The Atheist Forums Playlist

[Rev. Rye]

So, you know the saying about how Ginger Rogers was a better dancer than Fred Astaire because she could do everything he could, except backwards and in high heels (not exactly true, since Astaire did a lot of films without her, and at least one, Royal Wedding had him make the laws of physics into his bitch in one scene)?

Well, think of all the heavy metal guitarists you've known to shred amazing solos. Now, watch this:





If you remember the sound of the sitar in popular music (mostly Western and from the Sixties), you'll notice that, a lot of the time, it's used to play a (relatively) rudimentary and/or slow melody. I suspect a big part of it is because the learning curve for guitarists curious about the sitar is deceptively steep. Not only is it a bigger instrument played in a very different posture with very different string arrangements, but, perhaps most frustratingly, its strings are usually a bit less than half an inch above the fingerboard. On a guitar, this sort of action would make a guitar unplayable, unless maybe you were using it as a lap steel. I can remember trying once (although I'm not sure if it is a true memory or if the sitar I tried was a truly proper one, since it was shorter), and the comparatively simple act of fretting a note was an uphill battle, even if the frets were raised and the strings at a very low tension [if the charts I've found and D'Addario's String Tension Pro are any indication, they'd be roughly equivalent to 8-38-gauge strings on a regular guitar] to compensate for such preposterously high action. I've heard claims that it's traditionally believed it takes 150 years (fortunately, Hinduism allows for this to be spread out across multiple reincarnations) to truly master it.

And Ravi Shankar is positively shredding on such an instrument. No kidding, I've see quite a few videos of Ravi Shankar performing, and in most of them, there are points where it looks like they sped up the camera. Even in the Tenth Decade in Concert DVD, when he was Ninety-One years old, while he seems to have been brought down to mere mortal status for most of it, there are points (admittedly far less frequently and for shorter intervals) where he's running up and down the neck at that same camera-muddling speed he displayed in the sixties.

Ravi Shankar could probably do everything your favourite guitarist can do, and on an instrument they could probably never really master.