John Herdt writes about Tommy Bolin:
A couple of months along and I bought the James Gang’s Bang album with Tommy Bolin on guitar. Tommy freaking Bolin. When I heard Tommy the first time all the searching for the perfect rock guitar approach was resolved. Tommy’s tone raised the hair on the back of my neck, and he had a high degree of technical ability. From the beginning of a song to the end of a song, his playing would be interesting and inspiring all the way through, always standing out without hurting the music or interfering with the other players. He rarely played anything that didn’t make sense, and that was a big deal to me. To this day Tommy’s still my main guitar hero, even as I developed my own musical path.
The emphasis is mine. This reminds me of the best writers: they never use nonsensical or unnecessary words. They say in a word or two that which others need more to express.
My composition and rhetoric professor at Morningside had students perform an excercise meant to teach them how to use words efficiently. Students read an article and summarized it in 200 (or so) words. Then they summarized the same article in 100 words, then 50 words. The point was, of course, to get students to think about how to say something with as few words as possible.
HT to JD for the Herdt link.