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Whammy Bar
A vibrato system on a guitar is a mechanical device used to temporarily change the pitch of the strings. Instruments without a vibrato have other bridge and tailpiece systems. They add vibrato to the sound by changing the tension of the strings, typically at the bridge or tailpiece of an electric guitar using a controlling lever, which is alternately referred to as a whammy bar, vibrato bar, or incorrectly as a tremolo arm. The lever enables the player to quickly and temporarily vary the tension and sometimes length of the strings, changing the pitch to create a vibrato, portamento, or pitch bend effect. The pitch-bending effects have become an important part of many styles, allowing creation of sounds that could not be played without the device, such as the 1980s-era shred guitar " dive bomb" effect. The mechanical vibrato systems began as a device for more easily producing the vibrato effects that blues and jazz guitarists had achieved on arch top guitars by manipulati ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and the f ...
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Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music style which expanded its appeal to adult pop music fans. He was primarily a guitarist, but he also played the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and ukulele, and occasionally sang. Atkins's signature picking style was inspired by Merle Travis. Other major guitar influences were Django Reinhardt, George Barnes, Les Paul, and, later, Jerry Reed. His distinctive picking style and musicianship brought him admirers inside and outside the country scene, both in the United States and abroad. Atkins spent most of his career at RCA Victor and produced records for the Browns, Hank Snow, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Floyd Cramer, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry R ...
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Eric Johnson (guitarist, Born 1954)
Eric Johnson (born August 17, 1954) is an American guitarist, vocalist and composer. His 1990 album '' Ah Via Musicom'' was certified platinum by the RIAA, and the single " Cliffs of Dover" won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Best known for his electric guitar skills, Johnson is also a highly proficient acoustic, lap steel, resonator, and bassist, as well as an accomplished pianist and vocalist. He plays many musical genres, including rock, blues, jazz fusion, soul, folk, new-age, classical, and country.Pinson, Matt"Eric Johnson: In Full Bloom"– MusicPlayers.com – August 6, 2006. ''Guitar Player'' magazine has called him "one of the most respected guitarists on the planet."Leslie, Jimmy"On Tackling Odd Meters: Eric Johnson" – ''Guitar Player'' – August 2006. Music career Early life Born into a musically inclined family, Eric Johnson and his three sisters studied piano, while his father was a whistling enthusiast. Johnson started learning the ...
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Eddie Van Halen
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen ( , ; January 26, 1955 – October 6, 2020) was an American musician and songwriter. He was the guitarist, keyboardist, backing vocalist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Van Halen, which he co-founded alongside his brother Alex Van Halen in 1972. Van Halen is often regarded as one of the greatest guitar players in rock history, and was well known for popularizing the tapping guitar technique, allowing rapid arpeggios to be played with two hands on the fretboard. Early life Edward Lodewijk Van Halen was born in Amsterdam on January 26, 1955, the son of Jan van Halen and Eugenia (née van Beers). His father was a Dutch jazz pianist, clarinettist, and saxophonist, while his mother was an Indo (Eurasian) woman from Rangkasbitung on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. The family eventually settled in Nijmegen, Netherlands. After experiencing mistreatment for their mixed-race relationship in the 1950s, the parents moved the family t ...
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Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and '' musique concrète'' works, and produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation. As a self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop musi ...
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Jimmy Page
James Patrick Page (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Page is prolific in creating guitar riffs. His style involves various alternative guitar tunings and melodic solos, coupled with aggressive, distorted guitar tones. It is also characterized by his folk and eastern-influenced acoustic work. He is also noted for occasionally playing his guitar with a cello bow to create a droning sound texture to the music. Page began his career as a studio session musician in London and, by the mid-1960s, alongside Big Jim Sullivan, was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Britain. He was a member of the Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968. When the Yardbirds broke up, he founded Led Zeppelin, which was active from 1968 to 1980. Following the death of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, he participated in a number of musical groups throughout the 1980s and 1990s, more specifical ...
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Ritchie Blackmore
Richard Hugh Blackmore (born 14 April 1945) is an English guitarist and songwriter. He was a founding member of Deep Purple in 1968, playing jam-style hard rock music that mixed guitar riffs and organ sounds. He is prolific in creating guitar riffs and classically influenced solos. During his solo career, Blackmore established the hard rock band Rainbow, which fused baroque music influences and elements of hard rock. Rainbow steadily moved to catchy pop-style mainstream rock. He later formed the traditional folk rock project Blackmore's Night along with his current wife Candice Night, shifting to vocalist-centred sounds. As a member of Deep Purple, Blackmore was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2016. He is cited by publications such as '' Guitar World'' and ''Rolling Stone'' as one of the greatest and most influential guitar players of all time. Early life Blackmore was born at Allendale Nursing Home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, as second son to ...
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David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour ( ; born 6 March 1946) is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and member of the rock band Pink Floyd. He joined as guitarist and co-lead vocalist in 1967, shortly before the departure of founding member Syd Barrett. Pink Floyd achieved international success with the concept albums '' The Dark Side of the Moon'' (1973), ''Wish You Were Here'' (1975), '' Animals'' (1977), '' The Wall'' (1979), and '' The Final Cut'' (1983). By the early 1980s, they had become one of the highest-selling and most acclaimed acts in music history; by 2012, they had sold more than 250 million records worldwide, including 75 million in the United States. Following the departure of Roger Waters in 1985, Pink Floyd continued under Gilmour's leadership and released three more studio albums. Gilmour has produced a variety of artists, such as the Dream Academy, and has released four solo studio albums: '' David Gilmour'' (1978), '' About Face'' (1984), '' On an Island'' (200 ...
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Jeff Beck
Geoffrey Arnold Beck (born 24 June 1944) is an English rock guitarist. He rose to prominence with the Yardbirds and after fronted the Jeff Beck Group and Beck, Bogert & Appice. In 1975, he switched to a mainly instrumental style, with a focus on innovative sound, and his releases have spanned genres ranging from blues rock, hard rock, jazz fusion and a blend of guitar-rock and electronica. Beck ranked in the top five of ''Rolling Stone'' and other magazine's list of 100 greatest guitarists. He is often called a "guitarist's guitarist". ''Rolling Stone'' describes him as "one of the most influential lead guitarists in rock". Although he recorded two hit albums (in 1975 and 1976) as a solo act, Beck has not established or maintained the sustained commercial success of many of his contemporaries and bandmates. He has recorded with many artists. Beck has earned wide critical praise and received the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance six times and Best Pop I ...
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Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music." Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville then Nashville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the chitlin' circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after bassist ...
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Dick Dale
Richard Anthony Monsour (May 4, 1937 – March 16, 2019), known professionally as Dick Dale, was an American rock guitarist. He was a pioneer of surf music, drawing on Middle Eastern music scales and experimenting with reverb. Dale was known as "The King of the Surf Guitar", which was also the title of his second studio album. Dale was one of the most influential guitarists of all time and especially of the early 1960s. Most of the leading bands in surf music, such as The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean and The Trashmen, were influenced by Dale's music, and often included recordings of Dale's songs in their albums. His style and music influenced guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Eddie Van Halen and Brian May. He has been credited with popularizing tremolo picking, a technique that is now widely used in many musical genres (such as extreme metal, folk etc.). His speedy single-note staccato picking technique was unrivaled until guitarists like Eddie Van Halen enter ...
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The Shadows
The Shadows (originally known as the Drifters) were an English instrumental rock group, who dominated the British popular music charts in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the pre- Beatles era. They served as the backing band for Cliff Richard from 1958 to 1968, and have joined him for several reunion tours. The Shadows have had 69 UK chart singles from the 1950s to the 2000s, 35 credited to the Shadows and 34 to Cliff Richard and the Shadows. The group, who were in the forefront of the UK beat-group boom, were the first backing band to emerge as stars. As pioneers of the four-member instrumental format, the band consisted of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums. Their range covers pop, rock, surf rock and ballads with a jazz influence. The core members from 1958 to present are guitarists Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch and drummer Brian Bennett (who has been with the group since 1961) with various bassists and occasionally keyboardists through the years. Along ...
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