Prepared guitar

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a prepared guitar

A prepared guitar is a guitar which has had its timbre altered by placing various objects on or between the instrument's strings, including other extended techniques. This practice is sometimes called tabletop guitar, because many prepared guitarists do not hold the instrument in the usual manner, but instead place the guitar on a table in order to manipulate it.

1 History
2 Custom made instruments
- 2.1 Yuri Landman's Moodswinger
3 See also
4 Prepared guitar luthiers
5 Famous prepared guitar players
6 External links

Though rarely classified as a "preparation", but more as an extended technique, the slide guitar techiniques, used since at least the early 1900s, deserves mention here. Playing a guitar with a metal or glass slide subtly, but fundamentally, changes the character of the instrument: for example, one can play a true glissando with a slide, but this is otherwise impossible on a fretted instrument.

Main article: Keith Rowe

The method of actual preparing the guitar was probably developed in the late 1960s by Keith Rowe, in imitation of John Cage's prepared piano. Rowe developed various prepared guitar techniques: placing the guitar flat on a table and manipulating the strings, body and pickups in unorthodox ways to produce sounds described as dark, brooding, compelling, expansive and alien. He has been known to employ objects such as a library card, rubber eraser, springs, hand-held electric fans, alligator clips, and common office supplies in playing the guitar.

Fred Frith

Main article: Fred Frith

Main article: Guitar Solos (album)

Another pioneer was Fred Frith. In 1974 he released a solo album called Guitar Solos. The album comprises eight tracks of unaccompanied and improvised music played on prepared guitars by Frith. For this album he modified guitars and even creating his own instruments to achieve the sounds he wanted. The album was recorded using a modified 1936 Gibson K-11. Frith added an extra pickup over the strings at the nut, enabling him to amplify sound from both sides of the fretted note. He then split the fretboard in two with a capo, effectively giving him two guitars, each amplified separately that he could play independently with each hand. To split the sounds further he attached alligator clips at various positions on the strings. The net result was a guitar with multiple sound sources that could be channeled to a mixer and distributed across the stereo soundscape.

In the 1980s Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth and other experimental artrockers also utilized prepared guitars, as have classical guitarists such as the Elgart/Yates Duo, who have also written a pamphlet on the subject: Prepared Guitar Techniques. More recent composers for the prepared guitar include Nikita Koshkin, using cork, matches and foam mutes and Phillipe Drogoz using wire and knitting needles.

Main article: Third bridge guitar

Dissatisfied by the limited possibillities of exact soundreproduction of prepared guitars some guitarists began building self created string instruments to explore the possibilities of this extended technique.

Again Fred Frith was one of the first who worked with self-made instruments made of an old door with tuning pegs, strings and pickups on it. Sometimes he put drumsticks between the wood and the strings and probably created the first third bridge guitar.

Beginning in the 1970s, guitarist and luthier Hans Reichel made some unusual guitars with third bridge-like qualities.

Bradford Reed (pencilina), Glenn Branca, Fred Frith and the band Neptune also made other individually different types of experimental third bridge guitars.

the Moodswinger, a 12 string overtone 3rd bridge guitar

Main article: Moodswinger

Around 2000 Yuri Landman also began building heavily adjusted custom-made guitars. In 2006 he finished the Moodswinger, a custom-made triple-bridge overtone guitar for Aaron Hemphill of the Liars and is currently building an instrument for Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth.

Different from its predecessors, the Moodswinger is more focused on an easy non-atonal playing technique. A mathematical scale is added to specify 23 harmonic positions on the strings. Because the 12 strings are tuned in a circle of fourths, it's always possible to play every note of the equal tempered scale. However some positions have a + or - indication, because the equal tempered scale is not a perfect well tempered scale.