In 2007 I finished a guitar for Jad Fair, in my opinion one of the most exciting punk rock artists ever. The text of his brother below explains quiet clearly what makes them both special musicians. I wanted to built a suitable instrument for a person not actually playing an instrument in a regular way, so I gave him just one string. Jad doesnÕt play chords, so there is no need for more strings. I actually gave him two strings, in case one would break during a stage performance.
The Bachelor QS has an additional
feature for the strings, a pitch tremolo pedal. At the bridge the strings are
attached to a bicycle brake cable. The cable can be squeezed on the pedal with
your feet, raising the tone up to an octave or even more, depending how hard
you press. The reason for this pedal is that Jad and I both are mainly playing
rythmic instead of solos with the left fingers. The tremolo bar on an electric
guitar is inconvenient. You lose the possibillity to continue your strumming
while you grab the bar. This pedal solves this issue.
Besides the two strings and the
pedal, the guitar also has 12 iron tongues functioning as an electric thumb
piano. The 12 tongues are tuned in a circle of fourths causing a kind of random
tonal configuration as well as a nice sounding tonal follow up. All
neighbouring tongues are perfectly harmonic to eachother. All five neighbouring
tongues form a harmonic pentatonic scale, all seven a major scale. Quiet
convenient, even for orthodox traditional focused music lovers.
by David Fair
I taught
myself to play guitar. ItÕs incredibly easy when you understand the science of
it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low
sounds. If you put your finger on the string father out by the tuning end it
makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you
want to play slower move your hand slower. ThatÕs all there is to it. You can
learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but
thatÕs pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords
youÕd still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your
options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.
Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the
top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But the thing to
remember is itÕs your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to
put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but
my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldnÕt have so much
to worry about. Whatever string he hit had to be the right one because they
were all the same.
Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous
notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that
implies that every other place would be wrong. But thatÕs absurd. How could it
be wrong? ItÕs your guitar and youÕre the one playing it. ItÕs completely up to
you to decide how it should sound. In fact I donÕt tune by the sound at all. I
wind the strings until theyÕre all about the same tightness. I highly recommend
electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they donÕt depend on
body resonating for the sound so it doesnÕt matter if you paint them. As also,
if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher
reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic.
Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the
strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls.
The first guitar I
bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really
doesnÕt matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of
the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar
that tunes at the other end. IÕve never tried one. I guess they sound allright
but they look ridiculous and I imagine youÕd feel pretty foolish holding one.
That would affect your playing. The idea isnÕt to feel foolish. The idea is to
put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule
the world.
I found this
animation made by a fan of the manifesto:
YouTube Animation of How to
Play Guitar
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