A Brief History of Guitars's Big Bang Part 1

Mr Daniels

Mr Richard Daniels recently visited 433 Eros and discussed the more esoteric, evolutionary pivot points of the guitar. It was a sweeping review of the instrument that eschews the lampooning of popular artists of our past and present in favor of examining the "Big Bang" of the instrument's development. This interaction has been transcribed and will be made available in several parts over the course of the weeks to come. Put down the Zep records and dial up the guitar background radiation detector!

E.D. Out.

Q: Richard, what happens to all student musicians when they try?
A: The way I see it, music starts simple, then begins to fill out to the full hand of a science, and a pretty complex, but understandable, bigger “user” picture. The problem is right there: Once they got the thing nailed down, they had to come up with a system to translate music graphs to the performer and the student… that is where things got too complex to understand, and the student is swamped in too many number schemes… So I figured it out, but it is not easy to explain even though I know it!!! Q: Why do rock musicians just want to do away with all the papers and charts? Why is music so hard to learn?

 A: The student must learn the basics with interest. Here is what happened… Humans eventually figured out the octave and the major chord from the singing string. When they went to try to design a vehicle in the material world to vibrate to the string’s frequencies, well, they came up with their own round of problems concerning that. But once they got the real world whipped, by just simply putting seven octaves of C major across the face of the piano… a string for each note. Equal Tempered.
Q: Then what? A goal had been reached, but then what?

A: With the smallest interval being equalized (with the great octave staying pure with all half steps adjusted to cold, altered points), it forced a new expansion of use, a literal extrapolation of the numbers out into the music world… Think Mozart's most complex Harpsichord piece... The chromatic instruments offered a universal key application, with universal movement inside any one key… that made all the difference and opened the door for the classic period to be carried out…Beethoven had what he needed to push the whole thing inward, so he did… and it held together because of a single universal sized half-step… made the guitar possible too… so I had to mention that… Still, with the orchestra came a crushing, rigid complexity that is still there today. The reality- it is the best system they figured out… It works for them… and it is comprehensive… It is just that free jazz and the blues story grew out of the top of that uptight worldview of “tied down” musical performance… and so it is… I am here to tell you that it started with one note, which eventually produced a five lined graph system that showed the major scale in one key... that is the History of Western Music... That is where "reading music" started.
Q: Do you find that many players actively utilize this knowledge?
A: Is it necessary to know today...? Not to most guitar artists....
Q: So... is there a beginning... so to speak?
A: Well the “founding fathers” of the great instruments realized that the new chromatic instrument forced a resort to a system of “Key reassignment” to eleven other keys other than the one the instrument’s face was built around. So they started to assign numbers to every thing… it wasn't long before the pretty “simple in C” instrument that was so easy to play turned into an extrapolated explosion of adjusted numbers and letters… Know the simple piano in C first… from that fix came the system of 12 keys each with its own 12 degrees, the seven degrees of the major each with its own formal, and number name… then other stuff, like the five black keys, the three minor centers, the chords are all spelled out by inversion and degree names… On top of that, each numbered chromatic note got an alphabet letter… by the time it is over you have lines, dots, symbols to remember, symbols to forget, letters, numbers, modes and a soup of non sense… add to this a student that does not want to bother with it, and you have reached the front door of my world. Like I said, of course, I understand it… The Great Staff became the orchestra’s universal method… I see that… Now see that rockers have an instrument that was first evolved in that world, but now its primary reading staff is no longer needed for the new art.... (to be continued)