![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse10.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/mcbride1.jpg)
The iconic guitar sound
Get My Guitar blog profiles Ritchie Blackmore, including his sound, influences, top 5 tracks, technique, and historical equipment. While our regulars probably won’t find anything new there, it can be recommended as a well written introduction for the uninitiated.
Fans often note that Blackmore’s playing is not just about technical prowess—it’s about emotion, storytelling, and creating an atmosphere. His solos are often described as journeys, with each note carefully chosen to contribute to the overall feel of the song. This focus on musicality over flashiness is something that resonates with many guitarists, and it’s a key part of why Blackmore’s work continues to inspire.
Read more in Get My Guitar.
Thanks to Uwe Hornung for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
I’ve read more in depth analyses of Blackmore’s style, technique and mannerisms over the years, but this has the advantage of you not having to be a guitar nerd to understand it. Fit for general consumption. And written by someone who genuinely seems to like Blackmore’s guitar playing.
May 7th, 2025 at 02:58Written by a bass guitarist, hmmmmmmmmm, interesting. Thanks Uwe, enjoyed the Blackmore article. Cheers.
May 7th, 2025 at 06:45He was (rock phase) incredibly talented not only as a virtuoso guitarist, showman ..but also an great,great,great author ..he borrows an idea, a guitar phrase then makes it better in his own way ..he also knew how to choose a team around him (probably if he played football he would have been a good football manager)
May 7th, 2025 at 08:30He made his musicians better ,especially the singers .He left bitterness in communication but also to their former singers a beautiful musical legacy for his further career ..except for Candice who got everything from him ,women have always been the stronger sex, mentally and with an advantage with natural attributes, men mostly give up ..and Ritchie gave up ..he also gave up RnR,love is win !
Who made Ritchie better as a musician during his career as he grew up ? ..I only think of Jon Lord, a Ritchie compatible musical partner…and Ritchie had a fight with him in 69/70 .. “Enough with the classics, let’s play hard rock ” or I’m leaving”. Good decision
“Written by a bass guitarist, hmmmmmmmmm, interesting.“
That is not that surprising, Herr MacGregor, unlike their more percussively oriented colleagues in the rhythm section departments, the vast majority of bassists can read and write.
May 7th, 2025 at 13:26@#1 You make a good point about the article not talking over the average reader’s head.
May 7th, 2025 at 21:41The thing that I liked about Ritchie’s guitar playing was he could go from playing something in kind of a mediocre way to coming up with absolutely sensational at the drop of a hat. Because he’s always improvising/experimenting; refuses to play a song the exact same way he’s played it before. I was just listening to his opening guitar work on “Mistreated” at the California Jam in 1974. Just a phenomenal sound. I think Jon Lord was every bit as good and improvisational.
Uwe you may be pleased to know I have ordered Jon Lord’s Sarabande cd from the local music store. Still easily available according to the young chap who owns the store. I did notice that online before hand, however I thought I would support the young couple who have taken over running that business. That young guy went to a King Crimson concert while over in Germany in 2019. His father is Dutch and about our age, so I would presume that is where he has heard that era’s music, at first at least as a youngster. Did you see any of those KC concerts when they were in town? Cheers.
May 8th, 2025 at 06:53Way to go, Tassie! Yup, Sarabande was only rereleased a few years ago, it’s a consistent seller in Jon’s not so consistently selling catalog, I don’t think it was ever deleted in the CD age. It’s not just a great Jon Lord album, but guitar, bass, drums and percussion are sublime too. It’s simply the most consummate communion Jon ever achieved between a classical orchestra (the orchestra of Hungarian Cold War exiles does a great job here) and a rock line-up – magic!
Popular among proggies like you who salivate over it:
https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=15020
Naw, I’ve never seen KC live, the closest I got was a UK gig, a band that was initially planned to be a KC II of sorts.
May 8th, 2025 at 12:34@ 4 😀 😀
May 8th, 2025 at 13:05Am I the only one to notice this
‘he often used the middle and bridge pickups to achieve a biting, aggressive tone.’
That’s a load of bollocks. Blackmore never used the middle pick-up. In fact, the signature Strat that carries his name doesn’t even have a middle pick-up.
Or how about this: ‘taking classical guitar lessons and becoming proficient in sight-reading music’
AFAIK he cannot read music proficently. Jon Lord was the only one in the band who was proficient. I guess Don Airey, Steve Morse and Simon McBride are as well. But I am pretty sure RB is not proficient at it, if he even reads it.
The article reads like it was written by a not-so-well-informed AI. It’s garbage.
May 8th, 2025 at 20:59It is amusing at times the drummer and bass guitarist ‘conun(drum)’. Reading recent Nick Mason comments in relation to the Pink Floyd ‘Live at Pompeii’ movie re release coming out. It was in relation to the footage of him dropping a drumstick and quickly recovering in the instrumental ‘One Of These Day’. Nick reminds us of the drummers thoughts in a scenario this, ‘whenever you make a mistake you naturally look at the bass player and then shake your head’. Cheers.
May 8th, 2025 at 23:31#9 Of course, I noticed the middle pickup, but the article was written by a bassist. They might simply be overwhelmed by the number of pickups on a guitar relative to a bass. What do you call those guys who like to hang out with musicians? Bassists and drummers 🙂
May 9th, 2025 at 11:25Carl, I think it’s likely that he learned to sight-read (it wasn’t uncommon when you learned classical guitar at the time, hell, even I could sight-read a little when I took bass lessons with a jazz bassist in the late 70s though I was really crap at it and have lost it all). No idea whether he ever used it with Joe Meek, but at the Concerto he had a note stand before him (though that might have just contained arrangement notes). He also mentioned once in an interview that he could see the disdain on the professional string players’ faces when he handed them the notes for the Stargazer string part in the studio, if Ritchie didn’t jot down his ideas himself, then someone else must have done it for him.
Ritchie is not totally oblivious of music theory like many rock guitarists are, I’ve noticed that before, he can also do the talk. And finally: He did play a little cello for a while – hard to picture learning that without the aid of sight-reading.
But I too doubt that he was/is anything near “proficient”. If you don’t use it all the time, you tend to lose it.
You’re right about the middle pickup: With DP and Rainbow Blackmore eschewed using that. Whether that continues to be the case with BN I dunno, some people say that the middle pup of a Strat is the best one for electric, undistorted rhythm playing which you hear quite a bit with BN. That said, at least live Ritchie plays his Thinline semi-acoustic Tele a lot when playing electric (and not digging out his old Strat for a little rock extravaganza).
Little Tassie drummer boy: One of the many benefits of bass playing is (i) no one in the audience even registers your mistakes, (ii) your bandmates do (sometimes)!notice something is wrong, but they can’t pinpoint who is responsible! I’ll guiltily admit that I have sometimes played a wrong note at rehearsals ON PURPOSE, just to see the guitarists scramble about wondering what might be wrong with the tuning of their guitars. Despicable me. 😈
May 9th, 2025 at 12:52@9
“The article reads like it was written by a not-so-well-informed AI. It’s garbage.”
That was my impression as well… an AI generated article to try to disguise the fact that it is really an advertisement for guitars and related equipment.
May 9th, 2025 at 22:14@ 11- someone has to make the cups of tea and change a light bulb occasionally We are NOT totally irrelevant. I am talking about drummers of course. Cheers.
May 9th, 2025 at 23:02@ 12 -Well most of us have always held the notion that bass guitarists are a despicable bunch, he he he. Seriously though Uwe, that makes me wonder is what if those two guitarists were bass players before they crossed over to the other side. Or were they just ignorant of what the engine room was actually capable of or more to the point the musicians in the engine room. All good fun of course, although asking the question, what was their reaction when they realised that you were the culprit? Cheers.
May 10th, 2025 at 07:06Who said I ever told them? 🤣
Most rock guitarists don’t really have the harmonic grasp that you are turning their A minor 7 into a C Major 6 if you play a C rather than an A root note against it as a bassist. That is the determinative might of a four-string! Silly little possums are too busy fiddling with their amps to get “their sound”.
May 10th, 2025 at 11:29Me and my wife saw Robert Plant yesterday. An excellent show. Between the opening act and the main act, my wife and I had the following conversation:
Wife: Couldn’t they have tuned the guitars before the audience came in?
Me: They do that too.
Wife: Ok, and why do they now take the guitars off stage?
Me: Maybe so the paranoid guitarists can check the tuning before the show.
Show starts, intro tape running. Guitarists take the stage.
Wife: What the hell? The guitarist is tuning again?!
No amp tweaking though! 🙂
May 10th, 2025 at 11:41Same thing with Edith 😂, she’s no great friend of tune-ups either. Edith also doesn’t like it if an acoustic guitarist makes “squeaky noises” sliding up and down the strings with his fretting hand: “Why is that so noisy?” 😂 As such, Jimmy Page who is probably one of the noisiest acoustic guitarists on earth, really having made squeaky slides his own as a style element, would have a hard time with her.
I’ve only seen Plant solo once (the other time was with Page which was in effect an amputated Led Zep show), but that one gig was impressive in a very collected elder statesman and serious artist way – without being boring or pretentious.
May 10th, 2025 at 22:37Yeah, your experience of the one Plant show you saw pretty much sums up this gig too. And he treated us to a joke about Whitesnake!
May 11th, 2025 at 20:37We wanna hear it!
May 11th, 2025 at 21:35Would have the Page slash Plant sojourn during the mid nineties ever occurred if not for the disastrous Page Coverdale mess. Me thinks not, Percy was peeved and rightly so. Bummer I missed that tour when they were out here in Australia. Not moaning of course, just a memory of a momentary lapse of reason. Was it a good joke Svante or a bad one? My journo instincts have kicked in and I am in desperate need of a fix. Cheers.
May 11th, 2025 at 22:01Would you share the joke, Svante?
While I think that Plant is much more of an interesting artist these days than DC is when it comes to exploring new territories I always thought it a joke itself that he accused DC for stealing from LZ – when they stolen so much from the old blues men. That’s were DC – a dedicated record collector and blues fan – got many of his inspirations too. But at least he didn’t just change the name of a song and claimed it was his tune….
May 12th, 2025 at 05:43Well, it wasn’t a joke in the vein of, “two rock singers walked into a bar”. He was talking about how things could have been different, him being on stage with loud guitars playing old [LZ] material, faithful to the original versions, instead of being on stage with a mostly acoustic quartet. Then he rambled on about something that I didn’t hear but it ended with, “back when I was in Whitesnake”. Most people laughed but I am sure there was one or two in the hall that actually thought he was in WS for a while. 🙂
I usually take reports about artists disliking each other with a grain of salt. Someone says something about another singer and fans and/or media blow it up to a big conflict. Then it often turns out they are good buddies, or haven’t even met.
But Plant sure likes to joke or comment on DC in particular. I’ve quoted this here before, but I think the Plant song “Tin Pan Valley” is about people *like* DC vs Plant’s approach to his career in his later years. It at least always makes me think of DC:
“My peers may flirt with cabaret, some fake their rebel yell”
May 12th, 2025 at 13:40(in an earnest effort to be all supportive) For a joke (re)told by a Scandinavian, that wasn’t all bad, Svante! 😁
DC is a barn-door-size easy target for inviting ridicule, you can’t blame Percy I think. If you dye your dark hair blond, start yelling in a falsetto over blues riffs (after you came to fame as a low tenor/baritonish replacement for Ian Gillan) and allow some Dutch A(d)rian(a) the Pagemaid to cosplay with a bow in your videos aping Zep iconic images, you have really asked for it. Plant’s scathing, yet finely measured vitriol was well-deserved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRlx12uJqZM
(Mind you, DC does a credible job here singing a demanding song – but it’s not really his voice, it’s an emulation of Plant’s voice. And compared to Plant’s ethereal and androgynous high vocals, DC comes off like a trucker dressed in drag. Much of Plant’s undeniable – did I just write that? – charm as a singer came from the effortlessness with which he let his voice entwine with Page’s riff cascades – with DC is sounds like hard work.)
Except very rarely, DC never stopped making music for a teenage to young adult rock audience. Plant otoh, left Led Zep, n’er looked back and started making music for people his advancing age. He’s to me a role model in aging gracefully as an artist – really in a league with David Bowie. Neither as staged as DC nor as ramshackle as IG sometimes can be. Even when Plant does something tongue-in-cheek and not quite serious, it is immaculately rendered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BoUzzFXuVU
May 12th, 2025 at 14:56@24
Uwe, you write such a neat piece, and then ruining it with this:
“ramshackle as IG sometimes can be. “
Ian is a gentleman who can dress and behave just as he please, he has earned that right ☺️
May 12th, 2025 at 21:51Tin Pan Valley indeed, a wonderful song and the lyrics say it all. Cheers.
May 12th, 2025 at 23:44“but the article was written by a bassist. They might simply be overwhelmed by the number of pickups on a guitar relative to a bass …”
More than one’s a crowd, Crocco!
Bliv rolig, Karin, with ‘ramshackle’ I meant the musical environment IG sometimes chooses. I’d rather hear him with Elton John, Robert Fripp, EvH or Jeff Beck for once than the minor league players he likes to surround himself with on his solo outings (there are exceptions of course). Phil Banfield, his longtime manager (to whose services Ian seems devoted) simply hasn’t handled the brand “Ian Gillan” very well over the decades. For someone who sang the original Jesus Christ Superstar (in a version still ranked by its writers as the best one), was/is the most influential and longstanding singer in a band like DP plus even fronted Sabbath for a while (with an album that is these days widely positively reappraised), Ian’s solo exploits are curiously low-key. No comparison to how Robert Plant presents himself musically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPZ575AC3wQ
Part of that is of course Ian’s very endearing “I don’t give a damn”-trait and I like that too (Plant is perhaps a little too controlled in his presentation and in what projects he participates in), but I wish sometimes in the past he would have had someone sit him down and tell him in no uncertain terms what a good project is and what isn’t. Moonshiners, resurrected Javelins, Steve Morris, his solo touring bands all the way up to the Live in Anaheim one or his participation in Rock meets Classic, he’s selling himself short. I hear more devotion to detail in Roger Glover’s, Jon Lord’s, Don Airey’s, Steve Morse’s, Glenn Hughes’, Ritchie’s & Candice’s solo work (DC’s devotion to/obsession with detail is in contrast actually often already killing the music making it sound overcooked) than in Big Ian’s solo releases. The last one I would qualify as thoroughly professional was Accidentally On Purpose (a great album) and that was likely only because Roger hates sloppy work. That was nearly 40 years ago! (You may add his WhoCares single with Tony Iommi as well, but again that was likely due to Tony’s quality control.)
PS: Ian’s sense of dress has improved greatly over the years (or his personal assistant just does a good job), I don’t think there ever was a previous era where he was dressed as well as he is today.
PPS: Why was there never another collaboration between Colin Towns and Ian? I’d love to hear those two on a project today (just Colin’s piano and Ian’s voice) with Colin writing the music for Ian. Instead we get that pleasant, but hardly cutting edge and even slightly sedate Steve Morris stuff and his run-of-the-mill AOR songwriting …
May 13th, 2025 at 15:50@27
“Bliv rolig, Karin, with ‘ramshackle’ I meant the musical environment IG sometimes chooses”
Ok! All right! I know I seem to go in defensive mode whenever I can detect you’re about to trash the brilliant vocalist of Purple 😄
May 13th, 2025 at 19:38