Blog post #11: Dadolescent Rockers

A Dadolescent Rocker is a guy who, after a Saturday afternoon spent choosing cushion covers with his wife, finally says enough is enough and decides to rekindle a teenage dream. He goes online and orders a brand new, cherry red Fender Stratocaster guitar from Andertons.co.uk. It’s an American-made one. A good one. Expensive. One like the pros play.

The Dadolescent Rocker’s goal is to recreate the muscular guitar style of certain famous players in the Classic Rock/Blues Rock genre. In rank order, the most-admired and emulated players are:

1. Jimi Hendrix
   
2. Stevie Ray Vaughn
   
3. Angus Young
   
4. Eric Clapton
   
5. Slash
   

Following these players, in no particular order, are the likes of Kenny Wayne Shephard, Joe Bonamassa, Popa Chubby, John Mayer, Jimmy Page, Eric Gales and Richie Blackmore.


More than simply emulating these guitarists, Dadolescent Rockers (DRs) aim to recreate, precisely and in fine detail, the original versions of their famous guitar songs. The “tone” must, of course, be spot on: being a DR often goes hand-in-hand with a degree of gear-nerdery. The original guitar solos must be replicated note-for-note. Transcriptions of the solos are bought from online teachers. DRs often go as far as to recreate small mistakes the famous guitarist made on the original recording.


This insistence on attempting an exact replication of the original guitar parts always seemed odd to me for a couple of reasons:

1. Often, the original guitar solos are WAY too ambitious for the DR’s current level. So, the end result is a bit naff, despite them often owning great guitar equipment.
   
2. The idea of precise replication is against the spirit the original music was played in. Hendrix, Clapton and SRV never played their OWN songs the same way twice! Their much-copied guitar solos, for the most part, were improvised. While I agree that a period of imitation can be useful before starting to improvise or before coming up with your own guitar solo ideas, DRs rarely make that leap. They tightly hold on to playing the original guitar solos forevermore.
   
   

Other typical DR behaviour when first playing in a band:

• Placing his amplifier on the floor next to his legs and then complaining that he can’t hear his own playing once the rest of the band starts playing. His ankles can hear his amp very well. The other players can hear his amp very well. Perhaps too well. As the DR’s ears are positioned five foot directly above his amp and in the shadow of its speaker, he keeps turning up the amp’s volume to hear it better, deafening his band mates, who in turn increase their volume to match, leading the DR to again increase his volume, and so on… A vicious cycle begins. A volume war! The trick is for the DR to place his amp on a stool, or tilt it up somehow and then stand further in front of it, so he can better hear it. Also, he can play around with the EQ rather than the brute volume control. He can try to find frequencies where his guitar sound can cut through the mix and be heard more clearly (usually this will be the middle frequencies for the electric guitar). Ultimately, the degree to which the DR will hear himself distinctly will depend on the song arrangement (see the chapter titled Arranging the songs).
  
• Bending notes inaccurately. The Classic/Blues Rock genre requires guitarists to bend notes, i.e., stretch guitar strings to increase pitch in a way that mimics the old-time Blues singers. The DR has not mastered this skill. It is not just a case of arbitrarily stretching a string when the TAB (written notation) indicates a bend. There is a precision to it. Some bends, for example, a bend from the flat 7 to the tonic, require you to bend the string to an exact pitch. You can use a little vibrato at the top of the bend, but you need to vibrato around the correct pitch or it will sound out of tune. Other bends, for example bending the 4th degree of the scale, don’t need to end up at a particular pitch, but you should use a certain technique to get such a bend to sound good. Again, you can’t just stretch the string a little and think the job is done. The technique for these type of bends is to bend slowly to begin with, then fast at the end. And, the bend should be muted while the pitch is still ascending. All of this needs to be executed quickly. The technique takes a while to master, and it should be practised slowly to begin with. If I were to plot this bend on a graph, with the y axis as pitch and the x axis as time, it would be a hockey stick curve: a slow incline to begin, then a sharp increase. The line would stop while still ascending. Probably it’s better to listen to an example to get the idea. A good example would be the very first lick of Eric Clapton’s solo in Strange Brew (from the album Disraeli Gears, 1967). The bend happens around 1m20s into the song. Clapton bends the 4th degree of the scale and he bends it way sharper than it should be. He used the aforementioned technique though, so it sounds great: bend a little to begin, then bend strongly and cut the sound off while the note is still ascending. Don’t let the note descend at all before cutting the sound off by muting. Otherwise it will sound like a demented electronic cow mooing. This mooing is the hallmark of a DR’s solo.
  
• Over playing. Composers of orchestral music never write a composition in which ALL instruments play ALL of the time. They make use of the full textural palette of sounds the orchestra has to offer by using different combinations of instruments and having some instruments sit out and be silent for periods of time. Even compositions for smaller groups of players, like string quartets, have instruments sit out and be silent for periods of time. Unlike musicians in the classical tradition however, the DR will NEVER sit out and be silent, not even for one second. When the song begins, he begins, and he only stops making sounds when the song ends. This can even include playing an extravagant guitar solo while the singer is trying to sing. In addition, there is often a lack of dynamics in his playing. For example, he won’t lighten up his playing during the verses and get busier during the choruses. He’ll just be equally busy the entire time.
  
• Making noise between songs at rehearsals, thus rendering any discussion of the songs and their arrangements impossible for the rest of the band. It’s tiresome to constantly have to ask the DR in your band to stop fiddling with his instrument. This really slows things down at rehearsals. It’s super amateur behaviour. In the DRs mind, the rehearsal is his time to blast out and use his equipment to the full. He’s just having fun! He can’t do this at home, for his wife and neighbours’ sake. His noise-making in rehearsals between songs may take the form of general noodling or twiddling dials to perfect his ‘tone’. He may also tune up using a headstock tuner while his guitar is at full amplified volume. He could simply turn the volume down on his guitar to tune. This is band etiquette 101. Ideally, the DR should rent the rehearsal room for half-an-hour before each band practice, so he can set up his sound, blast out on Foxy Lady or Voodoo Chile and get it all out of his system before the rest of the band arrive.
  
• Digging a hole to fall down. A DR will often play fully-strummed chords (several strings played heavily) and switch mid-song to playing a guitar solo (one string at a time played lightly) with no attempt to electronically adjust his volume level. By thrashing away while playing rhythm, and initially setting his volume to this rhythm part, the DR has set himself up for failure. This is what I call digging a hole to fall down. When it comes time to play the solo, the DR will have to hit his strings super hard for any of it to be heard. And even then, all that will be heard is the initial attack of each note, not the sustained tail end of the note. This gives his solo what I refer to as a “plink-plonk” quality, which is far removed from the soaring, stratospheric solos of a Slash or a Dave Gilmour, for example. Graham Stove and Mr. X, who were mentioned in previous blog posts, both suffered from this plink-plonk affliction. The cure is to bump up the volume of the guitar by several decibels for the solo. This can be done using the volume control on the guitar, although perhaps a better solution is to use a pedal of some kind. For example a volume increase could be gained by using a volume pedal, a clean boost pedal, an overdrive pedal, a pedal which switches amp channel or an EQ pedal.
  

Summary

DRs are new to the game. They may have played a little in their youth, but have only picked up the guitar again recently, within the last couple of years. Some DRs will advance to a good level quickly and some will not. If you meet a DR who is exhibiting the traits mentioned above, then perhaps you should avoid them in a band context, at least for the time being. A novice DR would rate around 8/10 on the musician toxicity scale. You’ll end up wasting a lot of time trying to correct certain aspects of their band playing and you’ll also waste a lot of time continually asking them to be quiet between songs at rehearsals, so that some discussion of those songs can take place. Those DRs who have already been in a band or two are a much better bet.




Mark Baxter (c) 2024