Touch guitar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Script error: No such module "Infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".

The touch guitar is a stringed instrument of the guitar family which has been designed to use a fretboard-tapping playing style. Touch guitars are meant to be touched or tapped, not strummed.[1]

History

The touch or tapping technique was formally codified by American guitarist Jimmie Webster in his 1952 method book called the Illustrated Touch System.[2]

File:Dave Bunker in Performance.jpg
Dave Bunker playing a double-neck touch guitar

Webster credited pickup designer Harry DeArmond with first demonstrating the potential for touch-style playing.[3] Webster himself collaborated with Gretsch Guitars on a guitar stereo pickup design for the Touch System (which fed the bass and melody output to two separate amplifiers), but the concept was not commercially successful.[4]

Unlike Webster's approach, which was to play on a single-necked instrument, guitarist and luthier Dave Bunker designed, built, and patented (in 1961) the first double-necked, headless,[5] touch-tapping instrument called the DuoLectar.[6] While both guitars employed a two-handed tapping technique, Webster used a single-necked instrument while Bunker used his double-necked DuoLectar guitar.[7]

Webster's tapping technique can be heard on a 1959 record.[8] In 1960, Bunker first demonstrated his double-necked instrument for the Portland Oregonian newspaper,[9] and then on the nationally broadcast television show Ozark Jubilee.[10] His designs ultimately led to his double-necked touch guitar in 1975.[11][12]

Other designs followed. Among them was the single-neck Chapman Stick (developed by Emmett Chapman in 1970 and produced in 1974[13]), the single-neck Warr Guitar (first produced in 1991[14]) and the single-neck Mobius Megatar.[15] Other touch guitars have included the Solene, Chuck Soupios's dual-necked BiAxe[16] (patented in 1980 and produced during the early 1980s), and Sergio Santucci's TrebleBass.

File:Stanley Jordan 01.jpg
Stanley Jordan playing a single-neck touch guitar

Merle Travis occasionally used a tapping style[17] on his single-neck, strummed guitar, as did Roy Smeck, George Van Eps, Barney Kessel and Harvey Mandell.[18] Subsequent years have seen Eddie Van Halen, Stanley Jordan, Steve Vai, Jeff Healey, Fred Frith, Hans Reichel, Elliott Sharp, and Markus Reuter all feature the use of tapping techniques.

References

<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />

  1. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  2. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  3. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  4. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  5. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  6. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  7. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  8. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".Template:Cbignore
  9. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  10. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  11. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  12. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  13. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  14. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  15. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  16. Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".Template:Cbignore
  17. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  18. Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".

Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".