The Best Guitar for Each Genre (Is NOT What You Think)

i want to talk about this ongoing never-ending trend that i see in the guitar community i think it's mainly among the beginning to intermediate crowd but i think generally everybody is a little interested in what others have to say on the subject of what guitar do i need for a great blues tone or what guitar do i need for a nice crispy funk tone or a smooth jazz tone or an epic metal tone what guitar do i need and the answers are exactly what you expect well you need a telecaster for country you need a strat or les paul for blues you need a hollow body for jazz and generally i think those are smart answers if you're looking for status quo but i also think they can be limiting answers so here's my hot take no guitar equals genre and i'm going to prove that to you musical genre is not based on a guitar tone or a drum tone or anything like that it's based on the actual musical structure you can plug in anything you want to the formula if the musical structure is correct then the tools will simply be alternative colors than maybe the listener is used to but you will no doubt be able to identify the genre in question and a perfect example would be a genre that i've already alluded to the genre of country everyone's going to tell you you need a telecaster for country and as somebody who lives in nashville it is kind of blasphemous to say no you don't need a telly for country just what is it about the telly that makes it so country friendly so conducive to those spanky twangy tones well when you think about it it's the pickups it's the tea style maybe the way the neck and the body work together you know sometimes tellies have thinner necks and have that kind of sharper snappier sound that is very conducive to chicken picking whatever other country slang you want to use but you can accomplish that same feel with the exact opposite guitar now what guitar would that be what is the last guitar anyone would recommend for country [Music] gibson sg [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so as you heard there i accomplished telly things picking closer to the bridge to have a bit more snappier sound i actually turned the treble up on the amplifier that i was using which was a fender princeton reverb and i also just had a little bit of slapback delay on my tone in general i played country licks i used the bending of the body in the neck to bow out and create that vibrato bar sound at the end there i used the jimmy page vibrato on the outside of the nut to move the g string sort of like a g bender if you will if you were just listening to that music and not seeing what guitar i was playing did you really care that it wasn't a telly i don't know if the layperson would i think our experiment is proving to be useful let's move on to a different genre sorry i'm like hunched down i feel like i'm in frankenstein's laboratory conducting experiments i need to have better posture moving on we are going to talk about metal metal metal this is sort of the music that is conducive to humbuckers everybody's gonna say well you need a big fat sound you need something that is hot and aggressive but you know what the hottest aggressive sound that i can think of is it's not humbuckers humbuckers are warm and round and you know they can be aggressive if you have the right style of pick attack but a much harsher sound in a good way if you do it correctly is the sound of a single coil the last guitar that somebody would recommend for metal is probably a strat style guitar and you know a really famous strat style guitar and one that is not known for being used for metal a silver sky [Music] [Music] oh [Applause] [Applause] i mean that's epic tone that cuts but there was a raunchiness to the tone and that had to do with the single coils that was just so clear and aggressive sounding it necessarily didn't have the low end of humbuckers but i would much rather have a bit more clarity than a bit more low end especially in a mix like that that's what we're kind of talking about here the overall context is the context of a recording these guitars are interchangeable there is no right wrong answer and i think we've once again proven that by using a single coil style guitar with a genre that usually calls for humbuckers and just the same again going back to the telecaster that guitar is notorious for being awesome for metal because it actually has a lower end bump and there are multiple signature telecasters that i can think of that are used by players in the metal and rock genres so moving on to another genre that has a very specific kind of guitar that is associated with it jazz you like jazz i like jazz and when you think about jazz again we're framing this from the perspective of maybe a beginner intermediate guitar player they're gonna think big hollow body guitar something along those lines a guitar that would make sense to be seen in a picture from 1939 and i love the sound of big hollow body guitars they are very specific and nostalgic sound i would say so let's take the exact opposite approach let's take the most modern sounding and modern looking guitar that i have a prs custom 24 with a floyd rose bridge and pickups that would make your mother cry [Music] [Music] this so that example i think is the reason you shouldn't limit yourself to what the traditional guitar for a genre is being called for because any hollow body guitar you're not going to have a whammy bar to create maybe a new sound you don't necessarily have to be constricted and i'm not saying you shouldn't seek out these classic guitars and just have the sound for whatever genre you're going for but i'm also saying don't be afraid to experiment and don't ever feel like you have to do something to get a sound because in the end tone is in the fingers and you know all the effects that surround it to enhance what it is you're going for so i think we've finished the experiment i think we've proven the hypothesis that guitar does not equal genre let me know in the comments what you think about this whole subject thank you for watching and until next [Music] time [Music] you

Channel: Music is Win

Views: 2,074,418

Keywords: best guitar for blues, best guitar for metal, best guitar for funk, best guitar for jazz, best guitar for shredding, best guitar for country, best guitar for rock, guitar comparison, best beginner guitar, best guitar for every genre, Tyler Larson, Tyler Larson guitar, Tyler Larson music is win, music is win

Id: LQkGaKw7UC4

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 14 2021