Zen Posts: Is Guitar Playing a Form of Music?

  
There is no best or better unless guitar playing is decontextualized from actual music and turned into a male sporting event as it often is. Boys can be ridiculous and/or stupid so much of the time.

Notes on the Guitar as a System

The acoustic guitar is a context unto itself, thus it's appeal for solo work. A small universe of sounds is available to the careful player and listener.

The electric guitar requires an amp to complete a system. Without amplification, a solid or semi-hollow body electric guitar has minimum, barely audible resonance. Amplification brings out the resonances and overtones that are the magical qualities associated with electric guitars. The guitar must be played and amplified loudly to make the electric guitar sound vibrate to its potential. electric guitar = electric guitar + amplifier.

Also, for me, the electric guitar requires the context of an ensemble, as its harmonic/resonant capabilities (particularly at solo volume levels) are smaller than those available to an acoustic guitar in a solo context.

The reason acoustic guitars sound mostly bad amplified is because the piezo and sound hole pick-ups don't "pick up" the qualities of the resonating body (guitar top) that is the acoustic transducer, nor do they pick up the bi-tones that result from a stopping a string with a finger on the fretboard.

The acoustic guitar is about maximum vibration before amplification while the electric guitar is the inverse.

It all about resonating bodies.

Topic of the Day: MICROTONES

Microtones focus your attention to qualities of distance not available in equal temperament.

On an electric guitar, a slide can act as a quasi-third bridge allowing normally inaudible bi-tones to be amplified by pickups.

A slide can also trigger bi-tone multiphonics due to changing the proportions of the strings on the left side of the third bridge. Bi-tones are sometimes called ghost notes/tones in popular parlance, but this name only serves to obscure this well-documented aspect of string vibration.

On an acoustic guitar, bi-tones are normally audible and add to the complexity of the acoustic sound.

Resource: List of Books and Videos about Amps and Electric Guitars

More commercial than academic, but sometimes that's just right or better.

http://amptone.com/booksrecording.htm#_Toc142020948

Topic of the Day: RESONANCE

Resonance. The minimum through maximum vibration potential of a system. Includes inductive vibrations in supposedly unrelated circuits (i.e., natural, human, and computer system environments). Metaphorically, not formally, related to resonance in electronic circuit theory.

 

Microtones bring your attention to qualities of distance not available in equal temperament. It's all about resonance, both in and outside your ears, and the ears' ability to map space in your brain.

In addition to making harmonic use of the modes of limited transposition, he [Messiaen] cited the harmonic series as a physical phenomenon which provides chords with a context which he felt to be missing in purely serial music.^[44] An example of Messiaen's harmonic use of this phenomenon, which he called "resonance", is the last two bars of Messiaen's first piano Prélude, La colombe ("The dove"); the chord is built from harmonics of the fundamental base note E.^[45]  - Wikipedia: Messiaen, Olivier. 1/4/11

Solo or Group Event No. 1 - Amigo

Some ideas I've been working on. (click on image for original size). Let me know what's what, eh?

Temporality

Trying to find my way back into this blog:

Remember what Susan McClary wrote and also, the way Gagaku and Javanese music, and Zen... made me feel about temporality.  I still think time is the most basic musical quality. Multiple times, time spectra, the theory of relativity, and so on. Time span cast in various dimensions.
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Maybe this will turn into a guitarcentric space for thoughts about music and composition rather than an exclusive guitar thing.  That would be cool.