Why Guitar?

The enduring popularity of the guitar as a choice of instrument has occasionally puzzled me. This might sound odd coming from a guitarist but it's a question that only a guitarist is likely to ask. There have been times when I have ruefully asked myself why I ever took up such a pig of an instrument in the first place. After all, it's so confoundedly difficult for the novice even to play a simple one-line tune such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the thing. On a keyboard any nine-year-old would, with only the merest guidance, be able to render it within a few minutes.

The guitar appears to put so many obstacles in the way. For a start, it's awkward to hold - forever slipping off your knee - and after five minutes of playing, your right shoulder begins to ache and your left hand endures the kind of torture that Amnesty International would recognize as characteristic of the more unpleasant brands of repressive dictatorships' interrogation methods. You can't even see clearly which string is which because of the awkward angle of vision.

Then there are the numerous difficulties of technique. With wind instruments you blow, with keyboards you strike the keys, you hit drums and bow fiddles. The guitar? Let me count the ways: you can strum, you can finger-pick, you can use a plectrum, you can damp the strings with the heel of your right hand (incidentally, I apologize to all left-handed people, but really, you merely further muddy the waters of an already murky pond - whoever heard of a left-handed piano, for heaven's sake?) there is the free stroke, there is the rest stroke, there are the harmonics, there is the constant re-tuning, there is the dilemma of where to pluck the strings: near the bridge for a piercing sound, or over the soundhole for a mellow timbre? - the list goes on.

OK, I expect I'll have legions of violinists e-mailing me, stridently protesting the infinitely greater difficulties they face, but at least they've only got four strings to contend with as opposed to the unreasonable six of the guitar.

Added to the above there is the guitar's duplication of notes. A piano has one middle C right in the middle of the keyboard near the lock. Incidentally, why do pianos have locks? (I could understand if this precaution were taken with, say the accordion, which should of course remain locked at all times. Sorry accordionists - Paris wouldn't be Paris be without you, I know). Perhaps the valuable ivory keys were thought to be at risk of being stolen, although I've never heard of such a case coming to court, which could of course be testimony to their effectiveness. But I digress. At any rate the note middle C is the white note just to the left of the two black ones near the lock. And it stays right there. There is nowhere else on the keyboard that it exists. Not so the guitar: there are no less than four locations on the fretboard for the same note and furthermore this goes for many of the other notes, too!

Possibly it is partly this duplication of notes that has deterred many a gifted player from learning to read notation. And who would blame them? A fully annotated guitar score contains so much more information than simply the notes to be played - indications of which string, which fret, which fingers (right and left hand) to use - that to accomplish fluent reading becomes cognitively and technically a Herculean labour.

So, I reiterate my original question: why choose the guitar?

Well, it's the very difficulties posed by the instrument that give it its great depth of expression and versatility, perhaps more so than any other instrument. It provides the performer with choice, and you may have noticed that in the above list of difficulties associated with the instrument I used the word 'can' rather than 'can't'. Take for instance the apparant complication of the duplication of middle Cs: each C has an individual quality, from a clear bell like sound to a sweeter mellow sound. The variety of picking and strumming techniques allows enormous scope for both modifying the sound and producing rhythmic effects - from fiery Flamenco to the jolly Postman Pat theme. Furthermore the instrument allows more than one note to be played at the same time so a tune can be accompanied with chords or even two tunes played at once. So really, in the guitar is several instruments rolled into one. No wonder it's complicated.

But the beauty of the instrument is that you don't have to be a virtuoso to unlock its potential. Play a simple one-note-at-time tune on the piano: you can play it loudly and softly, you can vary the rhythm but you can't influence the fundamental sound because the piano is a machine. When you press a key a hammer hits a string either with great force, gently or somewhere inbetween. Play the same tune on a guitar and you can do all that a piano is capable of plus you can change the quality of the sound of each note because you can decide where to pluck the string, you can decide which string to pluck and you can decide where to fret the note. So quite simple pieces can be played with great expression without having to resort to elaborate and difficult to execute arrangements of accompanying notes to provide drama and depth.

And, of course, guitars are totally cool, which probably provides the most convincing answer the question 'Why the Guitar?'