10/13/2011

Audio, music, and guitar (as mid-term post)

Van Halen Frankenstrat

Van Halen Frankenstrat by keefer37 Used under Creative Commons 2.0

     Audio, needless to say, is the one of the most famous element of music. I will focus on guitars because I'm a guitarist. First of all, when I was 12 years old, I was not interested in music at all. But the friend of my father gave me a chance to listen the sounds of electric guitar directly. He played "eruption" of Van Halen. I found that one guy posted about Van Halen on his blog. This song was almost all composed by only a guitar. (and drums are only at intro.) That was amazing experience for me. That was only a guitar! "What a loud and cool sounds!" I felt. Listen and watch that song.




     I did not know at that time, but this guitarist, Edward Van Halen, did really advanced performance on this song. A guitar was invented as acoustic guitar at first, and it was made by wood and steel. A electric guitar is, too. Almost all the materials are same, but their sounds are very different. Maybe the time when electric guitars were invented, they would be advanced sounds at that time. But, Edward did advanced by his own techniques, his own fixed guitar, and amps. The important thing was his technique. Other guitarists improved and fixed their instruments at that time, but his technique was the only one. For example, he invented the skill called "tapping". Nowthetime, every guitarists know tapping, and this is essential technique of hard rock music. This skill is widely taught by many guitarists.

     Music is a harvest of audio, but it depends on not only audio but also human technique. I used to have same guitar, but I can't play his sounds perfectly. We guitarists all cannot play like him. This blog posted his interview. In this blog, the interviewer asked “Who are you?”, and the one replied  “Edward Van Halen.” This was his early days and he was just a man. 33 years have passed since this interview, but he has been my guitar hero. Every time I heard "music," "guitar," and "audio," I always remember him. I hope to see his live in Japan.

2 comments:

  1. Excellent post. It has gotten me wondering if there is some way you can include your guitar playing in any of the ds106 assignments. If not, remember you are free to submit your own assignment idea and create your own example project.

    It's clear that you've got great knowledge and passion about guitars.

    Here's an idea, kind of like the Triple Troll - get a picture of a famous players guitar but photoshop it in to a photo of a different famous player and see if people can guess who the two players are.

    What do you think about that?

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  2. Sorry for replying too late.

    Using photoshop and doing that project, that's very interesting! and in addition to that, I will try to attach my playing into ds106 assignment!

    ReplyDelete