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Chapter 2: Blues Meets Guitar: A Match Made in Musical Heaven
33
Figure 2-5:
The makers
of electric
sound,
reporting
for duty.
Naturally, there’s a lot more to the way electric guitars make music than what
I describe here, but what’s significant is that an electric guitar doesn’t make
its sound acoustically. Even though you can hear the string when the guitar’s
not plugged in, that’s not what the guitar “hears.” The guitar converts a disturbance
in the pickup’s magnetic field to a current. This all-electronic
process is different than “pre-electric guitar amplification,” which consisted
of placing a microphone in front of a guitar.
In an electric guitar, you must use metal strings, because nylon ones don’t
have magnetic properties. The fact that you need only a metal wire and a
pickup to make sound — rather than a resonating chamber — meant electric
guitars could be built differently from their acoustic counterparts. And they
were played differently, though that took some time to evolve.
Going easy on your pluckers (or strummers)
Many people think that the only difference between electric guitars and
acoustic guitars is that the electric versions plug into an amp and are louder.
While that’s true, it’s not the only difference. As a player, what you notice as
soon as you pick up an electric guitar is how easy it is to play. As far as physical
effort is concerned, electric guitars are much easier because
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