Fusion Guitarists

[reventlov]

Holdsworth in his early days played for a while with a guitarist by the name of Ollie Halsall, in a band with drummer Jon Hiseman. He's acknowledged the influence of Halsall on his own playing. Halsall was a strongly jazz-influenced rocker, a very under-rated and little known player but a very talented one; sadly he died in the early 90's. He's a favourite of mine, with a style that would probably appeal to lovers of fusion. His best work was probably with an early '70s band named Patto - you can hear him on The Ollie Halsall Archive - Patto [albums] - check out 'Money Bag' and 'Give it all away' to see what he was all about, he was away ahead of his time.

[DMatthewsBand07]

I'm not really much of a fusion fan right now, but I really was during my transition from rock to jazz. I've always loved Latin stuff like Los Lonely Boys and Los Lobos so Santana is up there for me. I remember back when I was about 9 years old I had 5 or 6 of his albums. 5 or 6 albums of one artist isn't a lot anymore (I've got somewhere around 25 Dead albums now with collection still growing) but back then that meant you were a fan. Absolutely love Santana, with all my heart.

Phish is great. Trey is a great player. I know how some of you jazz guys feel about Trey but I love him. I mean come on. Ever heard the song "Contact". It goes a little something like this...

The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road.
The tires are the things on your car that make contact with the road.
Your car is the thing on the road that takes you back to your abode.


... marvel of modern songwriting. Just messing. But really, "You Enjoy Myself", "Rift", and "Divided Sky". Have some great playing. "Eliza" is a chord melody composition. Beautiful. They're weird but I love Trey and Phish.

George Benson is great. Most of the time anyway. I love his really swinging stuff but the smooth stuff just drives me nuts. Phenomenal guitarist, beautiful voice. He's one of those guys that you feel like just has complete command of the instrument.

Love all the obvious ones. Pat Metheny, Scofield's pretty cool most of the time. I'm a big glues guy so at one point I was realllly in to Larry Carlton. I got a copy of Last Night (live album he did) and pretty much burned a whole through it listening to it. For about three weeks after that, all I did was kick in my overdrive pedal and play through my Miles Davis Hal Leonard book. good stuff.

[guitarplayer007]

Speaking of Larry Carlton and others like him, is there any where to leatrn their style of licks ..i.e. jazz mixed with blues and rock. I really can't seem to find and books on it
Thx
Ken

[fep]

Speaking of Larry Carlton and others like him, is there any where to leatrn their style of licks ..i.e. jazz mixed with blues and rock. I really can't seem to find and books on it
Thx
Ken

Check out Robin Ford and Larry Carlton's web sites. They've got instructional material on their sites. And I know there are some free transcriptions of some of Larry's solos on his site

And there's the time honored tradition of ruining your albums trying to cop solos off of them, i.e. playing the same part over and over ruins the vinyl. But now a days you just burn your cd to your computer and get software that loops and slows down a passage and you're good to go.

Learn the solo then analyze to see if you can figure out what the theory is behind what they're doing.

I really enjoy the way Larry can go 'outside' but at the same time it sounds so 'right'. He uses several devices for this, like when the band is playing G7 he might do well known substitutions likd think Fmaj7 or Eb major or Db7 etc. But one that as far as I know is unique to Larry is he often uses something he calls a super arpeggio.

Super arpeggio: start on a chord town and then alternate major 3rd and minor 3rd intervals. Depending on the chord tone you start on you might first start with a major or a minor interval but from there you alternate the intervals. You've got to experiment a bit to figure out how this works.

An example:
Bands playing Gmaj7
Say you start a lick on the low G, it would go G - B - D - F# - A - C# - E - G#!, see how that alternates maj 3rd, min 3rd, maj 3rd, min 3rd, maj 3rd, min 3rd, maj 3rd. Try it

You wouldn't necessarily just run that arpeggio, but you would use those notes as your stand-in chord tones that you are playing and playing off of, i.e. you are embellishing and playing passing tones and perhaps still considering the underlying Gmaj7. You end up with a bunch of additional options to mess around with. Also you wouldn't always play the whole thing but just might choose bits and pieces of it.

What's cool is when Larry does this type of playing that G# can sound consonant over a Gmaj7. And what's also cool is sometimes you can make the G note be the note that sounds dissonant against a Gmaj7 chord. Try this and see if you agree that the whole thing sounds consonant except for the last G note,

[guitarplayer007]

thx for the riff

[gratefuldeath]

I worked in a record store as the jazz specialist, and my favorite new fusion guitarists are:

David Fiuczynski - Plays fretless and fretted solidbody (double-neck style). One of the only guys who are experimenting with oud style microtonal jazz. Jazz enthusiasts should also check out the work he's done in Hiromi's Sonicbloom.

Solo:

w/ Hiromi's Sonicbloom:

Eric Krasno - Funky as hell. Bringing in the new wave of Jazz funk fusion as a member of the bands Soulive and Lettuce.

w/ Soulive:

Per Gade - just unbelievable. First saw him playing fusion guitar in this video online...

w/ Billy Cobham:

Chris Buono - Does unbelievable work with hybrid picking & guitar effects. Check it out...

Jimmy Herring - This guy's just amazing. Great tone, rhythm, and tons of virtuosity. Though, to be frank, you might want to skip past the stuff he's been doing with Widespread Panic (I found the vocals to be unbearable, but I'm sure Jimmy's still tearin' it up in his lead guitar playing).

Steve Vai - I know this guy's been around for a while, but he's new to me. Mostly because I prided myself on hating rock guitar players. Now I'd consider much of his solo work to be fusion. If you haven't already checked his stuff out, I assure you it's worth while, and if he's good enough for Zappa, he's good enough for me.

[Fleury1982]

Hey Guys i'm from Brazil i search more 3 years alot shred's not famous (4 hear something new) i'll show u my list with best names i found ... i hope u like

Benny Janson
Alessandro Bevenutti
Marco Sfogli
Luis Moreno
Leo Mellance
Gianluca Ferro
Stef Burns
Stephan Forte
Daniele Gottardo
rez abbasi trio
Luis Maldonalle
Jimmy Bruno
livio lamonea
Fabrizio Leo
Eddy Palermo

good fusion players not famous try in youtube , emule , myspace u will like guys

[carlosc]

Hey Guys i'm from Brazil i search more 3 years alot shred's not famous (4 hear something new) i'll show u my list with best names i found ... i hope u like

Benny Janson
Alessandro Bevenutti
Marco Sfogli
Luis Moreno
Leo Mellance
Gianluca Ferro
Stef Burns
Stephan Forte
Daniele Gottardo
rez abbasi trio
Luis Maldonalle
Jimmy Bruno
livio lamonea
Fabrizio Leo
Eddy Palermo

good fusion players not famous try in youtube , emule , myspace u will like guys

e ai cara, procura Tuniko Goulart ouve o solo dele no tema 'daqui a pouco' ve o myspace dele tambem... ele e brazileiro tambem e por vezes tenho aula com ele, mto legal o cara