by Giovanni Pelosi

It has often been discussed in various forums whether an instrument’s sound is prevalently determined by the instrument itself or by the hands of the guitarist. It is indisputable that if we pluck the strings of one guitar and then of another, the sounds emitted are different. It is also true, just as Chet Atkins said, that if we don’t pluck the strings at all, neither of the guitars will emit any sound… It likewise holds true that two different guitarists playing the same guitar will make different sounds. So, is everyone right?

I think so, even though the prevalence of the ‘instrument’ may seem greater in the case of specific guitars that have an especially characteristic sound, while the ‘hands’ of the guitar player may be more evident in the case of an unusual guitar style, which becomes a characteristic of a specific guitarist.

But… there is a third element that I would like to draw your attention to – the ‘head’. When a guitarist plays and has been playing for some time, he holds certain well-defined sounds in his head and it is these sounds that he seeks to reproduce when he plays the guitar in his arms. I realise that I am saying something quite controversial and many people may not share my opinion, but a series of imperceptible devices exist – I could even say they were unconscious to a certain extent – that a guitarist sets in motion in order to obtain his ‘own’ sound. If the sound reference I have in my head requires powerful bass notes and my guitar doesn’t tend to produce them, my thumb will automatically exert a greater strength, or my right hand will move slightly closer towards the guitar neck, or I will do both of these things together. Stopping sounds, allowing them to resonate, accenting them, straining the picking of a single string from which we ‘want more’ and who knows what else are all devices – to which we could add all the different ways we regulate our amplification system – that we use to obtain the sound we have in our head.

But isn’t this what we do anyway to control the dynamics, to express musicality, in short isn’t this simply guitar technique and – to sum up – our ‘hands’?

I think that it’s something else. There is our expectation that the guitar we hold in our hands should sound as we want it to. And what we want has little to do with technique. It refers to our ‘model’. I also think that in the majority of cases we manage to use a guitar, as long as it is not out of tune or completely mute, in the way that is closest to that model. We have a kind of more or less conscious memory that transmits to our neuromuscular system whatever is necessary to reproduce our sound on the specific guitar we are playing.

That is to say that our technique and our taste in music lead us to express ourselves through a certain style, while our sound model leads us more specifically towards our sound.

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