Jan HerbstUniversity of Huddersfield · Department of Music and Music Technology
Jan Herbst
Doctor of Philosophy
About
97
Publications
42,283
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167
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Jan Herbst is currently Reader in Music Production in the Department of Music and Design Arts, University of Huddersfield, UK. His main research interests are music production and popular music studies (rock and metal music in particular), often approached from an empirical perspective informed by musicology, sociology and psychology.
Current projects look at: Guitar in rock and metal music, Gear Acquisition Syndrome, German/Teutonic Metal, Professional roles in the recording industry
Additional affiliations
October 2017 - present
University of the Arts Berne
Position
- Lecturer
August 2017 - present
October 2015 - August 2017
Education
October 2013 - October 2014
University of Paderborn
Field of study
- Popular Music & Media
February 2012 - August 2015
University of Paderborn
Field of study
- Higher Education
May 2011 - May 2014
University of Paderborn
Field of study
- Music Pedagogy
Publications
Publications (97)
This Companion is the first academic introduction to the 1960s/70s 'Krautrock' movement of German experimental music that has long attracted the attention of the music press and fans in Britain and abroad. It offers a structured approach to this exceptionally heterogeneous and decentralized movement, combining overviews with detailed analysis and c...
This contribution examines the nexus between ‘the political’ and popular music from an interdisciplinary perspective. Using Rammstein’s highly provocative single “Deutschland” (2019) as an example, this case study showcases multiple different and often contradictory readings of the band’s work with a view to its textual, visual, sonic and performat...
Nimmt man die spezifische Ästhetik von Pop mit ihrer Kraft, Stilgemeinschaften zu konstituieren, ernst, dann lässt sich methodisch begründet daran zweifeln, dass Rammstein überhaupt Diskurse – etwa über Deutschland – führen, die in einem engeren Sinne als politisch bezeichnet werden können.
In diesem Kapitel werden die Affektstrategien in Deutschland als Teil einer politischen Ästhetik untersucht. Angesichts kalkulierter Empröungswellen beim Publikum einerseits und der im Songtext dargestellten Hassliebe zu Deutschland andererseits, stellt sich die Frage, wie verschiedene Emotionen angesteuert werden und ob dies Deutschland zu einem p...
Als Rammstein 1995 ihr Debütalbum Herzeleid veröffentlichen, lösen sie eine Reihe heftiger Reaktionen von Empörung bis Euphorie aus. Ihr Industrial-Metal-Sound mit deutschen Texten ist neu, aufregend und provokativ. Rammstein finden in ihrem Sound eine Balance zwischen Konformität und einzigartiger Andersartigkeit, was sie von konventionelleren Roc...
Nicht nur werden Songs und Musikvideos in der globalen und digitalen Popkultur über vielfältige Kanäle bereitgestellt. Diese zeitlichen, räumlichen und letztlich auch ästhetischen Entgrenzungen der Rezeption ließen sich in den großen Feuilletons, in Musikmagazinen, TV-Beiträgen oder in den Sozialen Medien genauer betrachten. Dieses Kapitel konzentr...
Rammsteins Song heißt nicht ohne Grund Deutschland. Im Song sowie in dem monumentalen Video steht eine Frage bei aller Vielschichtigkeit und Ambiguität unzweifelhaft im Zentrum: die Frage nach der deutschen Identität.
Das Musikvideo zu Rammsteins Deutschland
Aus einer Perspektive, die die oftmals mehrdeutigen Textstellen und Bildbezüge der Rammstein-Produktion als strukturelle Ambiguität identifiziert, kann das Politische Deutschlands nicht in eindeutig realpolitischen Bezügen bestimmt werden: Wie der Aufbau von Sinn schillert auch das Politische zwischen Nationalmythos und Popästhetik; die Frage nach...
Mit der offiziell unbetitelten Deutschland-Tournee präsentieren Rammstein das achte Mal ein Album bzw. ihr Programm im Rahmen einer ausgedehnten Konzertreise. Die Inszenierungsstrategien von Rammstein in diesen Live-Shows, so die These dieses Kapitels, zielen vorrangig auf das popmusikalische Feld, kaum je auf das Feld der Politik, und erfüllen fol...
Rammstein arbeiten sich an der Vergangenheit ab. Seit jeher geht es bei der Band um Deutschland, deutsche Geschichte, immer auch deutsche Literaturgeschichte (Grimms Märchen, Goethe, Brecht) und überhaupt den „Sound of Germany". Mit Deutschland treiben Rammstein die Auseinandersetzung mit deutscher Geschichte auf die Spitze.
Rammsteins Deutschland – das ist teutonisch-regressive Männerfantasie und afrofuturistisch-progressiv anmutende Germania gleichermaßen. Rammstein bewegen sich also wieder einmal in einem von ihnen zuallererst geschaffenen Spannungsfeld.
This article explores reasons for the proliferation of dissonance in metal music. It asks why metal musicians compose dissonant songs and what sociocultural functions dissonance may have for metal as a community. The findings suggest that exploring ways to further utilize dissonance is crucial to the genre’s development and continued transgression,...
Metal music studies defines "heaviness" as the genre's sonic signature but has rarely explored the sonics or the related discourse. This study analyzes message boards to determine how music producers and musicians use the "heavy" metaphor in their discussions. Practitioners' strategies employed to achieve heaviness are scrutinized to learn about wh...
“Heaviness” has been one of metal music’s defining features in three decades of metal scholarship. Research acknowledged its essential quality, but no comprehensive definition of musical heaviness was developed. This article, therefore, elaborates a preliminary framework of musical heaviness by identifying its constituent production, performance, a...
Rock and metal music have a complex relationship with the entertainment industries. They rely on commodified products but are also cautious towards the capitalist system with its instrumentalist mechanisms. This article examines early metal music from West Germany in the 1980s with its rock precursors in the 1970s to shed light on the music industr...
Audio heritage is a relatively unexplored area within popular music studies from a technical production perspective. This research raises awareness of the importance and challenges of audio preservation and provides insights into archiving practices of record labels and producers. Based on interviews with German metal music producers, the article e...
Viking, Mesopotamian and Hellenic metal; place-based metal labels full of mythology are commonplace in metal music. Focusing on ‘Teutonic’ metal, this article analyses such labels through a collaboration with one of the genre’s primary record producers: Karl Bauerfeind. Reflection on sixteen selected album productions with German, British, Swedish...
The past decade has seen increased interest in the pedagogical facets of audio
engineering, sound design, music technology and related fields. Much of this rising
interest in the teaching and learning aspects of sound corresponds to a growing
number of institutions offering training options for people interested in the technical,
creative, scientif...
This article explores how the proliferation of affordable digital tools and the availability of specialist knowledge have affected the mixing stage of metal music productions, asking whether a standard methodology is apparent in producers’ use of templates and presets, processing of audio, and choice of tools. Analyzing fifty professional metal mix...
Viking metal, Teutonic metal, Mesopotamian metal – labels of this kind are common in fan discourse, media and academia. Whereas some research has investigated such labels and related them to the artist’s stage presentation, music videos, artwork and lyrics, there is still a lack from the perspectives of music production and performance as to how su...
Inspired by claims that metal music production has become standardized, this article draws on interviews with eight internationally recognized producers examining whether a uniform methodology in recording metal exists and where creative freedom remains. The findings suggest that although recordists must abide by electroacoustic laws and metal musi...
Germany’s premier rock music export Rammstein has been controversial since its formation in 1994. This article analyzes Rammstein’s sonic signature from the perspective of the “art of record production.” It decodes the politics of Rammstein’s sound, which is inextricably linked to the exaggeration of German attributes and the associations attached...
Gear Acquisition Syndrome, also known as GAS, is commonly understood as the musicians’ unrelenting urge to buy and own instruments and equipment as an anticipated catalyst of creative energy and bringer of happiness. For many musicians, it involves the unavoidable compulsion to spend money one does not have on gear perhaps not even needed. The urge...
Recording studios are shrouded in mystery. Some have become sites of pilgrimage; other studios have been converted into heritage museums. These practices are driven by city authorities, commercial heritage institutions or music fans. This interview study gives a voice to an understudied group: record producers and studio owners as the people in cha...
Performance and rhythm research has been slow to incorporate the popular music canon. This article takes this into account by pursuing three objectives: Firstly, to explore how modern music production software can support the analysis of recorded popular music performances, for which an analytical toolkit is proposed. Secondly, to raise awareness o...
Ale Trails, where a series of pubs noted for serving real ale and craft beer are linked together along a prescribed route followed either on foot or by bus or train, are now a well-established activity in the UK and beyond. However, in some cases they have become associated with large groups of rowdy drinkers characterised by excessive consumption...
Germany’s premier rock music export Rammstein has been controversial since its formation in 1994. This article analyses Rammstein’s sonic signature from the perspective of the “art of record production”. It decodes the politics of Rammstein’s sound, which is inextricably linked to the exaggeration of German attributes and the associations attached...
Germany is home of a vibrant metal music scene. Yet, despite having been one of the very early metal nations with the second largest metal industry of the 20th century, German bands struggled to stick out of the mass of newly founded bands in the 1980s and early ‘90s. With role models such as the Scorpions and Accept, many bands believed they neede...
Labels that denote a cultural or regional characteristic are common in the metal music discourse. Based on interviews with five internationally renowned German metal producers, this chapter explores the views of these professionals on the ›Teutonic‹ metal label. It examines what it means to them and how it may influence their practices. The study c...
In: Samples, 18, 2020: http://www.aspm-samples.de
Popular music studies have seen a rising interest in what could be called »sonic signatures«. Based on previous research involving interviews with seminal German producers, this article explores sonic signatures of three of the first metal nations. Producing pastiche mixes – ›Teutonic‹ (German), Am...
Metal Music Studies, 6(1), pp. 87-108
Throughout the centuries German popular music has caused various foreign reactions from admiration to outright rejection. Sometimes, international audiences perceived it as too ‘Teutonic’, other times this was exactly the reason for appeal. This article traces ‘Teutonic’ features in 400 years of German popular...
Metal Music Studies journal: Despite being one of the oldest and largest metal nations, little research on metal music from Germany exists. The current article focuses on the formation of the West German power metal scene. This subgenre was one of the first to be played in Germany, and bands such as Helloween, Running Wild, Gamma Ray and Blind Guar...
Vox Popular issue 2020: Rock aesthetics was a central area of research in early popular music studies. Over time, the focus shifted to other genres and more specific topics, leaving behind outdated arguments on new musical and technological developments in rock music. Théberge (1997) has argued that musical instruments are open to change in the pro...
Published: Current Musicology, No 103, Fall 2018.
Musical instruments are inextricably linked to genres, their players’ attitudes, and practices. Equipment shapes the sound of genres and affects the performer’s expressiveness. This is particularly true for the electric guitar in the genre of rock music where distortion has always had a special rol...
Research on rock harmony accords with common practice in guitar playing in that power chords (fifth interval) with an indeterminate chord quality as well as major chords are preferred to more complex chords when played with a distorted tone. This study explored the interrelated effects of distortion and harmonic structure on acoustic features and p...
Metal Music Studies journal: Innovations in music technology have the potential to change practices of music making and to contribute to the development of new forms of music. In 2011, a ‘profiling’ technology was released, capable of copying any valve guitar amplifier and shaping every detail of its sound. Many rock and metal guitarists and produc...
Among the professional roles in the recording industry, studio musicians have received relatively little academic attention. Who has played on a record and who has developed the rhythms, melodies and fills are secrets that remain hidden behind closed studio doors. Since the little public media available mainly recollects memories of past stars or m...
Among the professional roles in the recording industry, studio musicians have received relatively little academic attention. The present study explores the work realities of professional studio musicians in Germany, one of the largest music industries in the world, and is based on interviews with six pop musicians; guitarists, bassists, keyboardist...
This cross-national research project pioneers in exploring the so called “Gear Acquisition Syndrome” (GAS) based on an international online survey of musicians (N = 668) about their attitudes towards their musical equipment and instrument collections. It investigates and differentiates musicians’ personal, social and musical motives for the collect...
This empirical study explores the guitar profiling technology and its consequences for metal music production. After briefly introducing this technology, the article investigates its public reception in reviews and online discussion boards to explore the subjective perspectives. A subsequent acoustic experiment tests the capability of the technolog...
In metal music studies, “heaviness” has been acknowledged an essential element of the genre. Commonly associated with the distorted guitar, most work on heaviness has concentrated on the instrument’s sound. If respective research considered structural aspects of the guitar riff, then with a special focus on tempo, rhythm, tonality and form. This ar...
Vox Popular issue 2019: Théberge (1997) has argued that modification of instruments can affect playing practices or even establish completely new playing techniques. The introduction of amplification, and with it overdrive and distortion, marked such a cornerstone in guitar playing history.
Research on the electric guitar in blues, rock and metal m...
»Shredding«, the fast and virtuous guitar playing, is a central stylistic element of many rock and metal music genres. Previous research has claimed distortion to increase the guitar's potential as a virtuoso solo instrument but acoustic evidence is still missing. Apart from this academic desideratum, distortion is lively debated in online musician...
The role of record producers has always been in the state of constant change. Following Howlett (2009) and Martin (2014), this article explores the work realities of ordinary but still professional “studio operators” from the Ruhr Area in Germany. Focusing on studio operators rather than on record producers pays special attention to the economic, m...
Since the exploration of distortion as a means of expression in the 1950s, the electric guitar has become a primary instrument in popular music, especially in rock and metal music. Despite this development, there is little musicological research on the use and perception of distorted guitar chords. This work aimed at exploring the influence of dist...
’Shredding’, the fast and virtuous guitar playing, is a central stylistic element of many rock and metal genres. A recent empirical study by Slaven and Krout (2016) reported metal guitar solos having become faster over the last six decades, thus indicating that shredding still is common in metal guitar, as argued in earlier literature in rock and m...
In 1996, Steely Dan guitarist Walter Becker coined the term ‘guitar acquisition syndrome’ to describe the guitarist’s compulsive and unrelenting urge to buy and own instruments. As this tendency applies to other musicians as well the term soon became what now is called G.A.S. – Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Although popular music research has emphasiz...
In 1996, Steely Dan guitarist Walter Becker coined the term ‘guitar acquisition syndrome’ to describe the guitarist’s compulsive and unrelenting urge to buy and own instruments. As this tendency applies to other musicians as well the term soon became what now is called G.A.S. – Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Although popular music research has emphasiz...
The sound of the distorted electric guitar is particularly important for many metal genres. It contributes to the music’s perception of heaviness, serves as a distinguishing marker, and is crucial for the power of productions. This article aims to extend the research on the distorted metal guitar and on metal music production by combining both fiel...
Im abschließenden Teil der Reihe werden sowohl die über die vorherigen Stationen erlernten Spieltechniken
als auch die erworbenen gitarristisch-musikalischen Kompetenzen in die Praxis übertragen. Ziel ist die Umsetzung des Liedes „Chasing Cars“ (2006) der britischen Alternative Rock Band Snow Patrol in einem Gitarrenorchester, gestützt durch Gesang...
Distortion as a significant feature of electric guitar playing is indispensable to rock music. Despite its relevance for the genre, distortion has not received much academic attention so far. This article aims at two interrelated issues. Firstly, it analyses physical and psychoacoustic characteristics of guitar distortion. Secondly, the effect of d...
This article examines learning opportunities of music production tasks by an exemplary unit on dub reggae following an action research approach. It addresses the educational areas of sound design, musical knowledge, analysis and listening skills, taking the sound of dub reggae as starting point for learner-centred activity. The main premise is to a...
»Shredding«, the fast and virtuous guitar playing, is a central stylistic element of many rock and metal music genres. Previous research has claimed distortion to increase the guitar’s potential as a virtuoso solo instrument but acoustic evidence is still missing. Apart from this academic desideratum, distortion is lively debated in online musician...
This article examines learning opportunities of music production tasks by an exemplary unit on dub reggae following an action research approach. It addresses the educational areas of sound design, musical knowledge, analysis and listening skills, taking the sound of dub reggae as starting point for learner-centred activity. The main premise is to a...
Das Thema "Verzerrung" fand trotz seiner Bedeutung für die Spielweise und Ausdrucksfähigkeit der Rockgitarre bislang wenig Beachtung in der Musikwissenschaft und Popmusikkulturforschung. Die vorliegende experimentell-analytische Studie begegnet dieser Forschungslücke, indem musiktheoretische und klanganalytische Methoden mit Erkenntnissen aus der M...
Obwohl die E-Gitarre seit den 1950er Jahren den Klang der populären Musik prägt, ist der Einfluss der Verzerrung auf die Akkordempfindung bislang kaum erforscht. Die geringe Anzahl bestehender Studien (Einbrodt 1997; Berger & Fales 2005; Lilja 2005, 2015) untersuchte in der Tradition von Helmholtz vor allem die Teiltonstruktur nach Rauheit (Störthe...
Die Gitarre wird in den meisten Stilrichtungen der populären Musik überwiegend zur Liedbegleitung eingesetzt. Grundsätzlich ist es mit ihr möglich, eine Vielzahl an Akkorden und Akkordverbindungen zu spielen. Aufgrund der standardisierten Stimmung ist das Arrangement der Akkordstimmen nicht uneingeschränkt möglich, sodass gitarrentypische Akkordgri...
Vorlesungen stehen in der hochschuldidaktischen Diskussion in der Kritik, eine vergleichsweise ineffiziente Form der Lehre zu sein. Die vorliegende Studie unternimmt ausgehend von einem sozialkonstruktivistischen Lernverständnis den Versuch, der passiven Rolle der Studierenden mit kommunikationsanregenden Methoden in einer zweisemestrigen Vorlesung...
Vorlesungen stehen in der hochschuldidaktischen Diskussion in der Kritik, eine vergleichsweise ineffiziente Form der Lehre zu sein (vgl. Dubs 2012; Voss 2012). Ein zentraler Kritikpunkt betrifft die passive Rolle der Studierenden, welche diametral der Vorstellung kognitiver Handlungs- und Deutungsautonomie konstruktivistischer Pädagogik und moderne...
Die Produktionstechniken des Dub Reggae sind in der heutigen Popmusik nicht mehr wegzudenken. Mit modernen Sequenzer-Programmen kann der Dub-Stil produktionsorientiert erschlossen werden.
Nachdem im ersten Teil der Reihe elementare Möglichkeiten der Tonerzeugung auf der Gitarre mit der Anschlagshand erarbeitet wurden, widmet sich der zweite Teil der Greifhand. Das Melodiespiel auf der Gitarre unterscheidet sich spieltechnisch von dem beispielsweise eines Tasteninstruments. Die Tonerzeugung und die Tonkontrolle sind auf beide Hände a...
Gitarren üben auf viele Schülerinnen und Schüler eine große Anziehungskraft aus. Die Unterrichtsreihe über mehrere Ausgaben vermittelt Spieltechniken und Grundlagen der Liedbegleitung sowie des Melodiespiels auf der Gitarre. Diese Fähigkeiten können kreativ im Klassenmusizieren genutzt werden und bieten nachhaltige musikalische Lernmöglichkeiten. E...
Since the introduction of electrical recording, reproducing and transmitting popular music in the early 20th century, sound by means of any technologically mediated music has become a central concept in terms of production aesthetics, and the way music is perceived. By the time media technology found its way into the classroom, sound posed wide cha...
Sound avancierte in der Geschichte der populären Musik seit ihrer Elektrifizierung zu einem musikalisch-ästhetischen Leitbegriff mit weitreichenden Auswirkungen auf die Produktion von Musik, die Entwicklung musikalischer Genres und ihre Rezeption. Ausgehend von der Vorstellung eines weitreichenden Netzwerks vermittelt Sound als Oberflächenphänomen...
In scientific and journalistic texts on music the issue of sound is always present. In German language the term “sound” emerged in the 1970s first as a synonym for timbre, later on other elements got included such as musical genres, artists, compositional aspects and technical means of production. This emergence was a reaction to the increasingly e...
Jeder Schüler kennt den Soundtrack zum Film Fluch der Karibik, was diesen zum geeigneten Gegenstand einer Unterrichtssequenz macht – im beliebten Original wie in der orchestralen Interpretation des Geigers David Garrett. Letztere zeichnet sich gegenüber dem Original durch eine doppelte Länge, umfassendere Form und abwechslungsreichere Dramaturgie a...
Die Ballade 18 AND LIFE, einer der erfolgreichsten Songs der Hardrock Band Skid Row, schildert die tragische Geschichte eines Jugendlichen in den Elendsvierteln von Amerika. 18 AND LIFE vereint Dramatik, Eingängigkeit, einen herausstechenden Sänger und eine ausgefeilte Studioproduktion und entspricht dem Zeitgeist des Hardrocks der ausgehenden 1980...
DON'T STOP BELIEVIN' ist einer der bekanntesten Songs der US-amerikanischen Rockband Journey und erlebt gegenwärtig eine Renaissance in Film (Rock of Ages, Monster), Fernsehen (Glee, Family Guy, The Sopranos) und Videospielen (Rock Band) sowie durch zahlreiche Coverversionen (Glee, Northern Kings, Petra Haden).
Red Hot Chili Peppers HUMP DE BUMP ist die fünfte und zugleich zuletzt ausgekoppelte Single des Erfolgsalbums Stadium Arcadium (2006) der amerikanischen Funk-Rock Crossover Band Red Hot Chili Peppers. Der Song ist stilistisch am funkbetonten Stil der ersten Alben der Band angelehnt und hebt sich von den rockbetonten und balladesken Stücken von Stad...
Rosanna Toto ROSANNA ist eines der bekanntesten und erfolgreichsten Lieder der amerikanischen Rockband Toto. Es thematisiert die Erinnerung an eine vergangene Liebesbeziehung. Charakteristisch für den Song sind u.a. der filigrane Schlagzeugrhythmus, das eingängige Strophenriff, der einprägsame Chorus, das durchdachte Arrangement und die aufwendige...
Formenlehre ist die theoretische Auseinandersetzung kompositorischer Strukturmerkmale, welche man für gewöhnlich mit klassischer Musik in Verbindung bringt. Im Musikunterricht der allgemeinbildenden Schulen lernen die Schülerinnen und Schüler die Fuge, die Sonatenhauptsatzform, das Rondo oder den Aufbau einer Oper kennen und üben sich im Analysiere...
Projects
Projects (9)
This project researches how collaborative songwriting takes place in songwriting camps. As the first study to focus on the UK and Germany, it investigates what forms of songwriting camps exist in the 21st century to understand the interests of convenors (publishers, record companies, individuals) and participating professionals. It investigates the collaborative creative processes and interplay of the different skill-sets of various roles (topliners, beatmakers, lyricists, producers, performers) and offers insights into the organisation of offline and online camps, legal factors, and the role of songwriting camps within the wider music industries. The investigation will uncover who convenes these events, for what purposes, and what is created and ultimately selected for release. Legal factors such as royalties, shares and splits will be considered as well as the power structures at play. Apart from the organisation of these camps, the research will investigate how the participants’ personal, professional and cultural backgrounds influence their aims and actions. This includes an in-depth analysis of the collaborative creative work and the evaluation of the value of collaborative songwriting offline and online. Furthermore, the research will study how the industry uses the results of the camps in the short and medium term.
"At last! A book about heavy metal as music." This opening exclamation in Sheila Whiteley's preface to Andrew Cope's history of Black Sabbath (Cope 2010) laments a long-standing practice in popular music studies of under-emphasizing musical details. This project remedies this gap with four articles that synthesize linguistic, acoustical, historical, and musicological studies of vocal techniques. The first will be a reception study of verbal descriptions of extreme metal vocals, taken from magazines and online reviews. From this chart of semantic relationships, the second article will use spectrograms to demonstrate patterns between the descriptors and musical aspects of extreme metal vocals that correlate to different time periods and genres. The third article applies these acoustical findings to study the rhetorical qualities of climactic song sections. Finally, the fourth article's kinetic approach uses motion-capture footage of vocalists to see how their movements communicate tension, anticipation, and climax without requiring participants to verbally articulate that information or consciously reflect on their actions. Ultimately, the project will offer unique insights into extreme metal's appeal and contribute to debates about musical meaning and its relationship to identity.
This project is motivated by speculations about the stagnation and demise of the electric guitar and the lacking recognition of advances in guitar playing. By analysing why certain guitarists were recognised and how they developed the instrument, the case is made that playing styles and sounds have continued to evolve to this day, as evidenced by the likes of player Tosin Abasi, Jason Richardson or Yvette Young. The early guitar heroes of the 1960s and ‘70s developed lead guitar styles outside the idioms of the blues. A decade dedicated to the pursuit of speed and progress of playing techniques were the 1980s. Characteristic of the 1990s and 2000s was experimentation with sound effects, seven-string guitars and amplifiers. After the ‘shred boom’, progress in guitar playing was more ‘musical’, bridging styles and genres, drawing inspiration from other instruments and using the new affordances not only for lead guitar playing but above all as a compositional tool. This project systematically explores how virtuosic electric guitarists in search of new forms of expression dealt with the unique characteristics and ergonomics of the instrument, and it will show how some overcame those challenges to advance the music. By combining playing with culture, technology, production, the recording industry and guitar communities of practice, the project will contribute to the understanding of how guitar playing reflects and drives cultural change.