hofner said:
can he play like joe satriani?
It depends what you mean by 'play like joe satriani'. Sure, he can shred, so can Joe. He can tap, so can Joe. He can do long legato lines, so can Joe. If he sat down with Joe's records long enough and bothered to transcribe them I'm sure he could do a pretty good job of emulating his songs note for note too.
The question is, though, why would he want to? What sets musicians (and any artists for that matter) apart is their *individuality*. Would we all hail Buckethead as the astonishing and original guitarist that he is if he sounded exactly like Joe? Most likely not, since Joe already exists.
It's okay, especially during the formative years as a player to copy other people. Everybody does it to some degree. For years, I wanted to be just like Jimmy Page; maybe for 4 years I listened to nothing but Zeppelin. Then for the next 5 years I tried desperately to be like Yngwie Malmsteen. I can play some of their licks, sure, but I finally realized that that wasn't particularly fulfilling in the long run and wasn't really allowing me to express myself.
The point I'm trying to make is not to try too hard to play like your heroes. Cop their licks sure; absorb them into your library of influences; learn techniques they use, cover their songs, hell, even dress like them for while, but eventually (bad metaphor coming...) just as you mature from a child to an adolescent to an adult, you have to strike out on your own and develop your own voice on your chosen instrument. Well, how you do this is the big question, but the first and most important step (Jeez, I sound like frickin' Confucius) is to know that you have an identity and that you want to express it and emphasise your differences.
Well, I didn't want to end up writing some patronising rant, but I have been drinking, so please forgive me for turning a seemingly innocuous comment into something that sounds alarmingly like philosophy... doh!
P.S. I'm old, so being patronising comes with the territory.
