An introspective exploration of tuned dissonance

This is Naito of Advance Guitars.

It is said that the appropriate indoor humidity for both instruments and humans is about 45~55%.
Is everyone managing the humidity in their rooms properly this season?
In my house, due to the 24-hour ventilation system, the humidity sometimes drops below 40% no matter how much I run the humidifier, which is very annoying.
It is not good for both humans and instruments, as it makes it easier to catch colds and fret burrs, so do your best to keep it in the 50% range.

Now, I would like to discuss the future of the acoustic guitar as an instrument.
Recently, we often hear about how electric guitars are being used in fewer and fewer songs and how guitar solos are disappearing from songs, but what about the acoustic guitar?
To begin with, electric guitars and acoustic guitars are in the same category of guitars, but their roles are completely different.
Electric guitars rarely use open chords to support chords well, and acoustic guitars do not often jangle power chords or play a lot of obbligato.
Considering this point alone, it seems that the acoustic guitar, being a chord instrument, would have more usage scenarios.

What is the actual situation?
Let's take a look at Apple Music's Top 10 Japanese charts as of 2024/02/04.

.... .2 songs confirmed use.

And while you say that the number of songs using electric guitar is decreasing, you used it in 6 out of 10 songs!
Who is it? It was 。。。。 who spread such falsehoods.

However, keyboard instruments such as pianos are still the strongest instruments for chords.
In the current trend of music, it is often used as a gimmick to include tension chords and to change the key many times within a song, so guitar voicings are very hard to play.

It is no wonder that as a chordal instrument, it is hard to beat the piano.
Because if you use 10 fingers fully, the number of simultaneous voicings is 10.
It is also easy to play melodies while playing chords.
Moreover, it is equipped with a cheat item called a sustain pedal.
I have witnessed that the number of songs using such acoustic guitars is decreasing, but after all, fads don't stay the same forever, do they?

If you listen to the songs on the current hit charts, you will find that they favor very precise pitch, as if they are always singing in the middle of the range on a karaoke scoring bar, and this has been adapted to musical instruments as well.
In this respect, it makes sense that the number of acoustic guitars that are not perfectly tuned is decreasing as instruments that carry chords. Inevitably, there will be fluctuations in the sound, and there can be a slight dissonance!

However, that feature actually tugs at the fundamental human psychological heartstrings.
I'll leave aside the details of overtones, but if a sound contains a lot of integer-order overtones, you get a firm sense of pitch, whereas if it contains a lot of non-integer-order overtones, you get a slightly fuzzy sense of pitch.
This slight psychological frustration is sometimes the charm of the singer.
The same thing can be said for musical instruments. For example, songs from the 60s and 70s are recorded in a messy tuning, and the pitch is often too high due to the speed of the tape, but they are still very memorable to the ear.

People are always attracted to imperfections, a psychological condition known as the "Zeigarnik effect.
A good example of this is the chord progression of a song, which is composed of tonic, dominant, and subdominant.
To put it simply, the tonic is the "C" chord in C Major, and the song naturally settles down when it ends on the tonic.
The song "My Cousin Ellie" by the Southern All Stars betrays this idea.
The key of this song is D Major, and if you listen to the end of the song, it ends on D (tonic), Em7 (subdominant), and A9 (dominant).
It is frustrating! Don't you think? But that frustration is addictive, isn't it?

Nowadays, people prefer something refined and less crazy, and that will surely demand a sense of frustration over time.
When you think about it this way, live instruments will not disappear for many years to come, and I can't imagine a future in which humans will completely replace AI as singers!

In conclusion, the principle of being attractive because it is not perfect is an eternal theme for players of live instruments, including acoustic guitar.

This was Naito!