Metal not lmletal and day 49

The problem of volume has always been with the guitar.  Earlier strings instruments used bows and could have giant bodies to provide immense volumes.  Eventually the body would get so large that you got out of the guitar's sound pocket and you'd be playing Bass.  Any form of making a guitar larger ended up being more like larger string instruments like the Harp or the piano.  This was all solved by electrical amplification in the 20th century, but right before that revolution an amazingly cool guitar style was invented.

Resonators are guitars designed to work with metal parts to create a strong reflection of sound back to the audience.  The sound was certainly louder than many acoustics of the time, but the metal really did give it a unique sound that did not work with most types of music at the time.  Resonators became cheap, and easier to move around than having your own electrical PA system.  The more "rural" types of music adopted these "outdated" instruments, and due to the sheer amount of usage they got in Bluegrass and blues, they are now accepted as mainstay sounds of those genre.

Resonators have metal bowls and reflectors, known as "Cones" built under the strings to take the sound and reflect it back out into the audience.  The originals used a 3 cone design, but a split in the company lead to a simpler and cheaper "dobro" design using a single cone.  Further, you could get square necked resonators to play like a steel lap guitar, or the round neck variety to play more like a traditional guitar.  Both are popular with slide guitar techniques.

Resonators, to me, rank as some of the most beautiful instruments ever created.  There are entire guitars manufactured out of bell brass and engraved with patterns and designs that remind me of the dualing pistols of the 17th century.  There are just as beautiful wood and metal combos that look like something out of a junk yard, but sound amazing.

Day 49

Still snowed in, but my hearth is still warmed by the awesomely burning light of ROCK.

or something Jack Black would say.... or maybe I'm watching too much Gearmanndude.  Wait, same person aren't they?  Has that myth been busted?  I refuse to accept it.

Anyway.  Somehow in between all the metal and rock, I came up with a very poppy guitar track.  Sounds a bit like "Steady as She Goes" now that I sit here and think about it, but I think that I was channeling Nirvana's Nevermind when I was doing it.  It is poppy, and its sorta happy sounding, but don't hold that against it, its fun to play!  I swear.  I'm really jonesing for a fuzz pedal these days.  Its quickly looking like 70's rock may give way to some 90's alternative soon.

So I'm practicing Stranglehold and while looking at my "recommended" tab, there was Black Betty.  Wow, it looks "doable" for me as well.  Black Betty just has so much energy, I figured I wasn't ready for it, but I think with practice I can get it pretty quickly.  It all goes back to my power chords having a lot more definition and sound to them.  As I said before, they're becoming less punk and more 70's rock, and that's evident with the two new songs I'm practicing on.  Black Betty has also been in my head because of Rayman Legends.  There's a level on that where the bad guys play Black Betty while you bowl through them running from some monstrosity or another, and its highly entertaining.