oh yeah and because I'm a musician with a wild imagination, I wonder
if a hundred years ago, the internet was clogged with posts bewailing t
the introduction of the "Dreadnought" guitar... by 1919 the new huge
guitar (named after a famous battleship of the day) had made its debut...
The dreadnought guitar dwarfed all others, and changed the nature of guitar music as we know it.
So I'm sure there were plenty of Edwardians and those kinky Victorians who were unhappy to see it.
"Those are doomed! they'll never sound like an 1888 Fianchetto parlor guitar.... they have no
beauty to their tone, only brute presence and insistent rhythm... what kind of music needs that?"
haha...
The designers of the dreadnought guitar intended to provide an instrument with which the guitarists
of the day could keep a place in the mix... Bands of the day featured brass instruments in the front line,
along with woodwinds keeping pace, taking solos and getting all the girls... boots on the monitor, of course.
The guitarist was relegated to a place in the back line, playing a chunka chunka supporting style, and seated
next to a nerd with a banjo and a straw boater hat, and the fat guy playing bass (on a doghouse, of course).
The back line was to support the swaggering trumpeteers and the subversive saxophonists... How's a guitar
to get a note in between that?
Well, where I'm going with this, of course is to remind us all what sweeping changes took place in music
in the years between 1919 and 1959, and where the surge of interest in guitar music began, because y'all
know where it has ended up. By 1959, a band consisting of four guys could play the same gigs that used
to require an orchestra of twenty, and get the same money. They could get people dancing, and paying cash
to get in, which is what it's all about. The trumpeteers and Sax players were walking down the street,
looking for a gig in a jazz combo, playing smaller places. Some sax players turned to rock an roll, of course
and the music has a place for them.
So anyway, I don't know if the acoustasonic guitar presented here is a hint of where the future might
go... but I have fun imagining. I still think the musicians of the future will make music on instruments that
haven't been invented yet. ...or on ones that are just in development now.
