Marty Friedman has become extremely well known in just about every musician's circle for being an excellent guitar player and songwriter, partially due to his instrumental solo work among various other big-name bands like Megadeth and Cacaphony. So what's his advice to upcoming guitar players? Don't jam the instrumental jams! Friedman was interviewed by Ivan Chopik of GuitarMessenger.com (below), where he spoke pretty extensively about why.
"First of all, instrumental music — don't even go there. Instrumental music is a tough genre. It's the funnest thing to play, because you don't have to deal with any singers. But in reality, it's a very limited amount of people who can stand it. To be honest with you, I'm not a big fan of instrumental music, myself."
And:
"It sounds hypocritical for someone who's released so many instrumental albums, but I think that's the standard to which I make my instrumental music. It's like for someone who can't stand instrumental music; it has to be at this level of stuff. It's far beyond showing your chops and showing what you can do. And the worst thing is how versatile you are, because I don't want to hear a country song, a blues song, a metal song, a rap song all on the same album. A lot of instrumental guys tend to do that because it's like a résumé, which is fine for a résumé, but not for a listening album."
Related: Watch Marty Friedman perform live at NAMM on Gear Gods.
He also stresses big time that developing your identity as a guitarist comes from being in a band and that even on his upcoming Inferno record there are four songs with vocals. I'm down with that logic- if it's just you as the star all the time on an album it's just going to get shreddy and boring, or just poorly written! Friedman wants a band to bring you back in and make you a star guitarist, and he's a dude who knows a thing or two about guitars.
[via Guitar Messanger]
