Electric guitars or the universe of sound

OK, it may sound fancy but I will explain you in just a second why I named my article “Electric guitars or the universe of sound”.

I named it this way since more than acoustic guitars, electric guitars open a world of sounds that reveal infinite possibilities. There is a lot of science in how an electric guitar sounds, in the way the sound is set by the guitar player or by the sound engineer, the sound needs to have certain mathematical level of trebles, of bass, but if you listen to those guitar heroes that you look up to, you will see that they all have their unique sound.

Electric guitars sound different because of many parameters that should be taken into consideration, from the wood type the electric guitar is made of, to the amplifier parameters and all the way to the particular way the player knows his way around music.

Even the position where the guitar strings are pinched matters when you speak about sounds of electric guitars and that is why all those guitar heroes sound that different.

I picture electric guitars sounding in a “visual” manner

I am a visually oriented person and I “see” everything, including sounds. Maybe it is difficult for you to understand what I mean, but picture this: let’s take a 70’s electric guitar player, let’s say Jimi Hendrix and his astonishing way of playing the guitar (by the way, I am not a big fan of Hendrix, but I do appreciate his perspective of the music) and Joe Satriani, a real God of electric guitars, in my opinion.

When I picture the sound of Jimi Hendrix’ electric guitar I see it as a tape running, flying, twisting in the air, but as a colored tape, I mean like a 2 faces limited thing, in one word…a tape. That, in my opinion defines the whole period of the 70’s from the point of view of how electric guitars sound.

When I think about modern electric guitars, when I think about how Joe Satriani makes his futuristic sounds, I see an infinite, fluid, conic shape, with a small base, some kind of a 3D tube that narrows to the infinite end, reflecting a silver-like light. This is the way modern electric guitars sound. The whole music of Joe Satriani sounds like surfing with the aliens, if you know what I mean…

I don’t know if you agree or not, this is my way of seeing the music, this is the way electric guitars make me feel and imagine music. Various electric guitar players give me different feelings, different impressions.

For example, if I think about Slash of Guns N’ Roses I think of him as having an incredible equilibrium, the way a cat has. Remember, a cat is said to always fall on her feet; this is what Slash makes me feel. Each time I see him playing his Gibson I have a damned ugly feeling that, look, now he’s going to miss a note, see…now, not yet…aaa, he’s going to miss the next one..But you know something? Despite this feeling of insecurity that Slash always throws on me, he always manages to put there as many notes as needed in order to make the song work. Without being one of the best electric guitar players around, Slash has other qualities, in my opinion. He is very melodic and has his unique style of playing. But that will probably be the subject of an other post, sometimes in the near future.

I could speak like this for hours about electric guitars, about how they sound and how various guitar heroes play and how they sound, but for the moment I stop here hoping that you have understood why I named my post “Electric guitars or the universe of sound”…

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