Guitar
“*TWANG*”
The guitar is a strange stringed instrument, used in many sorts of popular music such as metal, rock, blues, country, polka, and disco. A guitar typically has six strings but can come in 7, 8, 12, 27, 42, and 1 string constructions (if you're Jack White). Guitars are usually constructed from various combinations of wood, metal, rock, flesh, bone, plastic, air, and Keith Richards' Dad's ashes. Most people begin playing guitar for the sole reason of getting girls, but they usually fail in this pursuit; and the guitarists usually have to settle with lesser things: Fame, fortune, being legendary or just plain coolness. The guitar is known to cause bad health and sometimes death, as seen with Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and countless others. Charles Darwin noted that rock guitarists usually die at age 27, this making them proof of his theory of survival of the fittest.
Early History of the Guitar
The guitar is thought to originated in pre-rap times, before Nostradamus. There is historical evidence that Nostradamus saw the fate of music.
“Before twenty centuries after the birth of Christ have passed, a dark form of music shall arise. Pounding thumps, never ending. The perpetrators of this dark noise shall speak in tongues, and possess the vocal skills of a banshee.”
This surprisingly accurate prediction of music led Nostradamus to contact the local artificers. He talked to hundreds of carpenters and metalworkers, handing them pages of designs, early guitars no doubt, and babbling about a horrific vision of someone he called Lone Jane's large rear. The designs, warped and twisted, remained in circulation amongst the craftsmen long after Nostradamus' unexpected death. The designs were laughed at and drawn over many times, until one moment late in 1400's, an engineer and designer named Va Dinci came across the paper in his trash, and the mangled design intrigued him. He created the very first guitar.
Soon after this Va Dinci discovered that if played in a half-ass manner he would soon get laid. This lead to later alterations by such musicians as The Beatles and The Doors and finally perfection in Dog Fucker who perfected the amalgam of douche and guitar and has consistently gotten laid since.
The Guitar in More Recent Times
The guitar was played by Robert Johnson but became heavily popularised by Eric Clapton, who lived within a generation of artists including the legend Jimi Hendrix, Wes Borland, Mick Thompson, and That Black Guy From Fall Out Boy, inspiring them to play sweet sweet blues.
Gender in Guitar
The issue of gender in guitar history is a short and uninteresting one. Many female guitarists have existed through history but very few gain notoriety, dues to the fact they tend to look funny and cute with guitars, and are regarded as a kind of novelty. It is a commonly accepted fact that the guitar is a form of penis extension, therefore all female guitarists tend to be lesbians as they enjoy the feeling of wearing a rosewood and mahogany strapon.
Types of Guitars
1. The Acoustic Guitar This guitar (grandspa guitars) constructed for eighty two purposes, five of which deserve mention.
- Folk music
- Rock ballads
- Contact with spirits
- Traffic heroin
- Deaf people
Any other use for this guitar (barring use as a weapon) are to be reported to the Local Authorities. 2. The Electric Guitar This guitar requires a ridiculously expensive amplifier to work correctly also it must be practiced in a basement or else you won't be good. This type of guitar evidently is much cooler, because of the wide range of effects that can be purchased and used simultaneously to stimulate the ears. This guitar became the most popular type in medieval times due to the pure sexy look of the instrument. All electric guitars are the Gibson Les Paul Customs, although some have been cleverly redecorated to resemble less interesting instruments.
3. The Air Guitar An Air guitar is an instrument made entirely of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and argon. Care is to be taken during use of an air guitar, you must be wary so as not to inhale the guitar. This guitar sounds the best while being played by <insert name here>, as it makes no noise whatsoever.
4. The Bass Guitar The bass guitar is very popular amongst teenagers who have little or no musical talent, and want to be in a band, and professional musicians who want to be recognized by fans as a distinctive and important member of the band. The Flea of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers is really a guitarist. He just enjoys having a much longer, fatter, and heavier "instrument" than the other members of the band.
5. The Guit-air Rifle This is a highly popular design, featuring a fully-integrated, semi-automatic, onlyjustaboutstayingonduetoitbeingstuckonwithducktape-air rifle attached to the end of the high quality rose wood neck. it is a favorite of many mafia members, who decided to bring a bit of rock into their lives, by replacing violins with guitars.
6. Lyre The lyre is...hey, wait a minute...the lyre isn't a type of guitar! What a dirty, no-good, stinking lyre!
Guitar strings
For every guitar in the world there are at least one guitar string, and usually 6. Guitar strings can be made of a number of materials, including cat-gut and steel. Early guitar designs using razor wire and phlegm did not quite get the depth and feeling of deepness that guitarists strive for.
Cat-gut strings
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.
Steel strings
For most Blues, Country and other poor guitarists, this appears to be the only way that they can continue playing in a cruel world that just doesn't care. After all, their wife has left them, their dog has died, their hat has been stolen.
Gee strings
Usually used by big hair rockers, these strings actually improve the range of the guitarists singing voice, allowing them to hit the high G on the Barometric scale. in the 80's the H string also became popular for a short time, however it was overshadowed by rumour of the I sting that was being invented by NASA scientists, that will hopefully allow you to hear the guitar scream in space.
The Guitargasm
The Guitargasm is a pure, raw, burst of inspiration and skill to a guitarist. The guitargasm comes in one of two forms. The raw form and the refined form.
1. Raw A raw Guitargasm is a rare sighting. It most often occurs during the most unlikely events.
Let's say... <Insert Name of Local Teenage rock band who seems to get gigs in every fucking pub every night> are doing a pretty poor rendition of your favourite Van Helen song, and you are tuning it out, then as the teenage guitarist with a head like a mop with a nose poking through tears into the solo, your head turns irresistibly towards the harmonic goodness, and for a second, you are at peace. The moment is then ruined when the singer sets himself on fire and throws up in your beer.
That is a natural, raw, Guitargasm.
2 Refined This is a Guitargasm that is induced by a professional (don't try this at home), who has practiced and huffed many kittens to get to his level of proficiency at the Guitargasm.
Such Guitargasms are characterised by a gradual build up of power, and a warm feeling in the pit of one's gut as the trained guitarist gently, yet with unstoppable force, unleashes their power upon them.
The Practice of Guitaring
The act of guitaring follows a unique ritualistic pattern for each individual guitaring-ist-er; some guitaring-ist-er-ists often manage to spend enough time warming up or preparing that they barely have time to play before their annual bath.
In central Asia, men will traditionally wear leather and set their bodies on fire whilst practicing guitaring. This is said to channel the energies of the mind, body, and Jimmy Page throughout your system. To not play on fire, wearing leather, will bring about the Bad Dharma, Eric Clapton.
Some Rituals
As mentioned earlier, copious amounts of kitten and/or drugs will be taken/huffed in an attempt to increase playing ability. Other rituals include:
- Finger stretches. This is normally done with a tiny rack, with a small kitten in a black hood and bondage suit operating the machinery.
- Make-up. Used in the Glam scene. This only used until they see how ridiculous they look.
- Tuning the guitar. This is a rare ritual, usually not performed by indie musicians or Punk bands.
- Picking up the guitar.
- Plugging the instrument in (commonly known as "jacking on").
- Playing. (This is the rarest ritual of them all, only performed correctly by professional musicians or fat YouTube kids.
- "Jacking off"
- Being a douche bag to the rest of your band mates by being unsatisfied with any amount of the spot-light you get. This is very common among bands who aren't even popular enough for their spotlight times to warrant any extra notification from anyone.
- Radically overestimating the size of a gig
- Not growing up
- Playing guitar
- Attempting to play other instruments
- Saying phrases like "dude" and "d-uhude"
- Building model airplanes
How to Play Guitar
To play the guitar, you need to get yourself a guitar. Guitar usually graze on the hills and are difficult to catch. Approach them silently, and lure them into your hand by humming blues rhythms and tell the guitar that you have new strings for it. Now that you have a guitar, go home and plug the guitar into a guitar amp. Don't have an amp? Well, then just play the guitar.
You play music on the guitar by strumming. Strumming is a difficult technique that requires that you move your hand up and down quickly much like... You know what I mean. By now you may be demotivated by the fact that you have no arms. No worries, Stevie Wonder is blind, Beethoven was deaf and Axl Rose is just plain retarded.
You also need to learn chords, scales and other such nonsense. Chords are specific notes played together, that makes a certain harmony. The number of chords in a song determines how cool you are. Lou Reed summed it up by saying: "One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.". Indeed, many, many, many artists settle with three chords or less, one example is the German band Neu!, who received critical acclaim for their one-chord robotic music. Another example could be Sonic Youth, who doesn't play chords at all.
Well, you may wonder how to play a chord. The idea is to put your fingers on the fretboard and then strum the guitar with the other hand. Now, where to put the fingers exactly? You decide, actually. Let's take a look at the mythical Circle of fifths that musicians use to build songs. It looks like this:
You may ask yourself: What the heck? What is this mess? What is Donald Duck doing there? And the twinkies? Should I just play bass? To answer those questions, I would say: Donald is there because he is tired of rap music. The twinkies are there because you may like a snack while you're playing. And yes, play bass.
...Aaaand that's how you play guitar. Remember: Having actual talent and knowledge about music theory is incompatible with playing guitar. It's not like there's guitar in Mozart's works is there??!
Guitar Tunings
Besides the standard tuning prevalent among typical guitar novices, there exist an infinite number of alternate tunings. Many of these tunings have so far remained undiscovered. The holy grail for all guitar technicians is to find the so-called 'God tuning'. No-one knows what will happen at the exact point at which this goal is achieved, however some theories postulate that the universe will explode as soon as the first power chord is strummed.
Following are some common alternate tunings and their uses:
1. Drop D This tuning was first discovered by Limp Bizkit and remains in common use today by equally untalented 'metal' guitarists. This is the only known tuning in existence that allows the guitar to be played at ankle level.
2. Drop B This tuning is designed for guitarists who are too cheap to buy a real 7-string guitar and/or prefer the low E string to have the consistency of a strand of spaghetti. Bolognese sauce is optional.
3. Drop E This isn't actually a tuning but is something that some guitarists do before going on stage to maintain the concentration levels required for any chords consisting of more than 2 notes.
4. Open G This amazing, recently discovered tuning causes all chords strummed to sound a G Major chord. It is recommended for both one-armed and lazy guitarists.
5. Drop F# The E is dropped to a D and than the Guitar detuned, so that it sounds like a really distorted bass. Then it makes unpleasant noise. Slipknot, anyone??
6. DADGAD A weird tuning that nobody really uses, but Led Zeppelin used it on Kashmir so whatever it is it is badass
Comprehensive List of People Who Play Guitar
- Madonna
- (Not) Yngwie J. Malmsteen
- Eddie Van Halen
- Angus Young
- Ritchie Blackmore
- Alex Lifeson
- Johnny Ramone
- Hulk Hogan
If you are not on this list, then you don't play, you just think you can.
See also
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