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We left off discussing the beautiful instrument created when Gibson and Les Paul joined together in the 1950s. However I would be remiss if I failed to narrate the story any further. Leo Fender is the next big name that we must discuss. He developed an excellent solid body guitar in the 40s and took it to market by 1954. This first guitar by Fender was called the Fender Stratocaster. Some of you might know it as a fender strat. This development was very important because it was a different body design from the les paul. This new guitar was very light and used alternative hardware to the Gibson Les Paul. It used a single magnetic pickup that became popular among country singers in California. Leo Fender believed that an instruments design should be modular so that the products could stay cost effective. There was something of a trademark issue between Gibson and Fender with the Telecaster guitar. However we will not delve into that. I will comment that because of trademark problems, some of the fender telecasters were produced without decals of the fender logo. Interestingly these guitars are now quite valuable in collector circles. They are called nocasters.

Our last stop is to look at Vox and the pentagonal phantom guitar. Initially this was constructed in England but was then made by Alter EKO in Italy. Next came the Mark VI model, which was used by Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones. Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls also used this guitar. Vox also came out with some 12 string guitars in the 60s which were quite popular.

Labels: alter eko, fender, gibson, Leo Fender, les paul, vox

Obviously the beloved Electric Guitar which we have today came from the acoustic guitar. Musical instruments resembling the acoustic guitar can be found as far back as 1800BC. There is an odd sense of satisfaction knowing that the guitar has been around for so long.

Anyway to the point of the article – the electric guitar was invented by a man named Adolph Rickenbacker in the 1930s. I must admit that I was surprised that it was not more recently that the electric guitar had been invented. Rickenbacker used tungsten pickups to take the vibrations from guitar strings and transform them into electrical currents that go through the amp making that beloved sound. He moved this design into production in the 1930s. Since Rickenbacker's first design, the electric guitar has gone through some dramatic changes that have shaped it into the excellent instrument that it is today. After Rickenbacker's design came the semi hollow guitar design. This was the standard until 1941 when Les Paul came on the scene and invented the solid body guitar. The way a solid body works is that it is constructed by one piece of wood and does not use any holes like a semi hollow guitar.

Then in the 1950's Gibson and Les Paul joined forces to make the Gibson Les Paul which you might be familiar with today. The Gibson Les Paul Standard Electric Guitar is one of the best selling guitars out there.

Labels: acoustic guitars, Adolph-Rickenbacker, electric guitars, gibson, les paul, The History of the Electric Guitar

To continue with my argument for why I believe music downloading is unethical, I will continue with the last example I was using about the artist who went from a 4 million dollar salary to a 3 million dollar salary. You might look at that scenario and say, it doesn't matter, I deserve to get this music for free because I am "poor" and I can't afford to buy the music. Here is a statistic you might find interesting. To the rest of the world you are a rich person. If you own a car, you are in the top 6 percent of the worlds income bracket. So imagine this scenario. You might only make 20 grand a year and you would be considered to be "poor" by American standards. However you would be considered incredibly wealthy to everyone living in a third world country (most of the world). Therefore would it be ok for someone who was really poor (making say 700 a year – standard salary in third world nations) to start stealing 25 percent of your money? By comparison you would be a rich rich man or woman to that poor person. Yet you would be in a dilemma if some poor factory worker from China or some other place began stealing 25% of your paycheck. You would be at a loss because you probably counted on that money. The same is true for the American musician who makes 3 million a year now instead of 4.

Labels: An Ethical Dilema – Music Piracy, downloading

Is downloading music ethically wrong? By what means do you say so? I used to download music on limewire and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I had several thousand songs in my music library and I loved the idea of "free" music. However I will admit that I do not download music for free any longer. In my opinion, it is wrong to download music without paying for it.

I will detail the reasons for my conclusion in the following paragraph. If you disagree with what I say, feel free to say so. I am only trying to put forth the argument and mentality that has convinced me that music downloading is unethical.

First and foremost I think it is important to realize that America is a free market economy. We were founded on the basis of economic equality and potential for prosperity for all. That being said, I don’t believe that it is in the spirit of the American tradition to steal from the wealthy. Sure you say, but they have so much, why do they need more. But I would answer back saying you should apply the golden rule. Cheesy as it sounds look at it this way. Say you are a rock musician and you make 4 million dollars per year. Then music piracy starts to cause decreased record sales. So the next year you make 3 million dollars. You can’t honestly tell me that you would not be pissed off about your losing 25 percent of your salary. Sure you still have a lot of money, but you probably were counting on that extra million dollars.

Labels: An Ethical Dilema – Music Piracy

I concluded my last post with a few questions that were birthed from Neil Postman's book, Technopoly. I don't know if any of you have read it but the basic premise is this: For every technology that we accept and implement into our culture we must first sacrifice something. He gave the example that when human beings first started to write, the transition began to shift from oral storytelling to simply writing. It is obvious that in this transition, the time-honored tradition of storytelling died out because it was no longer needed. In doing so, people became lazier and did not utilize their memory as much because all they had to do was to read a document instead of trying to remember things.

So take the case of CDs versus MP3 players. Or even records versus MP3 players. One could argue that when we only had record players, listening to music was more special because we could only do so at home. Also people would not have too many records so they might have appreciated their music more. You could even argue that recorded music has caused us to sacrifice seeing live music. For the better part of the last several thousand years, people have only been able to listen to music when others played live for them. It is only recently that we can carry our recorded music anywhere. Is it really a good thing that we now are encouraged to never listen to the real thing but rather to listen to a recorded version? Surely you lose a little bit of the wonder you might get form an actual performance.

Lastly one could argue that with MP3 players like the Apple iPod Nano with Video, our society is becoming increasingly isolated as you have people walking around with ear buds in listening to music so they never have to talk with strangers or think about their life. One could say that that is in fact a degeneration of our society.

Labels: Cds, ipod, mp3, records, vs

I was wondering what you all thought about buying CD's versus MP3s. It is amazing to me that MP3 purchases from Itunes are becoming more popular each and every day. It makes me wonder if the brick and mortar cd shops like virgin records are bound to wind up floating belly up. Just how long can storefronts last when they are competing with companies such as Itunes or Napster which have no carrying costs?

My question is this, how do you guys procure your music? Do you pirate your music or do you purchase is legally? If you buy your music, do you tend to purchase cds or do you buy MP3s? One problem that I have with buying MP3s is that you pay for the music but then you end up burning the music onto a cd so you can listen to it in your car. Obviously this is not the case if you are playing your ipod through your car. For some reason I still prefer CDs in the car as opposed to listening through an Ipod. The biggest reason is that you get so much static with the ipod when you are taking over a radio station. The only way that it works well is if you have your ipod jacked directly into your cars audio system. Such an installment runs around 200 dollars.

Do you believe it is a positive transition that we have made from using Cds to using mp3 players? Before you immediately answer yes, give it some thought. Remember with every new technology, you are giving up something in return for that technology.

Labels: Cds, Cds traded for MP3s, ipod, mp3, technology, vs