Music is an important part of people’s lives. Each culture has developed various instruments over the centuries. These instruments were developed to create an enjoyable sound by themselves and to accompany nature’s instrument, the human voice. As time has progressed, different genres of music have passed through their primes; classical music during the Renaissance, jazz in the early 20th Century, and hard rock and pop in its current prime. In each style of music there are always names associated with their time and sometimes even their instrument. With Bach and Mozart from the Classical Age to Elvis Presley during the classic Rock ‘n Roll Age, each period holds its own outstanding individuals of their time. The recent time period and its popular instruments is no exception. As the Twentieth-Century progressed, so did the popularity of a now commonly recognizable instrument - the guitar. It seems to be an unspoken agreement between composures and consumers of the present that the guitar is almost a required instrument for any song to be popular. This makes the guitar a huge “player” in music so, who have been the biggest “players” of the guitar? There have been diverse guitar players throughout recent history, each with their own style and music genre, but there are a choice few that probably hold the most influence overall on the guitar in: playing style, sound, and music genre. Although there have been many, five guitarists seem to stand above the rest, if only by a little. These five guitarists are: Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Eddie Van Halen. These five guitarists have been the most influential in the guitar’s playing style and evolution than any other guitarists of history.
The first guitar p...
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There are certain musicians that come along that shift a culture, attitude, or future musicians. Another musician that went on influence future generations and considered one of the greatest guitar players in the world is Eddie Van Halen.
mother, Ruth, brought him to live with her at a sailor's hotel and bar that she
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Steve Miller was born October 5, 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Steve’s family was very involved with music. His mother was a jazz-influenced singer, and his father was a pathologist that very interested in the world of music. Dr. Miller was friends with many musicians which greatly aided in young Steve’s development in music. One of his father’s friends included Les Paul, who showed Steve some chords on a guitar at the age of five. Les Paul proved to be a very valuable mentor to Steve, and he became a good friend of the family. When Steve was seven his family moved to Dallas, where he was exposed to a different type of artists that usually did not visit Milwaukee. His father took him to see greats such as Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, and Carl Perkins. Steve was particularly drawn to T-Bone Walker, the father of Texas-style electric blues. This proved to be very influential in Steve’s life, and it is evident by the blues-sound that he exhibited in his guitar playing.
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There have been many bigshot artists that have gone down in music history over the years. One man in particular, however, will forever be known all over the world for his famous works and amazing stage performances. This man is none other than the one and only Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix altered the style of rock and roll during the late 60’s early 70’s and is widely considered one of the most influential guitar players amongst the music world to this day.
Commonly referred to as the “King of the Surf Guitar”, Dick Dale brought about the genre now known as “Surf Rock” with his fierce brand of guitar playing which took the ears of many by surprise. Dale was instrumental in the use of high powered guitar amplifiers, reverberation as an effect and also the rise of heavy metal.
As the increasing popularity of the guitar, guitar performance has been developed into a discipline, and is still being carried forward. At the beginning of the 1920s, Andrés Segovia (1893-1987) significantly popularized the guitar with tours and early phonograph recordings. He is considered to be the father of the modern classical guitar movement by most modern scholars. Many feel, that without his efforts, the classical guitar would still be considered a lowly bar instrument, and will never become an accepted concert instrument.
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Many people from the 1900’s contributed to the evolution of the history of rock and roll. However, Jimi Hendrix was the rock legend who changed the way music was made and he raised the bar for the rest of the music industry. Jimi was born in 1942, in Seattle, Washington, he had a difficult childhood, being raised by a young mom who had Jimi at seventeen and a dad who eventually left and started another family, he was often left living with relatives. He only saw his mom a few times before she eventually died in 1958. In many ways music became a sanctuary for Jimi since he grew up not having much. Jimi loved blues and rock and roll and when he was sixteen Jimi got his first acoustic guitar and taught himself how to play. Shortly after he began
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Jerry Garcia’s life was filled with wonderful things, many of which he never expected in the first place. After an almost fatal heroin overdose in 1986, “ Garcia philosophically stated, ‘ I’m 45 years old, I’m ready for anything, I didn’t even plan on living this long so all this shit is just add-on stuff.’ ” (“Garcia”) This attitude shows why Garcia did all of the things he did and even how some of them came about. Garcia, who “functioned as the preeminent pied piper of the rock era,” led a life of great artistic ability which he used in many ways(“Grateful Dead_ Rockhall”).
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As the increasing popularity of the guitar, guitar performance has been developed into a discipline, and is still being carried forward. At the beginning of the 1920s, a musician, a composer and the most important a guitarist, Andrés Segovia, was getting to be known as one of the greatest guitarists and the grandfather of the classical guitar. He spent his whole life learning, exploring and improving the classical guitar. Many people believe that, without his efforts, the charm of the guitar would still be covered, and the instrument would never appear in a concert stage.
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