Afleveringen
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Episode five is about one of the ways we organize human knowledge. It's also about two German musicologists who created a system for categorizing musical instruments, before the Nazis fucked it all up. And you bet it's relevant to the development of the guitar, because in the Hornbostel Sachs system, the guitar is barely a blip among the hundreds of tools humans use to make music.
As we get into this long history, it's important to maintain a sense of humility.
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This episode takes us from the evolution of human musicality into the realm of music itself, and its origins. That story is big, controversial, and messy. So, I've sorted it into easily digestible summaries of the ideas of Charles Darwin, Steven Brown, and Steven Pinker: three thinkers whose work is important for understanding how and why we started making music. It could have been really long, but I've cleverly limited it to under 25 minutes.
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Here's a link to a brief and delightfully tension-filled conversation between Police drummer Stewart Copeland and Harvard Linguist/Psychologist Steven Pinker, referenced in the last third or so of the episode.
Episode playlist here. I'll be tinkering with these playlists periodically, so feel free to add them to your library and revisit from time-to-time.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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You don't make musical sounds by just sitting there. You have to fight for them. Music begins with little acts of violence, and we've been learning how to do that for a very long time.
This episode is about turning kinetic energy into mechanical energy into sound energy. It's about force. It's about electrical circuits and stone arrowheads. It's about how we learned to make fists and hold guitar necks. It's about Stanley Kubrick and the Ramones, and how we learned important skills from breaking things, blowing speakers, and abusing musical instruments. Some of it's about me in 5th grade, and it's all about the fact that the guitar is...inevitable.
Support the project!
Episode playlist here. I'll be tinkering with these playlists periodically, so feel free to add them to your library and revisit from time-to-time.
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This episode is about one of the things that launched us on our journey toward making music, which would eventually get us to the guitar.
That one thing is our feet. Which is really two things.
When we began to walk upright, we introduced something new into our lives. Becoming bipedal, millions of years ago, gave us one of the foundations of music, and Disco, and CPR. It also helped to make our brains bigger, which made us smarter, and our walking feet and smarter noggins pointed us toward becoming musical beings.
Support the project here!
Episode playlist here. I'll be tinkering with these playlists periodically, so feel free to add them to your library and revisit from time-to-time.
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In this episode we'll go back in time, into a cave with a Greek God, where a mythical stringed instrument was created, and on to Wisconsin, California, and Mississippi, in search of an origin story for the guitar. The title might give you a hint of where we'll end up.
Support the project here!
Episode playlist here. I'll be tinkering with these playlists periodically, so feel free to add them to your library and revisit from time-to-time.
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A People's History of the Guitar is about people, the guitar, people and their guitars, and the guitar and its people.
In this introductory episode, you'll find out about what the podcast is about, why I decided to do it in the first place, and who the podcast is for. Spoiler alert: it's for everybody.
I'm just getting this going, and episodes are coming as I finish them. My goal is a minimum of three episodes each month. We'll get there, especially if you keep listening, and if you'll consider supporting the project, so support the project here!
Episode playlist here. Some guitar-based music that means something to me. I'll be tinkering with these playlists periodically, so feel free to add them to your library, and revisit from time-to-time.
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A taste of the sound and purpose of the show to come.
