here oh !

While Reid decided to do a post about the future, I am going to do a
post about the past. In the month of January I went on a little toy
shopping spree and found myself the radical rhythm guitar. Just after finishing Reed Ghazala
's Book on Circuit Bending I had the unstoppable urge to refine my instrument building. Aside from the looping station, I have finished two other instruments post-Ghazala's book. The first one is "The Cricket Stomper" which can be seen in a post earlier in this blog. "HERO" is the second and it started with the radical rhythm guitar. The guitar was shipped to me in a box that was labelled "guiter."

I'm not sure what happened in my brain; maybe it was the southern accent we mocked the word "guiter" with and some association with Lynyrd Skynyrd and patriotism, or possibly the patriotic images left all over the apartment from an ex-tenant:













Something made me want to make this the American Guitar. I sat down to the drawing board, which was actually just a piece of note book paper, and this is what I came up with:













After deciding that the circular pattern looked too much like something England's "The Who" might be sporting, I straightened up. I was also getting anxious to make the damn thing, so after zero hours of deliberating, i just started going at it, using the American flag, patriotic symbolism, and improvisation as my template. There is definitely some sarcastic cynicism to the whole piece, commenting on the post-9/11 flag waving epidemic that blinded most of the country in a red white and blue blur, but the name HERO, although commenting on the same content, is very serious to me. It was such a tiny little puny guitar that I didn't have much hope for to start with but now it shines with the same blinding red white and blue; the sounds it produces are as booming as the "bombs bursting in air." This little guy is now larger than life and I am proud to call it HERO.