Nice Noise

Hidden inside your guitar is a world of sounds, tone qualities, timbres, and effects that you will never find with conventional playing techniques. Some of these sounds are beautiful, some comical; some are edgy, exotic, subtle, raucous, mellifluous or strange. These are the sounds you can bring out with the prepared guitar techniques described in this book. The focus here is not on electronic effects; it is on things you can do physically to alter the ways the strings vibrate or the soundboard projects. Most of these preparations are easily put in place and just as easily removed. A few of them involve permanent modifications that can take an old guitar to turn it into something quite new. Whatever type of guitar you play -- acoustic or electric; classical, jazz, rock, avant-garde or other -- this book will show you new and unexpected ways to play it. Want to hear what the preparations sound like? Audio examples, fifty-nine of them altogether, can be found free of charge at nicenoise.bandcamp.com. And of course the book is extensively illustrated with color photographs showing the how the preparations are set up.