KENT GUSTAVSON :: THE GUITAR
__________________________________
A Historical and Practical Introduction to the Guitar!
Just read below about the history of the guitar, then pick it up and play it the way you feel best with -- and play with soul!
_____________________________
The guitar is an instrument first used in essentially its present form in Spain hundreds of years ago. Its ancestor is the sitar of India and the lute of the middle east. In the times of great trade during the middle ages, instruments were brought back from the orient, and altered by builders in Spain to create the present form of the guitar. Other lutes were found in many sizes throughout the middle ages, and still today are played in early music groups -- but the guitar has had the most success in sticking around. The steel string guitar used in bluegrass is essentially an invention of the last century, made to produce more sound. The guitar was brought to the United States as a parlor instrument, and was mostly used by ladies to accompany themselves when singing ballads. Early in this century, it was simple to mail-order a guitar from a catalogue.
The guitar had slow beginnings in American music, playing second fiddle to the banjo, a much louder instrument for dances and porches. But with the advent of country and blues recording in the 1920s, the guitar took center stage, adding its orchestral range to thousands of recordings. Among the early pickers of great influence were Maybelle Carter, who developed a thumb-bass style of fingerpicking, Jimmie Rodgers and Riley Puckett, who inserted flatpick runs underneath the singing. With Doc Watson, the guitar first became a lead instrument. Beginning in the 1960s, Doc Watson influenced two generations of flatpickers with his clean flat-picked fiddle tunes and complex runs.
The guitar's role in 'bluegrass' is similar to the piano's role in classical music; it is the instrument which most commonly accompanies the voice, and often the lead singer will play rhythm guitar, (boom-chuck) while singing. Most bluegrass bands also have a lead guitar player (or if the lead singer plays another instrument, only the lead guitar player), who generally plays in the Lester Flatt style of picking. The guitar has become a more key player in bluegrass groups because of the technology in microphones -- now the guitar can easily be heard above the other instruments during a break, or while strumming along, and flashy acoustic guitar solos are now the norm in bluegrass bands.
A guitar can represent the entire band, strumming the chords on the backbeat with the fiddle and mandolin, hitting the bass notes on 1 and 3 with the upright bass, and playing the melodies and runs in between in the place of a fiddle or mandolin. Use the instrument as your drum, and to drive the group, but be careful not to drown anyone else out!
And have fun with it!
For more information on the guitar, google it here!
|
|||
|