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    Guitar Noise: Power, Meaning, and Influence in Popular

    Music

    Dave Wall

    Where ever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. Whenwe listen to it, we find it fascinating.

    John Cage

    guitar history simultaneously spans popular and classical styles, urban and ruraltechniques, contemporary and historical practices, written and unwritten traditions, and

    Western and non-Western culturesVictor Anand Coelho

    In its brief life, the electric guitar has become one of the most powerful icons in 20th

    century music. This is evidenced by looking at its role in popular music post -1950 and,through that role, the sheer number of people exposed to it. If, as Jacques Attali says,

    power and subversion are born out of music, and disorder and the world are born out ofnoise (Attali, 6) then the guitar - in its pre-eminent position within the world of popular

    music, and through its use of noise - becomes a tool for radical transformation.

    I will argue that the electric guitar has been instrumental in influencing, enacting, andchallenging socio-cultural and musical discourses through its use of noise in the context

    of popular music. The noise I refer to here and throughout this paper indicates not onlyaural noise, but also non-aural noise associated with actions and attitudes that disrupt the

    normal flow of events within a culture. In effect, it covers virtually any cultural channelfrom various discourses to modes of dress and speech. This non-aural noise goes by

    many names: subversion, originality, idiosyncracy, transgression, all of which the electricguitar demonstrates. Following Frances Dyson, we can also see noise as an aspect of

    vibration and because of its ambiguous nature as something that unifies, thatdissolves the distinction between the body and technology, nature, and culture, and

    resolves the problem of representation and mediation. (Dyson, 11) Noise fractures andunites simultaneously.

    Before I begin, two caveats: first, when speaking of popular music, I am specifically

    speaking of the popular music of North America and the United Kingdom. Second, myuse of the terms electric guitar and popular music imply one another. When I

    mention one, the presence of the other is assumed. I should also say that the breadth anddepth of this topic demands more than the scope of this paper allows. The reader can take

    this as an introduction to the issues that emerge in this arena.

    In order to provide context and focus, I begin with three definitions of noise, acoustic,communicative, and subjective giving particular attention to subjective noise. While we

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    experience noise acoustically and communicatively, its effects are subjective. It makes usfeel things, and it is those things that I am most interested in, since how we feel

    determines how we act.

    From there I will consider the use of noise in music in the 20th

    century and how issues of

    power and meaning arise from this consideration. I will then discuss noise in popularmusic with a focus on the electric guitar. A discussion of the effects of popular music interms of identity, community, and feeling follows. I end with a look at the guitars

    relationship with technology, and at our relationship with guitar players, specifically inthe way we place them in positions of mythical power within the domain of popular

    music.

    Types of Noise

    As Torben Sangild points out, a single definition of noise is not possible. He identifiesthree basic types: acoustic, communicative and subjective. Michael Serres includes what

    could be called a materiality of noise. Noise is the background of information, thematerial of that form (Kelly, 74). According to Serres, we are constantly immersed innoise, without which there can be no communication; it is the ground from which all

    communication is drawn. Atalli: Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise(Atalli, 3).

    Acoustic noise is thought of as purely physical sound, sounds that are impure and

    irregular, neither tones nor rhythm - roaring, pealing, blurry sounds with a lot ofsimultaneous frequencies, as opposed to a rounded sound with a basic frequency and its

    related overtones (Sangild 4). This type of noise can be heard in traffic sounds, radiostatic - any sound existing in our physical environment that is typically thought of as

    unwanted.

    In communication theory,noise is a distortion of the signal from transmitter to receiver.This distortion of the signal can describe a condition in our relationships with other

    individuals or with the culture at large. Noise in communications with other individualscan cause misunderstandings or lack of connection, and influences our social construction

    of self. Signals are constantly transmitted to us through various ideologies political,consumer, musical - influencing our sense of place within the culture. If those signals are

    noisy, our sense of order can be impaired resulting in problems for hegemonic systems.

    Subjective noise, Sangilds third category, is largely a matter of personal taste and

    cultural-historical situation, occurring almost entirely through cultural perceptions, andindividual reactions within that framework (Hegarty, 4). Our experience of noise isbased on the extent to which we find it meaningful in particular contexts. Noises from

    nature the sea, the wind are not considered annoying even though they are not that farfrom white noise which most people do find annoying. In order to find meaning, we need

    to be able to name the thing we hear; we are not able to do this with many types of noise,and even nameable noise, in the case of ideological differences or offensive sounds,

    challenges or disturbs our experience of the world. Noise is non-repetitious and as such is

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    filled with possibility and is impossible to predict, creating more challenge anddisturbance.

    The development of a subjective experience of noise from revulsion to acceptance is

    considered necessary by some if the experience of music is to develop. The history of

    music holds many examples of this development, from the acceptance of polyphony toThe Rite of Springand beyond. Indeed, as Paul Hegarty points out, avant-garde music isalways initially considered noise. Only later does the old noise come to be seen as

    legitimate music. (Hegarty, 10) This implies an effort to diminish the power of noise. Byusing it in music, we integrate it into an existing system and remove its transgressive

    strength. In this way, the composer becomes instrumental in establishing order throughthe removal of subversion, the opposite effect that many composers intend.

    In order to move from revulsion to acceptance we need to learn to listen differently, or as

    Joanna Demers says, to listen aesthetically, to accept that sounds from the outside worldcan have aesthetic interest and that we can listen to them for more than just their

    informational value. (Demers, 16) This is difficult and it is not made easier by the factthat noise, in its initial impact, bothers us.

    What is it that bothers us? Is it simply the sound? Or is it, as Salome Voegelin points out,

    that hearing is full of doubt: phenomenological doubt of the listener about the heard andhimself hearing it. Hearing does not offer a meta-position; there is no place where I am

    not simultaneously with the heard. (Voegelin, xi) Since we are always simultaneouslywith sound and a part of it, it is difficult to observe objectively. This places our

    experience of it in question. If hearing is full of doubt, then hearing noise is doubtmultiplied exponentially, excluding other sounds [and] destroying sonic signifiers.

    (Voegelin, 43)

    Acceptance of noise in music is a problem for those in positions of power if music, asAttali says, has as its function the creation, legitimation and maintenance of order.

    (Attali, 7) Attali, operating from the perspective of political economy, asserts that noisechallenges order, which exists as the result of the transformation of noise into music,

    itself a regulated system. Subjective noise, noise determined by taste, not prescription,becomes a hindrance to the regulation of this order.

    Far from being negative, the subjective acceptance of noise can act as a panacea for the

    inundation of music in our lives. In exploring the effects of background music, GaborCsepregi, taking a cognitive/psychological approach, identifies what he considers to be

    an addiction to music, from morning to night, at home and in the workplace, whichleads to a gradual decay of our sensibilities. (Csepregi, 175) The acceptance of noise

    in this case background music - can take the emphasis off music and onto sound for itsown sake, creating sound-objects and leading to a deeper awareness of our sound-world.

    This attention to the sound environment is what R. Murray Schafer calls ear-cleaning,an approach to teaching that encourages awareness of the fact that noise is never not with

    us. While he feels this is largely negative, I feel it can be experienced as positive. Inconnecting to noise we listen more strongly and clearly. We notice more within sound

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    and our world expands. The background music that Csepregi decries becomes one morepiece of noise that we can experience simply as a sound object. Following the

    phenomenology of Edmund Husserl through Pierre Schaeffer, we learn to bracket outthe meanings of sound objects in this case, Muzak influencing our behaviour and

    imposing order - for the sake of a deeper experience of sound. In the specific case of

    background music, our conscious attention to it robs it of its power.

    Noise and Music in the 20th

    Century: Finding a Place

    The industrialized city of the 19th

    century is a convenient place in which to locate thebirth of sound-noise as Luigi Russolo does in The Art of Noises. Rising populations and

    increasing use of machinery foreground the phenomenon of sound-noise in a moreobvious way than previously, but a different type of noise was being identified in the 16

    th

    and 17th

    century. According to Atalli, this was the period when the culture of thepowerless was crystallizing, a culture increasingly considered to be noisy. This

    expands the idea of noise from one simply of sound to one that includes relations

    between humans. The idea of noise now becomes associated with marginalization,subversion, threat.

    Noise as a musical issue only became a concern in 20th

    century art music whencomposers began thinking about the possible uses of noise for noises sake as opposed to

    noise for the sake of effect. Noise as an effect makes it a controlled, directed andsomehow trivial substance. Noise for its own sake gives it an autonomous voice, allowing

    disorder as an acceptable alternative.Those calling for the legitimization of noise -Russolo (noise as the basis of composition), Edgard Varese (multi-layered textural sound

    rather than melodic-harmonic emphasis, foreshadowing electronic music), John Cage(expansion of musical sounds and the idea that all sound is music) and Pierre Schaeffer

    (use of found sounds) were forced to work on the margins.

    Russolo and the Italian futurists were an inspiration for Dada noise - sound poetry inparticular - which created noise by foregrounding the sound of language at the expense of

    meaning and structure. In many cases, this noise was informed by the sounds,languages, and social positions of others (Kahn, 47). This can be seen as a type of early

    globalart in which the marginalized from a dominant culture European bohemiansmade use of those outside that culture as a way of creating noise. They were able to

    experience the other as noise because they still had a base in the norms of their culturefrom which these others signified noise. This admixture meant that when they marshaled

    the noise of others to transgress or attack aspects of different dominant cultures, they

    reinforced other aspects of domination (Kahn, 48). We can see this process occurring inthe work of popular musicians such as Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon. In appropriating themusic of other cultures, they draw attention to these cultures while at the same time

    creating a misleading text. The power of these cultures do not reside in the way in whichpopular music represents them. The voice of the other, in this case, is muted or, as Kahn

    would say, dominated.

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    Electro-acoustic music exposes the semiotic relationships of noise. Joanna Demers pointsout that in electronic music, sounds function as signifiers for some underlying signified

    contentsounds are created and interpreted on the basis of their perceived ability toresemble something outside the musical work (Demers, 25). This is different from pre-

    electronic music, which rely on form to create meaning. In electro-acoustic music there

    are no generalized norms that dictate the use of form; the qualities of the soundsthemselves are responsible for meaning. While this is certainly true, sounds are not solelyresponsible. We cannot, as Demers seems to want to do, disregard the important role that

    form plays in the creation of meaning, regardless of the creators lack of intent in using it.She ignores the listener who will create form out of nothing if necessary.

    The sounds that Demers refers to here are found sounds (what many of us think of as

    noise), electronic sound (pops, crackles, white noise), as well as sampled recordings.These sampled recordings are not generally thought of as noise, but the context in which

    theyre used (outside of traditional musical structure and form), and the way in whichthey are used (isolated, broken apart and processed), is a subversion in the Atallian sense

    of a breakdown of order.

    In the mid to late 90s, as the general population gained access to computers andinexpensive recording equipment, experimentation became widespread. Caleb Kelly

    defines the aesthetic of glitch when he writes:

    Producers took these newly developedmusical tools andextended their use well beyond what their designers

    intendedtrying various methods to overload its centralprocessing unit (CPU) so as to produce a new tick, pop, or

    click that could be sampled and then sequenced for the nexttrackThe noising up of the digital was part of the noisy

    project of twentieth-century experimental music.

    Noising up digital takes the intentions of its inventors making sound clean andturns it on its head. Noise is once again used as subversion. The approach of driving

    machines to failure in the pursuit of new sounds creates an aesthetic of failure anddestruction, and challenges established order in the process.

    An interesting result of this advent of inexpensive equipment and software is the

    admittance of those conventionally thought of as non-musicians into the domain ofmusic-makers, opening up this particular subversive realm to more people and fulfilling

    Atallis final phase of music in which the tools of musical production are generallyaccessible. Anybody with ears and a computer can now manipulate the sounds around

    them, learn editing techniques and create sound/noise-worlds of their own without theneed to learn instrumental technique previously thought necessary to the practicing

    musician. This new amateurism hearkens back to the time before radio and thephonograph, when people out of necessity, created their own music with the parlor piano.

    This also points to the 1950s when people began buying guitars and teaching themselves

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    how to make music. There is a clear relationship between the parlor piano of the 19th

    century, the guitar, and the advent of inexpensive technology.

    The issues surrounding noise that have been discussed thus far power, meaning,

    aesthetics - all find their way into the domain of popular music. In popular music noise is

    no longer marginalized, but becomes an important aspect of music, finding a home in theelectric guitar.

    Popular Music and Guitar Noise: The Body in Action

    More people listen to popular music than to any other form of music. Aside from thosewho listen to nothing but popular music, many who identify themselves with classical,

    avante-garde and jazz will happily admit fondness for a variety of popular forms. Thisleads to a saturation in the popular consciousness of music that, until fairly recently, was

    considered unworthy of consideration. Its acceptance into the academy has increased itslegitimacy and profile. This broad acceptance of popular music by people from a variety

    of aesthetic and cultural backgrounds brings up the distinction between art music andpopular music and the relationship between the two. This is important given the

    perception of the place of art in culture and the influence that it has on society.Comparing the two draws attention to how we locate meaning in music.

    In art music, emphasis is placed on cognitive understanding, the ability to document

    sound and describe it. Experience of the music is largely through the mind. According toSimon Frith, classical music is the experience of feelings under control (Frith, 261). In

    popular music the emphasis is placed on embodied performance, an enactment in socialspace. It is through live performance that the popular music most clearly influences our

    behaviour, behaviour that is expressed through the body both the performers and the

    audiences. This physical interaction forms a link between the two and creates socialmeaning through communication and a type of collaboration expressed through anexchange of energy within the performance situation. Demers emphasizes this

    importance of the body when she invokes Maurice Merlau-Ponty:since all perceptionis necessarily bodily perception, one can therefore never speak of perception without also

    speaking of the perceivers physical interaction with stimuli (Demers, 32).

    There is a moral noisiness here, a discomfort with expression through the body, which theguitar in particular brings forward in popular music. Because it was the only amplified

    instrument in any early rock and roll band, the guitar was able to create a unique noise,which had a visceral effect different than other instruments. Elvis Presleys performance

    on the Milton Berle Show in 1956 demonstrated a confluence of physical and musicalnoise. Presleys movements seem at once highly conventionalized and incredibly

    spontaneous (Coelho 111) every time guitarist Scotty Moore would take a solo (seevideography, no. 7). These widely viewed performances would have the effect of

    solidifying the electric guitar as the rock and roll instrument. The physicalizing of guitarin this way made the noise produced by the guitar more than just sound. It placed the

    guitar in a sexualized context and cemented its subversive, transgressive position within

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    popular culture. More and more people would begin to be drawn to the guitar as listenersand players.

    This performative/transgressive aspect of the guitar, demonstrated throughout its history,

    draws focus to it. The onstage theatrics of many guitar players jumping from monitors,

    smashing their instrument, putting on the face - demonstrates passion, intensity,commitment, and noisiness. In the case of smashing the guitar, Pete Townsend and JimiHendrix enacted a remaking of social, cultural, music and technological discourses

    (Carfoot, 37) by demonstrating, in the words of Fluxus artist Gustav Metzger, that theline between a generative and destructive reality is paper thin (Birrell, 1). This idea of

    creation of meaning through destruction is supported in Michel Corbussens discussion oflinguistic meaning in the music of Evan Parker The deterritorialising powers of noise

    are not only destructive, they are productive as well. They can transcend the old codesand recreate a system of differences on another level of organization... (Corbussen, 31).

    The use of noise continues prominently with the punk rock movement of the 1970s and

    early 1980s, a music based largely on the guitar. Punk effectively used noise to challengethe existing musical discourse of the need for technical proficiency, and enacted the

    social discourses of individual freedom, agency, and anti-authoritarianism. As JoshuaClover puts it, The imperative logic is straightforward enough:Anyone can do it. Dont

    bow down before the band; be the band. Dont wait. Dont get stuck at home practicingscales. Raw power is enough. Urgency is enough (Clover, 76). The noise of punk is

    based on the noise of the guitar, and invokes the values mentioned above when heard.

    In the context of recorded music guitar noise is regulated by industry demands. In thecontext of live performance, the guitarist decides how to use the available sonic resources

    and power shifts into the hands of the performer. When we experience a liveperformance, we are controlled, but we consent to it because in being controlled, we

    experience a sense of identity, community, and feeling. These three experiences,discussed below, are present when listening to recorded music as well, but are

    attenuated. This distinction is useful to keep in mind as we consider how popular musiceffects us.

    Effects of Popular Music

    1. IdentificationSimon Frith has identified two critical positions that determine how listeners experience

    music. Bad music is formulaic or standardized (conservative, mainstream, productionfor a market); good music is original or autonomous (radical, elite, productiondetermined by individual intention). People identify with one or the other, deepening

    their sense of themselves, or, more accurately, their image of themselves. This image iscreated as a presentation of self to other(s) and a presentation of selfto self in which

    music can be used as a device for the reflexive process of remembering/constructingwho one is (DeNora, 141).

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    When we look at popular music, we are looking at a social institution that helps createmeaning. One of the most important aspects of meaning in popular music lies in how it

    helps to create a socially constructed image in relation to different groups, and how ithelp us connect to other humans across geographical locations and social divisions. It

    also acts in a negative fashion by creating boundaries and divisions, alienating various

    groups from each other.

    2. CommunityThe rock concert and the folk festival are two community-building events in which to

    witness an audience in the act of what Christopher Small calls musicking. I mention thesetwo events in order to compare experiences that are at once different and similar, one a

    microcosm of the other in terms of commitment to the event.

    Because a festival takes place over a number of days the musickingexperience is lessintense, but no less focused. People wander in a seemingly aimless way, yet they are

    always in the process of leaving one musical experience and entering another. They arealways musicking. Community is created based on broad contact.

    In the rock concert experience, the focus is more intense because the time within the

    experience is limited to a couple of hours. When the band takes the stage, the audiencetakes to its feet as one enormous organism and quite clearly feeds the band energetically.

    Focussed involvement in the experience is crucial in terms of producing a meaningfulmusical experience. Community is created based on intensity.

    3. FeelingOur experience of music is often based on feelings, emotional and physical. Bad music

    offends us; it is painful, boring, ugly. Howard Becker, speaking sociologically, has madethe point that people experience aesthetic values as natural and moral. We listen to the

    music we listen to because it communicates values to which we subscribe. Genre issignificant here. Rock can be perceived as either violent or liberating, country as corny or

    authentic. This duality exists in all genres, and different people respond to different musicaccording to their feelings, which are generated by their experience in the world. Popular

    music, with its richness of genres and sub-genres, brings these feelings to light.

    In all three of these aspects of the popular music experience, the guitar functions as atouchstone. The guitar helps to create our sense of identity, our awareness of community,

    and our experience of feeling.

    The Guitar as Technological Innovator

    Technology equals noise. The most technologically advanced cultures move quicker, saymore, press more buttons, drive more vehicles, produce more product, all of which

    creates both aural and non-aural noise, all of which make us act in ways we otherwisewouldnt if noise was not there.

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    The guitar has taken this noise-world and translated it into electronic sound, shaping it

    with sheer volume and aural effects, mirroring the contemporary world as a result.Amplifiers, effects pedals, computer programming, and virtualization work to shape this

    world, creating a threat to the forces of authority and power through the shifting of aural

    identities. These shifting identities can be seen clearly in the concept of the virtual guitar.they are virtualguitars, because the explicit aim is to virtualize some materialreality into a non-physical form (Carfoot, 37). This process takes place digitally

    through the modeling of amplifiers, various guitars, and other instruments in software,which can then be played on a single guitar. The idea of virtuality brings up the idea of a

    liminal domain - ...uncorrupted by the social and political realities that dominatetraditional media (Dyson, 1) in which the guitar participates. This is an aspect of the

    guitar that lay outside the scope of this paper, but that deserves more attention, involvedas it is in the advent of the new media.

    Steve Waksman, working from a cultural-historical perspective, addresses the guitars

    response to authority in his discussion of 1960s Detroit band The MC5s concerts andtheir use of early guitar technology. amplification was a useful weapon. As much a

    the illegal substances and the unlawful cries of MOTHERFUCKER, electricity itselfbecame a source of contestationThe authoritarian impulse toward silence was

    countered by the restless noise of youth, which was in turn amplified by the bands sonicexcess (Waksman, 213). The punk rock movement took the approach of the MC5,

    increased the volume and political rhetoric, ratcheting up the transgressive effect of noise,and creating controversy throughout most of the world as a result (see videography, nos.

    8 and 9).

    Perhaps the most famous example of guitar noise in popular music is Jimi Hendrixsversion of The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock in 1969. As Waksman describes it,

    distortion overwhelms the melody as the guitarist deforms the songshifting betweenhigh-pitched screams and dive-bomber bursts of low-end crunchwith notes descending

    into electronic feedback shrieks (Waksman, 171). This is perhaps the most overt useof noise in the history of music in terms of challenging power (see videography, no. 6).

    The guitar player is historically an explorer, looking for new ways to use and transform

    the instrument. Through the use of effects pedals, synthesizers, laptop computers,virtualization, detuning, inserting objects into the strings, replacing guitar strings with

    various kinds of wire, and the construction of crude guitars, the guitar has been a focalpoint for technological innovation in 20

    thcentury music.

    Heroes and Gods

    the scene mutates into a fantasy sequence of the guitaristas an archetypal seeker climbing a mountain in searchof

    eternal truthhe is met by the sight of an ancient manbearing a light and a staff. [The mans face] undergoes a

    transformation backwards in timeAs layers of old age are

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    peeled from the face, it becomes recognizable as Pagesown. He is positioned as both seeker and source of wisdom

    (Waksman, 242; videography, no.5).

    This scene from the Led Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same reveals the

    extent to which some guitarists abilities are framed in power and mystery. Guitarists areregularly referred to as heroes (Jimmy Page, Eddie van Halen) and sometimes as gods(Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix). There are no other popular culture icons or instrumentalists

    that we regularly refer to in this way.

    Why do we treat guitar players in this way? Why has the guitar become the instrumentalicon of popular music?

    The guitar hero isa social construction signifying a pre-existing structure, what Jean

    Baudrillard termed a third order simulacrum in which the simulacrum, or simulation ofreality, precedes the original. In other words, our perception of the guitar player as a

    powerful figure in popular culture is based on a pre-existing fabrication, a copy - orconception - of something that may of may not have existed, mythical figures, heroes and

    gods. In a sense, there is no electric guitar player hero/god as the distinction betweenrepresentation and reality vanishes. What remains is not a physical object, but a fantasy

    that we map onto particular representatives of popular culture.

    But why the guitarist in particular as god? If Baudrillards contention - that it is thesignifications of culture and media that construct perceived reality - is true then culture

    and media are complicit in the creation of the electric guitar player. The transgressivenature of the electric guitar - from its early rock and roll physicalization represented in

    Elvis Presleys performative response to Scotty Moores guitar solos, the loudness andpoliticization of the MC5, Jimi Hendrixs sonic explorations and beyond to punk rock,

    heavy metal and the noise guitar of players like Otomo Yoshihide, Fred Frith, KiethRowe and Christian Fennesz (videography, nos. 1 -4) has kept it in the cultural and media

    spotlight for almost 60 years. It would appear that people are attracted to subversion,originality, idiosyncracy, and transgression and are willing to refer to those that practice

    it publicly as heroes and gods.

    Conclusion

    I have approached this topic from a variety of viewpoints: phenomenological,

    linguistic/semiotic, socio-cultural, aesthetic, and political. In doing so, I have presented

    reasons why the electric guitar in its use of noise has had the effect it has had, effects thatcan be quantified in the domains of identity, communication, and feeling through theprism of power, performance, and linguistic and subjective meaning.

    Raymond Williams once said that culture is common meanings, the product of a whole

    people. He added that, It is stupid and arrogant to suppose that any of these meaningscan in any way be prescribed; they are made by living, made and remade, in ways we

    cannot know in advance (Williams, 15). These common meanings are what the guitar

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    trades in, that it makes and remakes as its players use it to explore new ways ofcommunicating sound. The demonstration of persistence in the face of resistance; the

    commitment on the part of its practitioners to continually look for ways to remake it; andthe foregrounding of physical experience: these noises are the demonstration of qualities

    that contribute to any healthy culture.

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    20. Sangild, Torben. The Aesthetics of Noise. Published by DATANOMEdited by Pelle Krghol. Copyright 2002 by Sangild & DATANOM

    All rights reserved

    21. Schafer, R. Murray. The Music of the Environment. inAudio Culture: Readings InModern Music, editors Christopher Cox and Daniel Warner.New York: The Continuum

    International Publishing Group Inc., 2007

    22. Schafer, R. Murray.Ear Cleaning: Notes for an Experimental Music Course.Berandol Music Limited, 1967.

    23. Small, Christopher.Musicking: The Meanings of Performing andListening. Hanover:

    University Press of New England, 1998.

    24. Toynbee, Jason, From Hegemonic Centre to Global Networks, inPopular MusicStudies, editors David Hesmondhalgh and Kieth Negus. London: Arnold, 2002.

    25. Voegelin, Salome. Listening to Noise and Silence.New York: The Continuum

    International Publishing Group Inc, 2010,

    26. Waksman, Steve. Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping ofMusical Experience. Harvard University Press, 1999.

    27. Williams, Raymond. Culture is Ordinary. In The Raymond Williams Reader,

    edited by John Higgins, 10 24. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,2001.

    28. Young, Rob. Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music. London:

    Continuum, 2002.

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    VideographyThis videography is limited to artists mentioned in the paper or, in the case of The Sex

    Pistols, a particular genre.

    Noise Guitar

    1. Youtube. Kieth Rowe. Live 2001.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb-GPdnfbyI&feature=related(accessed November

    22, 2010).

    2. Youtube. Otomo Yoshihide guitar solo Tokyo 1994.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-DXwxKlE2I&feature=related(accessed November

    22, 2010).

    3. Youtube. Fred Frith solo concert from MOZG,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2WSeZZV6iQ&feature=related(accessedNovember 23, 2010).

    4. Youtube. Fennesz Live at Lovebytes 2006 Sheffield UK

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKTCDweBUPg(accessed November 23, 2010).

    Popular Music, Noise, and the Guitar

    1. Youtube. Jimmy Page Violin Bow Solo.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmNHtWqcXqY&feature=related (accessedNovember 23, 2010).

    2. Youtube. Jimi Hendrix Star Spangled Banner Live Woodstock.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIoyZFzL8rM&feature=related (accessed

    November 23, 2010).

    3. Youtube. Elvis Presley Milton Berle Show 5 June 1956: Hound Dog.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5JALwwaASg (accessed November 25, 2010).

    4. Youtube. MC5 - Kick Out the Jams.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM6nasmkg7A (accessed, November 25, 2010).

    5. Youtube. Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvn-PEHuv9w&feature=&p=0189022BE77C5451&index=0&playnext=1 (accessed,

    December 1, 2010).

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