers. You're right though, the "flash" guitarists of yesteryear were much more melodic and at times a lot grittier. I always liked Dave Mustaine's playing on those old Megadeth albums. Fast, but also quite scary in attitude. And speaking of Frank Zappa, there's another one who had great technique but also a ton of grit and imperfection. His vocal sense of phrasing would be completely beyond most of today's young widdlers. 
 
As for chords, well that annoys me as well. The other day I saw a young guy playing keyboard with a saxaphone player in the subway, they looked fresh out of high school. Very technically adept, they were playing George Michael's "Careless Whisper" but getting one of the chords horribly wrong in that ascending phrase at the end of the melody. I just wanted to step in and say no no no no no, how could you possibly think that's right, did you even LISTEN to the original? But today's youngsters don't take criticism very well so I figured I'd probably end up traumatizing one of them...

You old guys slay me.
 
This is about the nth "what's wrong with kids these days," thread in the last month.  I think I'll start a thread called "old people know everything except when to stfu."
 
You all need to search a bit more.  There are some fantastic musicians from my generation that can play well, and want to do more than shred. 
 
It gets kind of old hearing how stupid, lazy, spoiled, and lowbrow we kids are. 
 
Sorry for the rant, go ahead, ban me, or pillory me, or ignore me, or whatever else you old farts do when someone young calls out your BS.
 
The coffee house is all yours gramps.
 
Jesse Q. Screed

Just like in the *meritocracy* of education, there's a strong force for specialization (liberal arts degrees are passe I guess)  I was always taught to be able to play anything and everything.  Most of the guys I hung out with did as well.  Now we'll have lots of adults who are great at astro physics but have never read the Illiad;  and we'll have lots of guitar players who play the Scorpions but have never heard of Tal Farlow or Andres Segovia.  Actually,  nothing's really changed, except for the fact that I'm an old goat now. Bless