What is your favorite thing about Edge's guitar playing?

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U2girl

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Is it:

- when it seems as if he's puting bits together-like a sonic puzzle? (example: Promenade, Bad-UF album)
- when he makes a thick, angry, blistering sound? (example: Surrender-War album, Zoo station)
- when he's just all over the place? (example: The fly-AB album, Pride)
- when the sound makes you imagine a picture in your mind? (example: Walk to the water, Heartland)
- when he just burts out all of a sudden?(example: solo in Acrobat/Lady with the spinning head)
- when his guitar seems to be weeping ? (example: ending of One, WILATW)
- when the sound seems to be floating in mid air? (example: Kite)
- when it's full of energy? (example: Where the streets have no name, Elevation)
- when he plays sparsely, yet he makes so much with it? (example: Walk on except solo, With or without you, Always)
- when the guitar gets playful (example: Mysterious ways, Party girl)

[This message has been edited by U2girl (edited 11-28-2001).]
 
Nothing especific, it's the whole package. He's unique. And he moves me.

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"To me a rock and roll concert is 3-D, it?s a physical thing - it?s rhythm for the body. It?s a mental thing in that it should be intellectually challenging. But it?s also a spiritual thing, because it?s a community, it?s people agreeing on something, even if it?s only for an hour and a half." (Bono, as quoted in the book U2 The Road to Pop)

Brasil is the country of the future. And it will always be that way...(my translation of a popular saying)
 
Everything U2girl said, and...

EDGE himself.
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Wuv Edgie wedgie....

disco
 
Speaking musically, I love everything about it.

Speaking non-musically, I love the orbit of his hips when he plays. Such a subtly sexy man...
 
there's one guitar solo that i really love and it's "love is blindness" on the "Stay" cd single. it gives me chills whenever i hear it. i love it!

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touch me, take me to that other place, teach me, i know i'm not a hopeless case

[This message has been edited by nellie (edited 11-28-2001).]
 
I love everything about his styles, and though he's progressed by leaps and bounds through the years, there are some characteristics that always stay with him: my favorite is the little staccato-twitch he has (best example: New Year's Day, the album version of which i still think is some of his best guitar work...all at the age of 23).
 
Originally posted by kerc:
His simplicity. He never, ever, goes overboard. Even his wild solos on BTBS live fit perfectly. How he uses the precise tone and effects for each song. The way he plays with the delay, how he inserts notes "between" the delayed sound, making complex patterns. His ridiculously precise rhythm. His skill at creating simple two or three-note riffs that stick like glue to your head.

I have to second this-- to me Edge's beauty is in his simplicity. Watching him play such songs as Bad and WOWY live, you realize that he's playing the notes very slowly compared to the complex, overlapping sound that comes out of his amps.

And those very simple riffs, they DO stick in your head-- Walk On, One, I Will Follow. These would be boring from any other artist, but Edge seems to make it all come alive.
 
Originally posted by OzAurora:
the solo in 'In God's Country' is just amazing
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Exactly, also in Bullet the Blue Sky is one song I love cuz of Edge, and I threw a brick thru a window and An Cat Dubh and Electric Co... and etc

If I continue I'll never end...
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AnPhisto

Official BonoBabe'sBitch

Do you feel in me
Anything reedeming
any worth while feeling
it's life like a tightrope
hanging on my ceiling...
 
i have to say all of the above, and what really made me believe that edge rules is the way he plays. he can play some simple things, and make them sound complex, and when he gets complex, he isn't making those gross guitar god faces that you see. he just does a damn good job and lets the music speak for itself.

and he's hot.
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It's really hard to say. Achtung Baby is not my favourite U2 album but I think it might well be the best for Edge's guitar. I just love the quality of his sound--not just on that album, on all my favourite ones. It's so pure and beautiful. There's something about his tone I don't quite hear in anyone else's guitar playing.

And just the combination of notes, sometimes. Simple, but perfect. Take Streets. I get chills when I just THINK that riff, let alone hear it. It couldn't be more beautiful and spine-chilling. Pride and UTEOTW are similar.

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One day we'd reach the great ocean
At the end of a pale afternoon
And we'd lay down our heads just like we were sleeping
And be towed by the drag of the moon


-Sting

[This message has been edited by scatteroflight (edited 11-28-2001).]
 
- when it sounds like everything is exploding? (example: Mofo at the ending and at the end of "mother..." parts, ending of Until the end of the world)
- when it sounds, well, hot?
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(example: Even better than the real thing solo)


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"It's about finding your way into the music." - Edge

"Something inside said this could be everything in your life." - Bono

"U2 as a band does things nobody one else can. I think that is a very powerful thing." - Larry

"Adam believed in the band before anyone did." - Bono

[This message has been edited by U2girl (edited 11-28-2001).]
 
my favorite is the echo-ish effect, primarily seen in their earlier work from Boy and October and the intro to Streets, Beautiful Day a bit. That sound that doesnt sound like Eddie Van Halen kind of guitar but sounds like U2 guitar rifts that dont sound like what you think a guitar would sound like, like on Ultraviolet etc.

Obviously its hard to explain what I mean!
 
Great,great post. We need more posts like this one.

It would be all of the above for me, but the thing that creates the 'U2' sound is 2 notes, played on the first 2 strings of the guitar, 7 frets apart. Edge OWNS that combo.
Those 2 notes have made Bad, WOWY, ISHFWILF, Pride, Mofo, SBS,IWF and so many others. It is amazing what he can get out of 2 notes. He is more of a painter than a swordsman.

Also, as someone mentioned,Edge is the master of muted strings. What an atmosphere he creates from that!
 
His simplicity. He never, ever, goes overboard. Even his wild solos on BTBS live fit perfectly. How he uses the precise tone and effects for each song. The way he plays with the delay, how he inserts notes "between" the delayed sound, making complex patterns. His ridiculously precise rhythm. His skill at creating simple two or three-note riffs that stick like glue to your head.

All in all, he's my favorite guitarist and one of the motivations for me to learn to play guitar at the ripe old age of 27 (I'm 30 now.)

Keep up the great stuff, Reg.

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k e r c

La aventura del comienzo
La intriga de lo incierto
No temas y busca lo nuevo
S?lo empieza desde cero
 
great post


I especially like how Edge seems to be playing simple stuff and still it sounds like crap when you try to reproduce it (example: I still haven't Found ...)

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Salome
Shake it, shake it, shake it
 
- when it doesn't really sound like it's U2?
(example: In a little while, Grace, Stuck)
- when he makes sort of a dreamy sound? (example: Unchained melody intro)


[This message has been edited by U2girl (edited 11-28-2001).]
 
EVERYTHING you mentioned U2Girl.

And also, for me,it has to be how happy he looks playing that guitar-and how obviously devoted he is to it.

Oh, and also those sexy riffs
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. He's the HOTTEST guitar player ever in my humble, biased, opinion
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If you are really good friends with The Edge, you can just call him The~ Adam

The right side of my brain is kinda redundant~ Larry
 
Personally, I've always been drawn to Edge's guitar playing because to my ear it sounds so... almost feminine. I mean, even when he's playing that loud solo in "The Fly", I just never get a sense of super-macho posing that some guitarists bring to their playing. And I like the fact that he doesn't "waste notes", as Bono described it, so whenever there's a longer solo coming along it feels like a gift. He never makes me roll my eyes and think, oh God, not another self-indulgent guitar wanking. And visually, he always has this aura of understated, tasteful dignity without looking like a bore. Hell, he even looked tasteful in that stupid electronic-cowboy costume (which I love BTW),
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I like the tones that the Edge uses. I think that is one thing all guitarists at least respect him for.

Creativity and unorthodoxed playing has to be another trait. Streets main riff is a simple riff, but his creative use of tone, delay etc. make it seem more than it actually is.

I like how uses his guitar to create setting that fits the song/ lyrics.

His playing on "Bullet" imitates the sounds of planes/ bombs,

On "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," he plays with the rhythm to create a marching sound that fits with the image created by the lyrics be it a peace march or the marching that comes before battle.

"Beautiful Day" where the tones and harmonics sound like a plane getting ready to take off and off they go(fits the video).

"Until the End of the World" the Edge sounds like the world literally coming to an end at the last part of the song.

Or Walk On - I was always wondering why the arpeggio was so simple and plain (I thought the Edge was half-assing it) but listening to it again it really does sound like bird taking flight or at least flapping its wings. C'mon Bono does say fly for freedom.

Although as I learn guitar more and realize how technically the Edge isn't that great (Van Halen like play impressesme alot), I'm learning to appreciate what it means to work wiuth limitations to create something different or the beauty of minimalism.

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~ "You can't resist her. She's in your bones. She is your marrow and your ride home. You can't avoid her. She's in the air; in between molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide." ~ RC
 
I absolutely looooooooove Edge's solo on EBTTRT...

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"I don't know you,
But you don't know the half of it..."
 
The little thing he does at the beginning of the Mysterious Way-Irving Plaza.Really it bedizens the song perfectly.I think I haven't heard anyhting like that on guitar.
+
All of the above

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all this THAT
 
the way he doesn like stand out in your face but just stays part of the music and doesnt come up with lame noticeable solos but with really deep, yet less conspicous ones. oh hes a good one.
...the force is strong with him
 
Thanks to Salome and tomtom for praising me. I guess someone would have started a thread like this sooner or later, it just happened to be me.

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"It's about finding your way into the music." - Edge

"Something inside said this could be everything in your life." - Bono

"U2 as a band does things nobody one else can. I think that is a very powerful thing." - Larry

"Adam believed in the band before anyone did." - Bono
 
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