DISCHORDIANISM 3135

The 11th of March 2024 marked my 55th birthday. For over 40 years I’ve been attempting to play the guitar and over the decades I have owned many.

I destroyed one, gave away three and returned one (I borrowed from my brother for over 35 years, a Westone Concord, the pickguard of which is used as the image for this download).

Two of the three I gave away were to friends’ children. They, like me, were dreaming of being rock gods. I wanted to facilitate their ambitions. To my knowledge, like myself, they have all failed to become guitar heroes.

The guitar is an unforgiving instrument. It’s physically painful to play. It takes a long time to achieve any significant results. It’s a slow process and a whopping 90% of would-be guitarists give up on the instrument within a year.

I have never studiously learnt the guitar in any formal way. I have a rudimentary understanding of chords, barely know anything about the key I’m playing and most scales are a complete mystery. Most dedicated beginners probably have a better understanding of the basics than myself. But incompetence and ignorance haven’t stopped me from making up my own ways of tuning and playing the instrument…and amassing more and more of them.

I have 18 guitars. There are 18 tracks on this download, each of my guitars getting their own song. Only one guitar is used on each song and no extra instrumentation has been added.

All tracks are 3:05 seconds long, a total running time of 55 minutes, 55 being my age at this time.

The running order reflects the chronological order of when the guitars came in to my possession.

For the last 5 or so years I have treated myself, or have been treated to, a new guitar on my birthday, this year being no exception, with the latest edition to my collection being an Alvarez Baritone 8-string electro acoustic which closes this album.