Small Talk #9 - Guitars
How did you feel when you saw this week's topic? Did you think, 'Oh, this is going to be fun!' Or maybe, 'Let's see if he screws this up.' Or quite possibly, 'Yawn <click> Honey are we out of TP?!' Some of the riskiest topics for small talk are those that generate a lot of passion. We've all been trapped in conversation with someone who cares more about their topic than we do. It's as if the universe enforces a balance of enthusiasm—the more giddy some people are, the more disdainful are others. Take Dave Matthews, for example, or pickle ball. Guitars might be one of those topics—enthusiasts are rabid, sometimes fetishistic, and that can be off-putting. But let's give it a try anyway.
Guitars
My son is an accomplished guitar player, so naturally I asked him what he’d want covered in this week’s chat. He replied, ‘I would like to know how wood types make guitars sound different and if everyone actually likes their Strats for their sound quality or if they’re just a vessel for effects pedals.’ Now I’ll try to address these questions in due time. But first I want to observe that in those few words he captured the world of the guitar enthusiast. We have: obsession with sound quality, the mystery of materials, the range of guitar types, brand affinity, good-humored insults, and nerdy jokes. So we need to proceed carefully.
Here’s the thing: Everything around us is vibrating all the time. But guitars vibrate with intention. Sound is just the movement of air molecules. If you slap a table to wake someone up, you are compressing air molecules under your hand and sending a wave of those particles into the sleeper’s ear—this wave is what we call sound. When you pluck a guitar string, it vibrates predictably, in a particular frequency. That is, it has a certain pitch. On an acoustic guitar, the vibration of the string passes through the bridge (the strip the strings pass over) into the soundboard (the face of the guitar) and into the chamber of the guitar’s body. Depending on the construction of the guitar, the sound waves inside that chamber cook up nicely and come pouring out of the soundhole in a delicious audible stew.
For electric guitars, the vibration of the string is detected by magnets in the guitar’s pickup, which transfer an electric signal, representing the frequency, through wires to an amplifier, which converts the electricity back to a physical sound wave— by way of the ‘cone’ or round bellows you see in a speaker. Phew. Who’s still with me?
A guitar teacher of mine once told me that you can tell a great electric guitar because it sounds nice even when it’s not plugged in. Post that statement on a guitar forum and you’ll kick off an infinite debate. But there’s a legit principle in what my teacher said. That’s because the materials used in the guitar have a resonance of their own—that is, they conduct vibrations in a specific way, making a unique kind of sound. Many acoustic guitars have a top made of spruce, which is light, soft, but also strong—these qualities enable a thin plank of spruce to vibrate vigorously but predictably. Spruce-topped guitars sound clear and bright. The same effect applies to electric guitars, just less so. The legendary Les Paul guitar usually has a mahogany body, because that wood is very dense and grainy and so conducts sound with a lot of ‘punch.’ Pick up a Les Paul, unplugged, and strum it. You can hear that punch!
But here’s the crazy thing: Every piece of wood has a unique sound quality, different from every other piece of wood. So when you build a guitar (as my son and I once did) you can only approximate the sound by choosing the wood and the specific style of construction. You don’t know how it will sound until you’re done! People make guitars out of almost every material, each with their own sound qualities. Steel guitars sound beautiful and dirty and mournful—great for blues played with a slide. The Taylor guitar company once built a line of guitars using wood from pallets (those flat skids that fork lifts use). They wanted to prove that you can create great-sounding instruments in a sustainable way—and they did!
Electric guitars were born not because someone woke up one day with an urge to shred. They emerged during the big band era because acoustic guitars just weren’t loud enough to be heard with the rest of the band. As I write, I’m listening to Charlie Christian, who was the first really popular electric guitarist, playing with Benny Goodman’s orchestra in the early 1940s. Although his instrument was new and not yet perfected (or maybe because of that) Charlie Christian invented many of the conventions of bebop jazz, which we usually associate with horns.
Since Charlie, there have been scores of great guitarists. They can be ranked, objectively and scientifically, in order of their greatness. Kidding! But if you want to get a taste for great guitar playing, across a variety of styles, I suggest: Wes Montgomery, Kaki King, Robert Johnson, Andrés Segovia, Joni Mitchell, Mississippi John Hurt, Alan Gogoll, Jimi Hendrix, Leo Kottke, and a band called The Night Painters.
And since we love ranking, let’s also talk about the very best guitar of all time. It’s not a Martin D-28, which baby boomers collected until they were unobtainable. It’s not a Gibson ES-335, though I wish I had one! I’ll tell you what the best guitar is: the one you’re playing right now. Because playing a guitar is one of the most gratifying, meditative, soul-stirring, and just plain fun things you can do. Except when it’s not, which is a lot of time, to be honest. But as my son will confirm (as will the three other guitar players in my family), it’s worthwhile to keep practicing, keep playing, keep loving guitars. They never talk politics and always pay you back.
Now as for the Strat being a vessel for effects pedals. (Oh for Pete’s sake we didn’t even talk about effects pedals…). I agree that the Strat seems like a gelded Tele with a vestigial pickup. But then, Hendrix played a Strat! So actually, I think the answer is yes. Hope that helps.
Is anybody still here? Maybe just the guitar players, who are furious. What do you say let’s agree to disagree and head inside and play Autumn Leaves. I’ll do chords and you can lead.
Have a good one,
Kipling Knox
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