Riley Clendenin

9/22/11

1st British lit.

Rock Research

For my senior project I will be starting a small business teaching guitar lessons to any beginner

musician. I’ve been playing guitar for several years and have been around music my whole life. Before I

explain my business and plans for my project I want to give a brief history about guitar. Although, the

precise origin of the instrument is still unknown, many believe it descended from other ancient

instruments. Such as the Greek kithara, European lutes, and Spanish Vihuela. During this time period the

type of music played on guitar is what we now know as classical music. One famous style of classical

guitar was baroque guitar. Through the years guitar evolved and so did its styles and genres. Any smart

guitarist will tell you that every genre of an instrument is just one that has branched off of a previous

one. Classical guitar is at the top of the musical family tree in this matter. Blues was influenced by

classical pieces and songs. And much of what we hear today comes from blues. Blues was a

revolutionary time period for guitar. Robert Johnson is known as the king of blues because he recorded

the first ever southern blues album. He recorded 30 songs before he died and became a guitar legend.

He influenced thousands of guitarists one of which was Chuck Berry. Chuck was a guitarist of which the

world had never seen his rapid pop licks paved the way for rock blues guitarists in the 60’s. Jimi Hendrix,

Richie Blackmore, and Pete Townshend started a new world of guitar originality. Around this time was

when amplifiers and stereos were evolving rapidly and guitar had a new raw sound that shocked the

world. The 70’s were more of the experimental decade for guitar and music overall. Jimmy Page of Led

Zeppelin made guitar sounds that made people question his instruments. Thus, birthing the shock rock

and hair metal bands of the 80’s. This was when guitar equipment and techniques had evolved higher

than ever before. Van Halen birthed many of these shock rockers with his incredibly fast licks and heavy

distortions. He is what some refer to as the god of shred. Each decade a new form of rock guitar is

produced or takes over, each one branching off from the last. Today guitars are getting more

complicated, more efficient, and more unique as well as their players.

Joe Satriani has been called a guitar god, a musical wizard, and a technical genius, but he is

nothing short of a genius musician. Born on July 15, 1956, the 55 year old rock god has changed the

world of guitar and guitar equipment. He was born in Westbury, NY he started playing guitar at age

fourteen soon after hearing about the death of Jimi Hendrix. He was in football training when he

confronted his coach and stated he was quitting to become a guitarist. Satch studied music with jazz

musicians, Billy Bauer and Lennie Tristano. Tristano being a strict, technically demanding teacher, he

influenced Satriani to be a music teacher. One of his first notable students made famous was Steve Vai.

In 1978 Satriani moved to Berkely, California to pursue music, where he taught guitarists Kirk Hammett

of Metallica, David Bryson of Counting Crows, Kevin Cadogan from Third eye blind and many more

talented musicians. Joe satriani now suffering with an enormous credit card debt from his first album,

joins a small band from San Francisco called the Greg Kihn Band which helped him pay some of it off.

Meanwhile his most prized student, Steve Vai scored a record deal playing with David Lee Roth of Van

Halen. Vai raved and ranted about Satriani’s skills and talent thus giving high recognition to produce his

second most popular album, Surfing with the Alien. It was the first all-instrumental album release to

chart so highly since instrumental jazz records in the Harlem renaissance. This album really sky rocketed

his career and Guitar World magazine featured him frequently, and the 1989 film Say Anything...

featured a song from his newest album, Flying in a Blue Dream. A highly influential guitarist himself, he

has many influences of his own, including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Ritchie Blackmore.

Joe is highly influenced by blues rock but has made effort to make music covering all types of genres

from classical to death metal. He is the ideal definition of a true guitar virtuoso.

Jimi Hendrix is said to have been god’s gift to rock music. His life story and musical message captivated

his audiences by the thousands. Born on November, 27, 1942, Hendrix was arguably the greatest rock

guitarist in music history. This is said because he basically taught himself everything he knew by listening

to music that was played in those days such as Chuck Berry, Chubby Checker, and Elvis, but this does not

explain how he created his revolutionizing sound that was pure Hendrix. Hendrix lived a hard childhood,

of the 4 other siblings he had 3 were physically disabled. His parents were drunks and fought frequently

until their divorce when he was only 9, his mother died from rupturing her spleen when he 16. Around

the time his mother died his father bought him his first guitar which replaced his air guitar broomstick

and ukulele, until he got his electric guitar, a white Supro Ozark with no amplifier. His love for blues was

influenced from listening to records his father owned by Muddy Waters, and B.B. King. In 1961 Hendrix

had a choice of doing jail time for riding in stolen cars or join the army, he of course joined the army.

However, Hendrix was not a conformist to society so he did the smartest yet simplest thing to get out of

the army. Nothing, and by doing absolutely nothing they told him to do, they saw him as wasted guns

and discharged him from the army less than a year later. He met his long friend and bass player Billy Cox

in the army. They lived in Nashville and played in many different bands Including little Richard and Ike

and Tina Turner before starting The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966. The Jimi Hendrix Experience got

started when Hendrix befriended the girlfriend of The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards who then got him a

record deal with Chas Chandler. Chandler liked his song “Hey Joe” and turned it into his first hit single.

Now a big name in the music industry, Hendrix was going on all sorts of tours with new albums and

other radical bands from the sixties such as Cream, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and many

more. He recorded some 5 albums in between 1966-69 and performed most of hits at monumental rock

show Woodstock. Since The Jimi Hendrix Experience broke up months before Woodstock festival, Jimi

was just playing as himself and flew some of his old jam buddies in to be his band. Since this was his

comeback concert, the audiences grew to well over a hundred thousand people, and Jimi and his band

had only practiced for 2 weeks and performed off no sleep for 3 days. Hendrix’s career slowed down

until his death in September 17, 1970. He died from over dosing on his girlfriend’s sleep medication and

choked on his vomit in his sleep. Many rumors spread about his death saying that he was murdered by

other competing Rockstars, that his girlfriend murdered him, but one stayed true even in his death,

Hendrix was a musician with talents of unimaginable proportions and he was worshipped for his love he

gave to music.

Eddie Van Halen was known as the second best guitarist only to Jimi Hendrix by many. He is best

known as the lead guitarist for Van Halen a band he and his brother started in the late 70’s. He

revolutionized heavy metal guitar and introduced guitar techniques in ways the world had never seen

before. His first album titled, Van Halen, was released when he and his band members were roughly 18

years old and it took them straight to the top of record sells. His brother and he started playing music

young. Their parents bought Alex a guitar and Eddie drums, but when Alex acceeded him on drums he

decided to take up guitar in spite of his brother. Eddie had remained in the top charts whether it be a

Van Halen song or Michael Jackson song whom he also laid down the guitar tracks for. Soon after there

1984 album the band decided to kick their singer, David Lee Roth, out of the band due to his cocky

controlling personality. He was replaced by Sammy Hagar until their come back tour in 2008 which they

toured using Eddies son, Wolfgang Van Halen as their bassist. Eddie is still playing at guitar shows and

producing his patent guitar equipment. His most famous solo “Eruption” still remains the second

greatest solo of all time by Guitar world magazine. May he Rock until death take him from it.

Many people think a great song is just a certain tune or riff that a musician stumbles upon and

makes a great song out of it. This is the amateur way of making music. A much more efficient way takes

a lot knowledge and practice. There two main things to learning to play music on an instrument,

technique and theory. No matter what the instrument, you need to know how it works. What makes

certain sounds and why those sounds happen. This is just so you can physically play a song, the other

part requires much more thinking. Music theory is basically like musical math. If music could be put into

a formula just like completing a math problem, then that is a perfect example of music theory. Music

theory teaches you keys, notes, patterns, modes, and so forth to show you how to make a song and

what sounds go together make a certain tone or stroke a certain feeling. All the great guitarists didn’t

just wake up one morning with incredible technique and knowledge of music. No, they had to practice it

and study theory, because theory is how you make a song and if you know how all the formulas to make

music then you’ll be able to make hit after hit like all the great artists and bands have done. These are

the basic necessities for making music.

People have taken guitar to levels no matter ever saw coming. Guitar is such a popular instrument

because of the many different wonders you can do with it. No matter how much music is out there,

there’s always more to be made. It is a perfect instrument to represent music theory and technical uses.

50 years ago, people couldn’t have imagined what guitar would’ve sounded like just a decade after that

and so on for every decade since. Each decade breeds a new generation of guitarists with their own

unique tastes and abilities and I speak for every guitarist and musician out there when I say I’m looking

forward to what’s next.