During the first half of my talk I illustrated my view of the primary identity of the electric guitar as a vehicle for sonic, and stylistic imitation. I lead the talk with a sound example from Hendrix's Live in Berkeley concert where he introduces himself as performing on the "public saxophone". I concluded this half by showing
an early prototype of my augmented guitar with hexaphonic processing to allow free movement in a vowel space. This is the logical generalization of the waa-waa pedal.
In the second half of my talk I introduced a conceptual model of innovation which I find far more fruitful in understanding the instrument's past present and future than the current "lone genius" model that frames most histories of the electric guitar as a series of key personalities and key instruments.
My model is that innovation occurs when three normally asynchronous processes are brought together: ideation, implementation and resonance in the community. This is analogous to the three pillars Bill Buxton employs of Invention, Manufacturing and Marketing. My twist on the terminology is to take these ideas out of the corporate development context noting that they are more broadly observed collective behaviors,
I demonstrated my model by showing how many core ideas have been implemented with different instruments and music
over hundreds of years with an example of the electric guitar and speculations as to why resonance was achieved at that point in time.
