In a Band, Which is More Important? A Rhythm Guitarist or a Lead Guitar Player?
We’ve had a reader question come in on the subject of lead guitar. Let’s take a look:
Question:
Please explain why.
Please explain why.
Answer: The designation between "lead" and "rhythm" guitarist is really a pretty stupid and pointless one.
All it really means is that one guy plays chords and one guy plays solos or a melody. Things aren’t usually that clear cut.
Of course, if you’ve got a song with vocals, people usually aren’t ripping out solos while the singer is singing… they’re accompanying him! playing a "rhythm" part.
With that in mind, I’d say "rhythm guitar" is more important. You don’t often hear a song that has guitar solos and no other guitar parts, but there are lots of songs with guitar and no guitar solos. But once again, it’s a pretty pointless classification to make.
each one is equally important, that’s why its band , like a team, for example can a soccer team play without its goal keeper? can a lead singer play with out a guitarist, like no music background, some people might say the singer is more important, i would say no cos many famous songs are famous by the guitar maybe for example that song, "Kashmir"
I say the rhythm guitar is more important. You can still play music and coherent songs without a rhythm guitarist, but if you only have a lead guitarist, I think it sounds really sloppy and disorganized.
Lead guitar is more important, because you can have a band with lead guitar only, like Pantera, Psycroptic, Maximum the Hormone and many others.
Lead guitar player
I know bands that get by without rhythm guitarist
Depends on the music. Not all bands have both.
I was a roadie for a punk band in the 70s with just one guitar. One thing that Punk was rebelling against was the self-indulgence of 60s & early 70s rock bands. Everything was stripped down to a minimum. Almost as a point of ideological principle, there were NO guitar solos. Rhythm was all-important.
I’ll never forget the withering contempt suffered by the old hippie resident mixing desk guy at one London club, when he asked for a bit of lead guitar to set a level.
The more important will be the one with the most creativity and emotion, whether it’s the lead or rhythm guitar. The main songwriter is the one that is going to be hard to replace.
Lead, because there’s plenty of great bands without them (The Who, The Doors, LZ). I couldn’t listen to music without a lead guitar