Smithsonian Magazine has a retrospective on the 70th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster. That very popular model of electric guitar has been manufactured since 1954.
The Stratocaster also had timing on its side. It came out amid two other transformative innovations: television and rock 'n' roll. Sales picked up once Buddy Holly showcased a Strat on the "Ed Sullivan Show" in 1957. For the American and English kids who came of age in the '60s—Hendrix, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, the electrified Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival—the guitar's look was as groundbreaking as its sound. "Cool" depends more on appearance than on wiring, and the Strat's double-cut profile (producing two "wings" at the top) and sensuous body lines were mind-blowing. It looked, one early '60s British pop musician recalled, like "the equivalent of a bullet-finned '59 Cadillac."
Not to be confused with air guitar.
Previously:
(2016) Don't Give Up on the Guitar. Fender is Begging You
(2015) Our Musical Instruments May Become Obsolete
Related Stories
The Times of India has an article that suggests all (or at least most) of our musical instruments may become obsolete because of the invention of a new system of musical notation.
The theory is that western musical instruments are designed with our octave based system of discrete notes because of the limitations of the musical notation system available at the time. Because multiple instruments playing together had to harmonize, it was necessary to limit the actual tones that were playable to what could be written down on paper.
Without the limitations of the notation, the instruments might have been designed to play other notes than the octave system we have standardized on.
Western music took a wrong turn with tempered tuning, a system which made tuning keyboard instruments easier and helped keep fixed-pitch orchestral instruments in tune with each other, says Dr David Ryan, Edinburgh-based music and mathematics expert. Tempered tuning, "reduces the number of potential notes available, none of which (apart from the octave) are actually in tune."
However technological advances now allow music to return to Just Intonation (JI), a theory which applies the mathematics of periodic waves to the science of instrument tuning, and ensures that two notes in the same interval share the same harmonic series. In a research paper, Dr Ryan writes: "JI is a desirable tuning philosophy since it has a mathematical grounding in the physics of sound, and subjectively (to most people) its harmonies sound better and purer than the tempered approximations."
Dr Ryan has created a "new notation system for Justly Intoned music, in a format which can be inputted into a computer using an ASCII computer keyboard, to aid computer sequencing of such music. With this new method we will be able to score music in a way we could never do with the octave based notation system we've been using since the middle ages.
Such Just Intonation music, unfortunately may not be playable on many of our discretely tuned instruments such as pianos. Even the frets on a guitar lock you out of Just intonation.
A Sitar allows the playing of music written with Just Intonation, as do some synthesizers.
Each holiday season, thousands of teenagers tear gift wrap off shiny, new guitars. They giddily pluck at the detuned strings, thinking how cool they'll be once they're rock stars—even if almost all will give up before they ever get to jam out to "Sweet Child o' Mine."
For them, it's no big deal to relegate the guitar to the back of the closet forever in favor of the Playstation controller. But it is a big deal for Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the 70-year-old maker of rock 'n' roll's most iconic electric guitars. Every quitter hurts.
[...]The $6 billion U.S. retail market for musical instruments has been stagnant for five years, according to data compiled by research firm IBISWorld, and would-be guitar buyers have more to distract them than ever. So how do you convince someone to put down the iPhone, pick up a Stratocaster, and keep playing?
Seems Fender didn't get the memo: the music of the future is hip-hop and autotuners.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 08 2024, @09:05PM
Was the SG.
The Strat was build to be cheap. Single-coil pickups and minimal sustain from the body.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday September 08 2024, @09:20PM (5 children)
They're all fine in their own way.
The only rule is: NO STAIRWAY!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Gaaark on Sunday September 08 2024, @11:50PM
I hear that if Stairway stores are all closed, with a word you can get what you came for!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday September 09 2024, @12:51AM (3 children)
I believe there's also unofficial rules of "No Smoke on the Water" and "No Crazy Train".
But yes: No Stairway. Denied.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday September 09 2024, @03:23AM
OTOH for Through the Fire and the Flames, anyone who can manage to play that is welcome to.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday September 09 2024, @06:51AM (1 child)
What about Breaking the Law or Seek and Destroy?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by bmimatt on Monday September 09 2024, @10:25PM
Firmly in the Les Paul domain. Later ported to ESP.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 10 2024, @03:59PM
Rock and Roll was named in Columbus, OH in 1952 IIRC. Not a single song in the top 100 that year was Rock.
The Strat didn't really get famous until the 1960s.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron