Guitar Heroes - Best Selling Electric Guitar for Beginners & Professionals | Rock, Pop & Metal Music Performance

Heard about Joscho by virtue of being a big Tommy Emmanuel fan - and seeing a couple of videos of them together -- just the two of them. I was very impressed and started investigating who this Joscho Stephan is. That led me to this record - - which introduced me to the virtuosos: Bireli Lagrene and Stochelo Rosenberg.This is the only thing I've listened to since receiving it. Sonically it is clean (without added reverb) and present in it's recording approach and the obvious togetherness-approach - all at one time) makes me smile and feel like I'm at a live performance and it blows my mind how these guys amaze each other and luckily the listener in these seemingly 1-take recordings. I have all of Django's recordings, many of other guitarists playing Django, imitating so to speak but I've never heard anyone play with the precision, heart and technique of these four on this record his music as well as other older songs and new ones. After listening to it as much as I have I can now tell who is who on each recording (Joscho is panned to the left side) and it seems like they stretch and challenge each other improvisationally and delight in the back and forth, 'hey listen to this' kind of approach that is a sonic amusement park ride -- and it is pure excellence! Precise filat-picking style, to my ears, is either the Merle Travis-Chet Atkins (finger-picking [one guitar plays bass line, chords and melody/harmonies] which influenced flat-picking [single note solos with ensemble providing bass/rhythm etc] blue-grass) school or the Django (flat-picking gypsy jazz solos with ensemble providing rhythm, chords...) school [maybe an over-simplification - but the later has more riff-experimentation]. The American finger-pickers are great and I love the music that Mark Knoffler & Chet, Tommy & Chet, etc have made and then add the bluegrass flat-pickers which usually color inside the [chordal structure] lines of the chord progression with precision, & speed in front of (usually) other acoustic stringed instrument accompaniment; but once I heard the gypsy style and especially Joscho with one of these three, it was for me the difference in a two-dimensional perfectly lit black & white CITIZEN KANE-movie-making and a WIZARD OF OZ-technicolor presentation.After many, many, many listens I find myself sometimes skipping HEY JOE and SOMETHING, but for different reasons. HEY JOE because, while great ( and with an incredibly accurate JIMI HENDRIX'S guitar rendition of Little Wing as an introduction), the body of the song doesn't have the give and take of other selections maybe because none of the other three guitar 'heroes' are on it (unless I have missed that) - it seems to be only Joscho and his trio - which are great - but it is more in the style of the blue-grass flat-picker approach with some exceptions and in contrast to the other collective selections after a while I want the more Django-esque variety approach - - now that's just me. SOMETHING gets occasionally skipped because it is almost too other-worldly, retrospective, personal if you will in contrast to the other selections (especially coming after the souped up version of HEY JOE) - but with Tommy's amazing double-finger harmonic-chiming and the most delicate soulful playing by both he and Joscho per melody and embellishments... while the rest of the GUITA HEROES' selections are overall lighter and more playful/joyful. I did say I like variety, though.All that to say, GUITAR HEROES is maybe my favorite recording, maybe of all time - so far. I put it up there with THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMY SMITH AND WES MONTGOMERY in my most listened to (starting with the vinyl in the '60's) and RUBBER SOUL. GUITAR HEROES did make me want to explore all four guitarists' other recordings. There are some incredible performances with lots of variety in different styles outside of the straight finger/flat/Django-jazz picking from traditional jazz to bossa/samba to blues to rock - all to be found from these four virtuosos separately and most featuring other great virtuosos like Jaco, John McLaughlin, Stanley Clarke, Stochelo's brothers etc. But it is the back and forth of having that 2nd top-shelf virtuoso Gjango-Gypsy jazz guitarist that takes it up a notch for me; not to say their other works are not incredible, but since I took a bite of this apple, I find myself wanting this chemistry on everything they do/did - - the closest for me is Bireli's Vienna concert with his ensemble featuring Florin Niculescu: violin, Diego Imbert: acoustic double bass, Martin Weiss: violin, Richard Galliano: accordion among other guests including Stochelo Rosenberg on DVD recorded in 2002, released 2004.So if you're fan of Django, Gypsy Jazz, Paris Hot Club-era Django and love finger/flat-picking improvisational virtuosity with great tunes, I think you'll NOT be disappointed!Joscho (German), Bireli (French), Stochelo (Netherlands), Emmanuel (Australia) play the same language: Excellence! I would have preferred a cover picture of their four guitars instead of the back of a pick-up truck, but I'm from Texas!