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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I have always thought about that summer camp I was telling you about and how this Guns’N Roses unplugged ballad made the change. If it weren’t those acoustic guitars maybe I would have still loved rap at this age, even if I doubt, since probably rock would have finally broken through one way or another. Today, the acoustic guitar I have in my room is one of the 3 things I need, along with my computer and my digital camera. I play every day and it clears my mind when I get back home after a long and busy day. I am also in love with electric guitars, but that is another story, I can not play the electric guitar every day since I live in an apartment and I do have my neighbors, you know…

For me, acoustic guitars are one of the most beautiful things on this earth, the sound is that pure and clear and in the middle of the night, after a few drinks with your friends at a party, this is all you need.

An acoustic guitar is the best way to bring back the long gone past

Do you realize that there is nothing better to bring back the memories of the past than an acoustic guitar, a bunch of old friends and a bottle of wine? Of course, this is if you know how to play that guitar. If you have that magic trio, then all that songs that you have thought forgotten come to life again and everybody will start singing along. That is why I love acoustic guitars, for the fact they remind me of all those lovely high school parties, of late night college fun, of playing on the seaside by night or by late nights around the fire in the mountains.

The acoustic guitar was part of my life since many, many years and I don’t know if I could live without it. I love electric guitars, I love how Joe Satriani makes those alien sounds and how Steve Vai pushes the music to where no man has gone before, but most of all, I love “Patience” of Guns’N Roses, I love Mr Big’s “Be with you” and the whole unplugged movement that started, in my universe, with Nirvana’s unplugged sounds.

That is why I love acoustic guitars…

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I remember the feeling I had when I first started to like rock music. I was in a summer camp, during high school period and it was this girl, one of my class colleagues, who was a big fan of Guns N’ Roses, and I mean really big fan of Guns N’ Roses and their music. I remember back then I used to listen rap and dance music and totally rejecting anything related or only close to rock music.

Back then, Guns N’ Roses’ “Don’t cry” was in heavy rotation on radio here in Romania and I had a lot of chances to listen to it, but I was just…turning off the radio just to not listen anymore since I was feeling that inside me, something is changing with each note I was hearing and I just didn’t want to. I was such a stubborn teenager back then, I guess…

So, I was running away from “Don’t cry” because I felt that anytime I was hearing it on radio, on TV or anywhere else, my love for rap music was fading away and it seemed less and less interesting, personal and close to my soul. Instead, rock music was gaining more and more of it. “Don’t cry” was getting to me and I was running away, I was fighting the feeling that was growing inside me for the lovely electric guitar sound, those starting riffs of Slash’s Gibson guitar and Axl’s scratchy voice. Of course, back then I had no idea what guitar Slash had, I only knew a thing or two about electric guitars but not much.

Anyway, I remember that a few months before this, I had bought an acoustic guitar of smaller size from a friend of mine (back then I didn’t know that acoustic guitars come on sizes so it didn’t make too much difference to me). I can not tell you now why I bought it, I was listening rap, no rock, but I think I just found that brownish acoustic guitar one of the things I must have so I’ve bougt it and how handy it came from that moment on.

Coming back to my story, I was in this summer camp and this girl brought with her 42 tapes (I am dead serious!) with Guns N’ Roses and some other rock bands, but mostly Guns N’ Roses. Of course Guns N’ Roses doesn’t have that many tapes, but there are compilations, best of, albums, live shows and this girl had them all! And I really mean all, plus tones of black t-shirts with Guns N’ Roses and the skull. We had some Walkmans with us in this camp and I remember borrowing tapes from her and starting to listen.

And the acoustic guitars broke the defense line

I remember the moment I dropped the defense line and I let myself in the hands of music…And, most of all, I remember the song that made this change possible…

It was not “Don’t cry”, even if it is of the songs I really love even today and it was part of my transformation. It was “Patience”, a song that broke my heart in two, a song that I found so sweet and clean that I could not resist anymore. I came back an other person, I came back a rocker. I remember sitting in the dark while driving back from the camp, at night and listening Patience over and over again, I remember the acoustic guitars, the clean sound, the sparks in those treble sounds and Axl counting in the beginning…one..two…

And so a rocker was born, a guitar player and an avid seeker of new sounds, thanks to Guns N’ Roses, thanks to Patience, thanks to acoustic guitars and their lovely, clean sound. And thanks to that girl…

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