Dave Wirth
When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana hit the charts, something died: Guitar solos. What Nirvana did, in my opinion, was take the conventional wisdom of learning to play an instrument correctly and flip it on it's head. I really do like Nirvana to be honest, both because their music is good and because they killed the guitar solo without even trying. The 80's hair metal, power ballad, rock-and-roll nonsense had to end, and the guitar solo needed a breather anyways. Nirvana was the catalyst.
The guitar solo often uses distortion to make the solo really stand out. Distortion compresses the sound, meaning that any note that was picked softly is brought up in volume, and any note that was picked loudly is brought down in volume, unless of course the guitarist doesn't play anything. If they don't play anything, they get amp noise and a dreaded drop in volume. Basically all the sound is the same volume unless they don't play. One effect of this is that the guitarist might want to keep that solo going. If they stop playing, there is amp noise, which has got to be the equivalent of an awkward silence. No faults there obviously, because a good guitar solo is a good guitar solo, but the result is that the guitar solo never takes a breath! If the compression and distortion keeps the same volume (ie, loud), and if the guitarist wants to keep on playing, then what else is the guitar solo than a new texture?
I wonder about this because when I listen to John Coltrane's solo on the Miles Davis tune "So What," I hear him searching for sheets of sounds. I hear him searching for new melodic and harmonic textures all throughout that solo, and plopping them right on top of the chords. To me, it's almost like he is trying to create a new texture. The thing is that he has to take a breath in order to keep on soloing. Guitarists, on the other hand, do not need to breathe. The result? Saxophones have a natural ability to pause during a solo, and guitarists have a natural ability to fill up all the gaps in a solo. My guess is that if John Coltrane played guitar, he would have filled up all the gaps with a new texture that would have been unheard of, even today.
