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Butler 1 Ryan Butler Professor Collins Musical Experience 11 November 2003 Born on November 27, 1942, a musical wonder was brought into the world. Jimi Hendrix reigns as the most influential instrumentalists in the history of rock music. He was awe inspiring, a showman for the first degree, and a wizard of electronic cause and effect. Through his passion and emotion for music, his cultural influences because of his willingness to be different and his electrifying stage presence, is the reason this man is legend. Jimi Hendrix was born into a family who wasn’t very well off financially. So, at age 11, when he received his first acoustic guitar bought by his father for $5.00, he loved and appreciated that gift and treated it like it was an angel’s golden harp, handed from God. Jimi’s first love was the guitar, when he played emotions ran wild whoever was around stood in awe to watch this amazing man turn a simple instrument into a voice of his imagination. He was an impressionist in that he created the feeling of the sound, as well as a realist, depicting that sound by reproducing it on his instrument. He couldn’t afford to own a tuning fork, so he would go to the music store, run his hands along the open strings of a guitar, then go home and tune his own guitar up, only someone with perfect pitch, and passion for music could perform this intricate task. Another gift that Hendrix had, was mastering the guitar Butler 2 in many aspects that most wouldn’t have thought of; all this may be explained in the method by which he learned how to play. Self taught and without money to purchase him a left handed guitar, he experimented with the guitar right handed before realizing the difference. In the later years of his career Jimi preferred the right handed Strat as opposed to the left handed model, because he could use his arm to control the switch, now at the upper bout, as well as the volume and tone controls and tremolo bar, which would be similarly located. This enabled him to play the string and simultaneously operate the electronics and mechanics of the instrument – allowing the guitar to speak.
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