Electric guitars have been a part of my life since my mid-teens. Obviously they’ve really been a part of my entire life, inasmuch as their sounds form a backdrop to most of our lives, etc. But I’m being more specific here, and talking about my own playing of the instrument. As a kid acoustic guitars – both steel and nylon strung – were very much part of the childhood environment. So early efforts to learn guitar, and occasional tinkering with instruments that were lying around were part of the fabric of young life. A penchant for mellower jazzy sounds lead to a love affair with the nylon strung ‘classical’ style guitar that persists to this day. But the electric was nearly always there as well, floating around.
Bizarrely, despite this long relationship, it’s only very recently that, thanks in part to Jack Stratton of Vulfpeck fame, my longstanding relation to the electric guitar finally clarified itself somewhat. In one of his excellent Holy Trinity videos Stratton describes his approach to or view of electric guitar, as in effect a pitched/harmonic tambourine. This immediately chimed massively with my own history with the instrument, wherein it’s always been primarily rhythmic and chordal. Whereas for some guitarists, including some I love deeply, Grant Green springing to mind, it’s all about melody lines and soloing, for me it’s always been primarily about rhythm parts and chords.
That’s finally beginning to change: over many years I’ve occasionally dabbled in constructing licks, and even brief solos, in my private recordings. But just recently I’ve actually started practising scales. Something I’ve sedulously avoided until now! I’ve also started to take a deeper interest in the instrument itself, such that I’ve just enjoyed setting up a recently acquired Squier Strat (pictured above), adjusting the truss-rod, bridge settings, etc.
Having long wanted to build my own guitars, I’ve slowly been gathering the necessary gear to do so. But the idea had always been to make acoustics. Seeing folk online, and others, inc. people like my step-father Malcolm, building electrics has me fantasising about that as well now! So far all my electric guitars (excepting basses) have been Strats, or Strat-derived. I have deep and growing hankerings for a Tele’, a Les Paul type, and some form of hollow-bodied jazz axe. I had long-term loan of a beautiful Heritage jazz style guitar from our pal Patrick. One like that, of the deeper bodied Gibson or Epihone variety as played by, say George Benson, as opposed to the thinner 335 style, is high on my wish list.
Hofner 191
A recent obsession with learning parts to Fela Kuti tracks, amongst other stuff – bass, guitar and drums, and more – has even got me fantasising about making a twin necked axe (like the Hofner 191 pictured above), for use with a loop pedal, so I can record live grooves and then drum along to them; a rhythm section that never bores of modal grooving… That really appeals to me! And to conclude this post… I love how YouTube contributes to both the exploration of the history of these fabulous instruments, and also provides abundant resources for learning how to play them.