The piano is a really powerful instrument. With ten fingers, you can play ten notes at once, or more if you use the sustain pedal or you mash two keys with one finger. It can play both higher and lower than a guitar - at the same time! Unplugged, a piano is louder. And there is tons and tons of music for the piano - a lot of it classical, but going through ragtime, jazz, some blues, and even some rock.

That got me thinking. Why is the guitar the indisputable queen of instruments in today's popular music? Folk, blues, and especially rock and roll? What is so special about the guitar that makes it so perfect for rock? I love Billy Joel's music, and Jerry Lee Lewis kicked ass, but numbers-wise, guitarists leave pianist in the dust. Why is that?

Well, first of all, we have the practical considerations. Pianos are big, heavy, and expensive. Guitars are cheap and portable. That's obvious, but I think there's a lot more to it than that. After all, ragtime was not a rich-man's music. It's not too hard to find a piano to play, even if you can't afford your own. No, there has to be something about the sound of the guitar, something about what you can do with it.

And here it is

This is my list of things a guitar can do that a piano can't. This is not intended to diss pianos, or to even say one instrument is better than another. No, it's more of a thought-experiment, a reminder of just what it is that makes the guitar such a special instrument. A good guitarist should be aware of all these techniques and take advantage of them whenever it fits the song. Otherwise, you might as well be playing piano.

Note that I'm limiting this discussion to acoustic guitars and pianos. Once we start getting into the electronic keyboards and electric guitars, it becomes a whole different ball game, with all the special effects and so on. I'm keeping this just to the basic, primitive instruments.

String bends

When you hit a piano key, once the key is down there is nothing you can do to change the sound. The note sounds the same pitch until you let up the key or the pedal. With a guitar, you can bend up to a note, you can unbend down to a note, you can hit a note a quarter step up, you can bend up then down, or down then up.
Because of this, a guitar can actually play more notes than a piano, even if a piano has a larger range. Bending gives us the infinity of "notes between the notes."
It also can give a great wailing sound. Listen to any solo by Kirk Hammett of Metallica or David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and I guarantee at least half of the notes are played with a string bend of one sort or another. It's the sound of the blues, and by extension, the sound of rock'n'roll.

Vibrato

This is related to string bends, but more subtle. The vibrato is where a guitarist really shows his personality. Think of B.B. King, the quintessence of distinctive vibrato. You can tell after one note that you're listening to the King when you here his trademark "bee-sting" sound.

It also brings the sound of the guitar closer to that of the human voice. Studies have shown that we are psychologically hard-wired to respond emotionally to the sound of another person's voice. That's why, historically, the most popular instruments are the ones that come closest to singing. (That's also why I can't stand the recent Auto-Tune craze. But that's for another post.) If you can make your guitar sing, my friend, then you have truly mastered your instrument.

Varying string attacks

Hitting a piano key, you can hit it hard, you can hit it soft. You can hit it very hard, or very soft, or somewhere in between.

When you pluck a guitar string, you can do all that, plus a whole lot more. When you play with a pick, it sounds different than when you play with your fingers. A string plucked with your thumb will have a different sound than one plucked with your index finger. An upstroke sounds different from a downstroke. You can use different styles of pick. You can play with the side of your pick. You can play with the edge of your pick. You can play with your fingernail. You can play with the fleshy part of your finger. You can play near the bridge, you can play near the soundhole, you can play way up on the fingerboard.

The possibilities are literally endless. Beginning guitarists don't think too much about these aspects, but they can make a huge difference in the sound. Especially in acoustic fingerpicking, they can show the difference between an amateur and a real pro.

Snapping the strings

This technically belongs in the last category, but I decided to list it separately because it doesn't get enough attention. What I'm referring to is when you pull the string away from the body of the guitar, then let it snap back against the fretboard. This produces a loud percussive sound, but with pitch. It can be the perfect thing to liven up some playing, especially when you do it on the low E string. And don't be afraid to put some oomph into it. Trust me, you won't break the string, but you'll definitely attract some attention.

Hammer-ons and pull-offs

When you want that smooth, legato, sound, nothing is quite like a hammer-on or a pull off. Just take the sound of the pick right out of the equation.

Slides

Slide up. Slide down. Slide fast. Slide slow. Slide one note at the beginning of a solo. Slide a whole chord at the end. The possibilities are endless.

Percussion

Mute your strings with your left hand and strum a bit, and all of a sudden you're your own rhythm section! Dave Matthews uses this technique a ton.

Harmonics

There's nothing like the sweet sound of pure overtones. Just lay your finger lightly on a string at the fifth, seventh, or 12th fret, pluck, and you're on your way to harmonic bliss.

Well, the list goes on, but that ought to stoke some creativity. It's a pretty cool instrument we've taken up. But only if you take advantage of everything that makes it unique.

This is a topic that seems to come up quite often, both in online forums and in talking to people. Does learning music theory take away from the ability to simply "play what sounds good?" Can learning proper vocal technique remove the raw emotion from singing? Does learning more about the established techniques in a field (like songwriting) remove true creativity and make us all sound alike?

I've thought about this a lot, and I'm going to say no. And here's why.

The musical toolbox

In my opinion and experience, learning more about any topic can only help. The right approach is to view every lesson, book, or piece of advice as a tray in a buffet steam table, or as a tool in a toolbox. It's there for you to use when you need it, but there is nothing forcing you to use it (or eat it). But the more items you have to choose from, the better your building or dining experience will be.

To stick with the tool metaphor, a builder can make a lot of great things with a hammer and nails and a cross-cut saw. But what if one day he gets a Skil-Saw and a screwdriver as a gift? Now all of a sudden he can make a lot more things, and some of the things he used to make he can now make faster. Will he still have a use for the hammer? Of course he will. He just doesn't have to frame every building problem in terms of how it can be done with just a hammer. Getting the new tools doesn't take away the old tools. That's the key point.

Learning is an additive process, it's not a replacement process. Even if it's true that, as Homer Simpson said, "Every time I learn something new, it pushes something old out of my brain," we all have enough useless nonsense floating around in our heads that we don't have to worry about running out of room for the really good stuff.

In particular, learning technique does not cause emotion or instinct to go away. On the contrary, by learning the technique well, it becomes automatic and allows even more freedom for emotional expression. When we're speaking, we don't want to take the time to worry about constructing words and phrases. That part has become automatic, and we can focus on the ideas we want to express. In the same way, when we learn well the mechanics of singing or the technical process of songwriting, it becomes automatic and frees us to create better than we would ever have expected.

Learning From The Masters

Michelangelo did it: he spent the first part of his life as an apprentice to the painter Ghirlandaio. The Beatles took a lot of their initial sound from the Everly Brothers. Heck, even Luke Skywalker had to learn from Obi-Wan Kenobi. This certainly didn't hinder any of their progress.

Copying

Now this sounds strange, but I believe it to be true: copying another artist can make you a better artist and help you find your own style. There is much concern about a passing on of an established style, as a cookie cutter makes a plate of nearly identical ginger bread men. But doesn't this passing along of established technique happen anyway? Everyone starts out sounding like their influences at some point, before finding their own style and branching out. Why not learn to really sound like them, so the differences you forge will be based on moving forward rather than making up for technical deficiencies.

Pablo Picasso spent an entire year of his life doing studies of just one Velazquez painting, yet nobody would say Picasso's work is derivative of Velazquez, or even that there is a resemblance. He learned from the master, then became a master himself, without sacrificing his personal style.

These are my thoughts. I'm curious to see who agrees or disagrees.

The young people started listening to Elvis, The Beatles, Nirvana. Jazz became the domain of stuffy pipe-smoking intellectuals and pretentious fast-talking pseudo-intellectuals. If you aren't like, totally into Coltrane, man, you have no clue. You aren't worthy to dine at the table of the musically educated elite.

I guess what bothers me about Coltrane is precisely that his music is not accessible to the "common folk." I understand that sometimes you have to put in a little work to appreciate something new and different, and that much of the time it is very worth it, but in some of his work it seems he is intentionally making it challenging just for the sake of it, forgetting that there is true skill in creating a melody that hooks the listener instantly. A good song should not require an owner's manual.

As an analogy, I have the same complaint about the writing of James Joyce. He often seems to be showing off how erudite and knowledgeable he is, while forgetting to tell a good story. Similarly, in the art world, I don't want to have to know that the supposedly genius artist involved is a transsexual, HIV-positive, war protester. A painting is a painting, and it should stand alone without needed to be explained.

The best artists can create a "layering" affect, where on the first listen you're hooked by the instantly accessible melody, but subsequent listens continue to provide new surprises and challenges. An example in the popular music world for me would be the first album by The Counting Crows (let's pretend they quit after that one), or some of the Beatles' stuff.

To continue the analogy, it's sort of like the way Shakespeare would include bawdy jokes for the rabble in the cheap seats of the theater, while not sacrificing the intellectual depth of his works.

Some of my opinion may be caused by timing, too, of course. I'm sure if I listened some more to Coltrane in the right environment I would appreciate him more. At the time, I said, "I'm going to give this 'jazz' stuff a try, but it better be good!" and I wasn't in a patient frame of mind. (What can I say, I was young?) Maybe some day I'll try again and will be blown away. For now, there is enough music in other genres to keep me occupied.

I encourage anyone who agrees or disagrees to use the "comment" link below and let me know what you think.