How To Disappear Completely

The Age of the Guitar

I was fated to love the guitar, especially the acoustical guitar. It's my mother's fault, really. She played the guitar in high school and college. After I was born, I slept in the open guitar case (not on a regular basis, but we do have photographic evidence that once, at least, the case formed my crib). My mom didn't have much leisure while we were growing up, but her chorus book and acoustic guitar provided much of my childhood background music.

I was briefly interested in taking up guitar at one point, but F Major and my small hands quarreled, and I left the guitar to take up with the ukelele instead. My grandfather had given me an instrument he no longer played. I figured out my own chords (good piano background). I never became excellent on the instrument, but I get by, once composing a birthday song for a friend's 18th day of reckoning.

I can handle cheesy, sentimental guitar music much better than I appreciate the same on piano. Most of the music I like has guitar of some sort in it, but more often than not, the acoustic guitar that harmonized my youth is the dominant sound.

If the 19th century was the century of the piano, then the 20th century can perhaps be called the century of the guitar, the new instrument of the everyman. More portable than a piano, but with its capability to produce chords and multiple lines, the guitar accompanies the social music of our day (although the piano still forms an important staple).