How Many Guitars?
The Stairway Project is still doing the math on how many individual guitar parts are on the studio recording of Led Zeppelin’s Ten Years Gone, but we can say for certain: there’s at least one guitar that’s not exactly a guitar. But it’s not exactly not a guitar either. What is it? Well it’s the venerable and obscure Danelectro Coral Sitar.
Sitar: see photo credit below.
First conceived in the 60’s when there was a massive interest in the traditional Indian Sitar by Western Rock Musicians (inspired in large part by Ravi Shankar and his student George Harrison), ehe electronic sitar was designed by Vincent “Vinnie” Bell around a traditional 6 string guitar fret board and tuning, and utilized a specialized bridge to give it a distinctive buzzing sound (called the Sitarmatic bridge). It also had 13 drone strings that were meant to ring in sympathetic vibration while the guitar was played, and both elements, combined with the “lipstick” pickups, were the secrets that gave the electric sitar its Indianesque sound.
Not A One Trick Pony
Over the years, the electric sitar has appeared on many rock recordings – and not just as a western instrument trying to sound like an Indian sitar, but as an instrument unto itself. The following guitar demo’s show a variety of sounds and techniques (both familiar and unfamiliar) that you can achieve with it. For something with such a niche sound, electric sitars have a very broad tonal palate, and if you know what to listen for you’d be surprised at how often they show up on some of your favourite songs (can anybody say Van Halen’s Aint talkin’ ‘Bout Love?).
No Sitar? No Problem
Here at The Stairway Project we have yet to acquire an electrical sitar, and it’s looking pretty unlikely that there will be one under the tree this year, but we won’t let that stop us! In future articles we will look at different ways to achieve that “sitar” sound using the guitars we have on hand. Very much like the Original Stairway Project where we did not have a 12 string guitar, we will improvise and find a way. Stay tuned for future articles about this.
Feature Image Credit: Star’s Electric Sitar RD by Shunichi kouroki, via flickr, CC by 2.0
Additional photo credits: Paulo Sousa – Sitar by Mário Pires via Flickr, CC By-NC-ND 2.0