The Elusive Guitar

       You may love to hear the guitar played but not wish to become a musician. Even so, you can still become hypnotized by the mix of soothing and savage sounds that flow from six dynamic strings. In this article we will look at three ways to a richer and more informed guitar experience, for the non-player. The first two paths are very straight-forward...The third will require time travel and a little imagination.
       As basic as it sounds, the first key to guitar knowledge is through sound. One must hear the mellow tones of the acoustic and the thunderous crash of the electric. So get out your music collection. Go through it carefully, just listening for how the guitar fills in or sometimes takes centre-stage. If I could recommend just one song for you to experience, it would be "Sunlight on Water" by Carlos Santana. Pay attention to the emotion it raises in you. What rhythms capture your spirit, what sounds stay with you for days? Do they comfort, disturb, delight?
       You can also have a guitarist friend play for you, (I can almost guarantee they would love to be asked) or go hear a concert or listen to a busker on the street. The guitar is always there to be heard. This is the guitar - elusive yet dynamically present, just as Les Paul claimed.
       Secondly, besides sound, the guitar has a visual presence with its many beautiful styles featuring various woods and woodgrains. Some electrics have eccentric art painted on the face and headstock, or even on the sides and back! Mark St. John of KISS has his own creation, a huge mouth with teeth painted across the guitar body. It is interesting what we humans have done with this string creation. Many visual messages emerge to combine with the sound. Some of them are quite dark, some are funny, some are romantic. Online you can find photo contests for guitars, with large galleries of stunning images. The guitar we 'see' has gained its own immense power to inspire awe.
The third key involves time-travel. If you enjoy retracing history, this won't be difficult. A fast trip through 400 years of time, from 1610 to 2010 can be exciting, like a magic carpet ride. Hang on and speed back to the 1600's!
       Around 1610, when the Renaissance was in full swing, Italian cities hosted many street musicians playing lutes, theorbos, vihuelas and chitarrones. The composer Monteverdi often wrote madrigals, or secular songs (as opposed to the religious songs of the day), specifically for their type of audience. The classical guitar evolved from three main sources: lute, vihuele and lyre. It could also have been influenced by the Greek kithara. The words 'guitarra morisca' and 'guitarra latina' actually appear in 13th century literature, in a Juan Ruiz poem that describes two stringed instruments. The vihuela players were possibly similar to today's street buskers, entertaining shoppers passing by in the main square of many towns in Italy in the early 1600's. In fact, a pre-1510 engraving shows a player plucking a vihuela by the roadside. Who knows? Perhaps the first busker!
       Next came the baroque guitar, so-named by Anton Birula. It was small, about the size of the modern baritone ukelele, and had nine, sometimes ten gut strings. A painting c.1672 by Johannes Vermeer depicts a young woman holding one of them. Notable makers of these new instruments were Alexandre Verboam II and Dominico Sellas. History records at least one famous player of the baroque guitar, one David Ryckaert III, who lived from 1612 until 1661, in Antwerp.