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Eddie Van Halen has died

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171–180 of 214 posts

Re: Eddie Van Halen has died

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This deeply saddens me, the pool of people I admire is draining faster than it’s replenished Then you need to stop wading in the shallows of the people you admire and get out in the insane expanse that is the rest of the creative world. In terms of just music alone, there's more talent out there now than there ever was before. Two generations or more of musical education where none really existed before, plus an en…

I got the same feeling as brtkdotse when Chris Cornell of Soundgarden died. "They aren't making them like that anymore". And if they are, I haven't found any. Can you give us an example (like a YouTube link) of a modern guitarist (from the past 15 or so years) that approaches Eddie Van Halen's level of talent or innovation? An uplifting thought is that, like Cornell, although we have lost him, we still have his music…

Tosin Abasi of Animals as Leaders

Plini

Aaron Marshall of Intervals

Misha Mansoor of Periphery

Re: Eddie Van Halen has died

#173

I don't fully understand hacker news I think, I am curious as to why this is still on the front page but the Nobel prize that was announced today has been on page 2 all day (unless I missed its original front page landing) also, RIP Eddie!

Eddie van Halen was a guitar hacker. Not only did he "hack" the playing technique he also hacked the guitar hardware:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstrat

Re: Eddie Van Halen has died

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

forget the lakers, every basketball fan, a billion people around the globe, appreciated and respected kobe. and if you can't recognize the sheer intelligence involved in actively, relentlessly achieving your objectives in a fast-paced, highly dynamic environment at the limits of your physical abilities, while hundreds of others at their physical limits and billions of dollars try to prevent you from doing so, then yo…

Lol.

thank you, i'm here all week. be sure to tip your server!

Re: Eddie Van Halen has died

#175

One of the greats, that completely re-defined guitar, and spawned a new class of guitar players, as well as gear. I remember having played guitar for probably a year, when a friend of mine (who had been playing for the same time) threw on Van Halen 1 on a cassette, and we listened to Eruption. It sounded out of this world, like nothing else I had heard. After listening to Eddie play guitar (on/off) for decades, I've…

Yeah, EVH was majestic and a true sonic innovator! Unlike 99% of other shredders he had a tremendous grasp of pop songcraft, natural showmanship and a sense of musical humor...plus you'd see as many females as dudes at a VH concert! So many Eddie solos are chock full of "Sounds great, ooh where the hell did that left turn come from?! Even better!!" moments. And of course - brilliant rhythm playing with that rich, aggressive tone. RIP Maestro!

Re: Eddie Van Halen has died

#177
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone else find it strange that Van is actually a middle name, thus rendering his name as HALEN EDWARD VAN

His middle name was ‘Lodewijk’, ‘Van’ is just part of a compound last name like Von Richthofen or Fitz Patrick, O’Leary, Di Chirico, etc.

I'd heard before they were Dutch born, but still, to hear that Eddie Van Halen was actually called Edward Lodewijk van Halen makes him sound way more Dutch.

And here I was thinking that Jan Akkerman was the best Dutch guitar player ever.

Re: Eddie Van Halen has died

#178

His music wasn't really my style, but I remember the Heavy Metal effect pedal from Boss that my cousin owned had a booklet in it with the setups of various professional musicians - to show off how they used Boss pedals in different combinations. Everybody had complicated setups with multiple pedals. Van Hallen's "setup" went something like this: Heavy Metal --> cable --> jack --> amp

I think that was just a way of the manual showing you how to have a sound "inspired by" Van Halen, since he famously got his distortion sound not from a pedal, but from a Marshall amp that he ran at a low voltage using a variac (as an aside, the boss heavy metal was famously used by Swedish death metal bands turning all the dials up, not really a Van Halen sound). He also used multiple pedals, such as the Echoplex, M…

Well, you seem to know this better than I do. I was always more into the kind of music you got out of turning all the dials up, like you say. My (older) cousin fancied himself a more sophisticated rocker.

The booklet stuck in my mind because Van Halen was the only musician in there that was anywhere near a Metal musician. The others were all people I had never heard from bands I didn't know that probably played jazz or pop or stuff. Van Halen's simple setup, inaccurate as it may have been, somehow served to justify and enforce my preference for the simple, uncomplicated, no-fuss kind of pleasures I always looked for -and found- in Metal.

Re: Eddie Van Halen has died

#179

I saw on Twitter he has a patent for a guitar... "support device" that includes the greatest patent image I've ever seen: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4656917A/en

What strikes me: the one who draw the guitarist could have done it adding a neutral facial expression (e.g. a jazz musician) but, hell no!, the choice was for a shredding-guitar-solo rock expression. Nice.

he could have made the 142 line ... different too.

Re: Eddie Van Halen has died

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can just sit in a chair and stick a regular guitar in your lap, like lots of people have done. For example, Jeff Healey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgOUzodS6E&t=2m25s (Not trying to turn this into a competition, by the way. His style definitely seems like it was influenced by Van Halen.)

Or you could just play a stick. https://stick.com Fwiw, I would be surprised if Eddie Van Halen was not aware of the instrument, since they were invented in Southern California ~8 years before the release of "Van Halen".

Unfortunately that site is using TLS 1.0/1.1 and won't open in modern Firefox...
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