GUITAR

Guitar In The Expanded Now

The guitar is perhaps the most recognizable instrument in the world because of it’s role in popular music but also in Jazz, classical, African and experimental music; the guitar is a foundation, for rhythm, composition and tonal expression…

Why has the guitar captured the imagination in such a universal way? I believe that in the late 1950’s and early 60’s the simplicity and portability of the guitar as well as it’s reasonable cost engaged a simple equation, the ease of use, availability, and the advent of the long playing record, this, fired by the media flash of the Beatles, television, counter culture, all mixed in a way with the humble human need and desire for a means of self expression. The guitar became the vehicle, an amplifier of emotion and a means to express ideas and feelings in a new and accelerated context that continues to have permutations to this day more than fifty years later.

The earlier history of the guitar is well documented and it is interesting to study, for
example the luthier accomplishment of Antonio de Torres (1817-1892) who’s design insight
and application define what we know of as the ‘classical guitar’ but also that many
of his design improvements are still in use today over one hundred years later.

Guitar As Psychic Mirror

Any person who picks up a guitar or musical instrument with sincere interest is entering into a relationship with an object that possesses a powerful and profound potential to express emotions, feelings and ideas. In short musical instruments are both psychic mirrors and projectors. A good performer “pours out their soul” or “tells a story by the way they play”.

This quality of the interface between instrument and player and player and audience and what occurs experien-tially in the, being and or soul, that is, ‘on the inside’, is overlooked perhaps because the outer experience, sound and atmosphere fills the circuit so completely and is satisfying in it’s own right at the level that it occurs. But, especially for the musician paying attention to what is going on in the whole arena of the psyche, the minds eye at the hinge of the ear if you will, can not only enhance and excel their learning process but also free them from culturally bound expectations.