An Introspective Exploration of Tuned Dissonance

This is Naito from Advance Guitars.

It’s said that the ideal indoor humidity for both musical instruments and people is around 45–55%.
Everyone, are you managing the humidity in your rooms okay this time of year?
At my house, because of the 24-hour ventilation system, the humidity sometimes drops below 40% no matter how much I run the humidifier, which is a real headache for me.
It makes you more prone to catching colds, causes burrs to form on the frets, and isn’t good for either people or instruments, so let’s do our best to keep it in the 50% range.

Now, in this post, I’d like to explore what the future holds for the acoustic guitar as an instrument.
Lately, I often hear people talking about how the use of electric guitars in songs is declining and how guitar solos are disappearing from songs—but what about acoustic guitars?
To begin with, while electric and acoustic guitars both fall under the same “guitar” category, their roles are completely different.
On an electric guitar, it’s rare to use open chords to firmly support the chord progression, and on an acoustic guitar, it’s uncommon to strum power chords vigorously or incorporate elaborate obbligatos.
Looking at it from that perspective alone, the acoustic guitar—being a chord-based instrument—seems like it would have more uses.

So, what’s the reality?
Let’s take a look at the Top 10 on the Apple Music Japan chart as of February 4, 2024.

.....Confirmed in 2 songs.

And even though people say the number of songs featuring electric guitar is decreasing, it’s actually used in 6 out of 10 songs!
Who was it that spread that rumor, anyway...?

That said, when it comes to instruments that handle chords, keyboard instruments like the piano are definitely the strongest.
In terms of current musical trends, using tension chords and modulating multiple times within a song is often employed as a musical gimmick, so playing those with guitar voicings can be quite challenging.

It goes without saying that the piano is unbeatable as a Japanese musical instrument.
After all, if you use all ten fingers, you can play ten notes simultaneously.
Playing the melody while strumming chords is a breeze.
Plus, it’s equipped with a “cheat item” called the sustain pedal.
I’ve witnessed firsthand how the number of songs featuring acoustic guitar is declining, but ultimately, trends can’t stay the same forever.

If you listen to the songs on today’s hit charts, you’ll notice that—to use a karaoke scoring bar as an analogy—people prefer a pitch that’s incredibly precise, as if they’re always hitting the bullseye, and this preference has carried over to instruments as well.
From that perspective, it makes sense that acoustic guitars—which aren’t perfectly tuned—are becoming less common as instruments used to play chords. After all, there’s inevitably some fluctuation in the sound, and you might even detect a slight dissonance

However, that very characteristic actually strikes a fundamental psychological chord in people.
Setting aside the technical details of overtones for now, when a sound contains many integer-order overtones, the sense of pitch feels solid; conversely, when it contains many non-integer-order overtones, the sense of pitch sounds slightly ambiguous.
That slight sense of psychological unease is actually part of a singer’s charm.
The same applies to musical instruments. For example, songs from the ’60s and ’70s are often recorded with wildly off-key tuning, or the pitch ends up higher due to the rotation speed of the recording tape—and yet they really stick in your mind, don’t they?

People constantly experience a psychological phenomenon known as the “Zeigarnik effect,” where we’re drawn to imperfections.
A good example of this is a song’s chord progression, which is typically composed of the tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords.
Simply put, the tonic—such as the “C” chord in C major—brings a sense of resolution when a song ends on it.
The song “Itoshi no Ellie” by Southern All Stars defies this convention.
This song is in the key of D major, and if you listen to the ending, it concludes with D (tonic), Em7 (subdominant), and A9 (dominant).
Doesn’t that leave you feeling a bit unsettled? But that very sense of unease is what makes it so addictive, isn’t it?

These days, people tend to prefer polished, flawless music, but over time, they inevitably start craving that sense of restlessness again.
When you think about it this way, acoustic instruments—including the acoustic guitar—will never disappear, no matter how many years pass, and I can’t imagine a future where humans are completely replaced by AI as singers.

In conclusion, the principle that imperfection is what makes something appealing is a timeless theme for players of acoustic instruments, including the acoustic guitar.

This was Naito!