Mr Richard Daniels recently visited 433Eros 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! We continue the discussion of musical theory and how it applies to the evolution of the guitar. Richard Daniels is a frequent visitor to 433Eros. We always enjoy our time together watching the universe slide by.
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E.D. Out.
R.D. The pleasures of the classic period were only new once, and that was during the classic period itself… then the classic period never really went away, as far as the music was held in esteem and commonly performed… The whole thing with Playing Classical Music of Any Kind… it seems like a learned, artificial effort to me… It all seems already done... when I hear it...
The guitar we have is the end of a long line.. that is all… it is more developed than you think. A large part of the story had already ended before you were born.
Argue keeping music acoustically pure if you want… I am announcing the New World Guitar: The children own the future of the guitar… for it is melting again into any and all instruments, for the future holds an instrument that will be controlled by the nerves, and thought, of the human body directly… the destiny of all instruments is to serve as stepping stones on the way to a more personal experience of music’s perceived ecstasy.
E.D. It seems almost to be a manifesto of sorts....
R.D. I imagine a future deal where you place all ten of your fingers on some sort of large glass bowling ball sized thing… your thoughts will then transform and produce the outgoing musical signal… Piano, violin, guitar, horns… all the same thing… transcending the physical world, your thoughts are the music… you think, the speaker shakes…
So my gospel includes all of this, and forces the student to see that my vision is not that the guitar “won” the war exactly… The guitar is what we have after the dust settles… and the human goes to sleep, and awakes inside the world he made… Guitar Centers on every corner all around the world… Selling the thing… feeding the masses… fulfilling the universal need. I have seen that it is good.
E.D. Is there a down side to this notion?
R.D. My realization is this: To stop along the way and “stop focus” on any one instrument is to ultimately fall short of my real goal of understanding music itself to my own satisfaction.
The specifics of the history: Which instrument did what/when/by whom… The pre-established schools of devotion to one’s own instrument (my own included)… All of this has worked together to cause an artificial competition, a critical distraction along the way… These tangents have worked together to blind me to one, rather simple, profound, underlying fact: It is actually the single tensioned string that has won the big global prize of history, not any one instrument with any one name. When the guitar was fitted with an electro magnetic pickup, it was on its own from that point. Centuries of developed acoustic consideration, out the window with the arrival of Les Paul's log guitar… the classic quote from Les Paul:"But I don’t want it to shake…"
R.D. So the single string was the master vehicle ALL ALONG… and all through Western Music History. It was ALL just a NEED DRIVEN game to get to the free guitar… from here the fall off point will be to greater freedom still…. The beauty of the guitar is that the artist’s fingertip is still on that string… no matter who is the king of France…
So the guitar arrives into our world with the touch of the singing string, but the resultant note is a DIGITAL COLOR, and transformed away from the sting into a virtual music world. So the end of the story is the singing string, the fingertip, and their resulting electric footprint made simple… that is where we are now…When the time machine came out of the other side—the man and the guitar were still there, but all else had changed….
E.D. Interesting.. biological, electric... almost like McKenna's ESR theories at work... the guitar is the mushroom...?
R.D. Well, the pre-existing physical universe we found ourselves inside of when we first gained consciousness is still here, and so are the desires of mankind that has driven one long passion play from the jungle vine to the “Hands On” crystal ball (or something like it, the instrument of the future). The need to express is the driver in the pilot’s seat… The instruments that humans invented along the way are the bus wheeling down the road… Any bus will do…
The electric guitar inherited the core beliefs of Western Music… the musical inventions of the centuries before… The guitar is the temporary vessel that the human, natural, divine “energy of the grail” is channeling at the present time.
E.D. Richard, where is it all going?
R.D. So to stop along the way, and try to freeze an instrument… that does not work… the instrument will grow past anyway… if it is the destiny of that instrument…
So here is what I wish… To help in my effort to educate those that want to know… I wish I could throw aside the powers of life and death… and I wish we could all sit together in a living room for an hour of violin recital from Paganini, then another hour from guitar great Andre Segovia, and another hour from Yngwie Malmsteen… afterward … we would see… first hand… the playing out of the Grail’s life… and it would be nice to ask them some gentle questions… Maybe tell Paganini the big news… of his talent continued… then a few hours of jazz guitar...
E.D. What is the future of the guitar?
R.D. All Universal guitar performance, works together to cement the destiny of the guitar as the most sensitive, versatile, and worthy "thing" to inherit the grail story... History was going to be made one way or the other... so the story I tell is that "The Power of the Grail" fell to the guitar naturally through use... Newly updated and fully adapted to the latest technology, the guitar was there all along, waiting, for the developing artist to come calling...Things happen for a reason, and there is a good reason to understand why the guitar ended up all over the world, digitized into a working musical signal, past its physical origins, and wearing the crown of global live stage performance.
So behind the curtain of today's Totally Global Electric Guitar Stage is the silent "finished classical violin model" from centuries ago... The guitar was the next violin in history...The guitar grew in the shadow of the violin... Overall, the single string walks off with the "Universal Trophy for best musical vehicle on earth." And now I see we are all living through a sort of "Finish Line" for Western Music... An eclipse of events... The effort, taken all together, to make all instruments has melted together... and the ending is not as humble as the beginning... Rock Guitar Grail History points towards an underlying Art of Expression. It defined itself as it happened...
After the human filter, there is only one instrument: the child "about to touch" the keyboard. The touch of one finger on a singing string. From inside the single note, he can hear many, so my work begins again. In the future there will be "hands off" instruments. At that point, all instruments of history will serve as individual stepping stones toward a world where a new family of musical stuff will allow a complete assimilation of all previous efforts to lasso a bit of music out of any particular instrument. So, maybe it will go.... you sit in the studio and "think violin playing" and you and everybody else will hear a violin playing however you want.
So it all leads to you being a sort of a conductor where you sit in a chair and play a whole orchestra - with newly invented, "just thought of" instruments if you want- just by thinking "about it"....Music created by thought.... could get tricky pretty fast... anyway... it could end our tuning struggle... just think in tune!!!
The future of the guitar is therefore a place where guitar playing will be accomplished by "Thinking about Playing the Guitar." Certainly I already do a lot of that!!! Good Luck...
