Creative Date Week 5 - Play it Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll

It is rare to see a more historic museum to exhibit the instruments of rock and roll. Even though I am not a fan of rock music, I still find this exhibition inspiring. Rock music is a great example of how instruments and technology are combined to create more variety of sounds and eventually become a new field. It is the first time I saw so many fashionable guitars that were designed with both visual and sound impact.

There is one piece I really like is the "Dragon", which Jimmy Page used to play it with a violin bow as experiment. He even hand painted the guitar and replace the white pickguard with transparent acrylic over silver-gray diffraction film. When later I saw the video when Page experimenting the violin bow and theremin with guitar, I was fascinated on how different instrument parts could mix together to make richer music.

As a violin player, I started to wonder if violin could become as vibrant as the guitar one day. Although electronic violin is also created for pop and rock music, it seems it still cannot reach the popularity as electronic guitar based music. Another feature I notice about guitar is that the design or redesign of guitars help to voice out the musicians' identities. This probably really makes electronic guitar stand out from other instruments.