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Your letters to the Guitarist editor. Drop us a line at guitarist@futurenet.com

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GO YOUR OWN WAY

“Write and play from the heart”: wise words from Gordon Giltrap

What an inspiring and insightful interview with Gordon Giltrap in issue 492. I picked up the guitar again two years ago after last playing in 1970 when everyone thought they could be a rockstar. I have learnt more in the past two years about music and guitar than I ever knew existed back in the day. My two granddaughters, aged 10 and 14, are also learning and I think I agree with Gordon when I tell them to try to play your favourite songs how you feel they should sound and not exactly how your guitar heroes play them. That way you’ll be adding something to the music and not just copying it.

Roy Pearson

Thanks for this, Roy, we completely agree – and even when we do try to imitate an existing musical style, we can’t help but introduce our own ideas, quirks and alterations that often change it into something new. A good example of that is ska (which later morphed into rocksteady and reggae) in 1950s Jamaica, which was in part an emulation of American R&B of the era. But instead of merely replicating the loping shuffle of US R&B tunes, ska fused R&B with calypso and mento influences and the rhythmic emphasis shifted towards the off-beat. And so a new, distinct and incredibly influential musical lineage was created.

So we can see from that example and others that both imitation and originality are important to the vitality of music. We might perhaps say, though, that imitation without originality risks a lapse into cliché, whereas pure originality alone can yield masterpieces. Your thoughts on the subject win you this month’s Star Letter prize of some superb Vox headphones.

Each issue, the Star Letter will win a pair of Vox VGH AC30 guitar amplifier headphones! www.voxamps.com

RARE BIRD

For the attention of Neville Marten: I read with interest your article in Guitarist 493 with your recollections of guitars that you have bought and sold that with hindsight you should have kept (or sold sooner) if you had then had the luxury of the internet. Although you mention at the end if anyone has any guitar horror stories, my story is of amplifier regret!

Back in early 1973, I was 16 and in my last year at school and had scrimped and saved the princely sum of £39 for a better amp. One evening the local rag had an ad: Vox AC30 for sale £40. Off I went to have a look, out in the middle of nowhere, inside a mobile home with the AC30 next to a stand with a macaw on it. The guy said he used the AC30 for his disco… He then pointed to his replacement, a 1960s Marshall 100‐watt head and a pair of column speakers. Argh, even rarer now!

I asked the guy if he’d take £39 for it and he said that was okay, and when I mentioned I was still at school and that was all the money I had, he then gave me a

This article is from...

Guitarist Magazine

3 February 2023

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