Official 30 - lecture 4
music history class, the professor has been discussing about music of the twentieth century.
and what instrument comes to mind when you thin of rock and roll.
electrical guitar?
exactly, I think it's fair to say that the sound of electrical guitar typifies the rock and roll genre which became popular in 1950s.
but really, the instrument we know today was the result of continuous development that started for a practical propose in 1920s.
but long before that even, people were experimenting with ways to modify traditional acoustic guitars.
the first guitars were wooden, this is the Spanish guitar and the strings were made from animal products.
then came steel strings and that let to the lap guitar, which is also call steel guitar, because the player slides a steel rod up and down the neck.
and those are all acoustic guitars, but then eventually we have electric guitars.
over the years, many inventors and musicians contributed the design of these instruments.
and each design was intended alter the sound in some way, at first at least with the electric guitar to make it louder.
so let's get back to when the steel guitar was first introduced in the United State.
it was right after Spanish American war in late 1890s, us sailors who were stationed in Hawaii, then a us territory was very enamored with the music they heard there, Hawaiian music was based on the steel guitar I just described.
some sailors learned how to play the steel guitar and brought it home to the states, before long Hawaii steel guitar music was all the rage in main land US.
it actually had strong influence on the development of several music genres, rock an roll most notably, but also jazz and blues.
anyway by the 1920s, with the advent public dance movement, people would gather in large groups to listen to steel guitar music.
but they had trouble hearing it, especially in the large public settings.
as I mentioned the instrument was played horizontally, on the lap.
since the string face upward, the sound would project toward the ceiling rather than outward to the audience.
something had to be done, because the music venues and audiences kept getting larger and larger, so what would you do?
find a way to amplify the sound?
yes and to do that, inventors started attaching electrical devices, electrical coils to acoustic guitars, and the electronics worked.
coil 线圈
but attaching electronics didn't just effect how loudly you can play, it also changed the quality of the sound.
these early electric guitars are hollow, and these early amplifiers cause vibrations in the bodies of the instruments
hollow: having a space or cavity inside; not solid; empty.
so as the sound got louder, it became more distorted, fuzzy sounding, and what musicians at the time wanted was a pure, clean sound.
so where does Les Paul fit in? wasn't he the first to electrify acoustic guitars?
no, electrified guitars already existed by the time Paul came into the picture around 1940s.
what Paul did was experiment with ways of removing distortions.
and he succeed, he designed a guitar with a solid body that relied solely on electronics.
Paul's solid bodies eliminating the vibrations and thus distortions.
when I think about electric guitar music, I think of Jimmy.
Jimmy, one of my favorites
but Hendrix's style really was all about distortion.
that was so great about the music, also special effects.
I thin a lot of rock and roll fans preferred that than pure sound.
you are getting ahead me here, but good
because the point we gonna make is that the sound of rock and roll changed over years.
and the design and technology of electric guitars made those changes possible.
so whereas Les Paul’s goal was to remove distortion, later musician wanted to produce it.
and by the time Jimmy came around.
essentially, it's Hendrix reinvented electric guitar , in the sense that he created amazing effects and vibrations and changed sound of rock and roll completely.
so eventually people tried to improve on Les Paul model, to modify it I should say.