The Changing Right Hand

Instruments can tell us stories that their players have forgotten. Although it seems counterintuitive, the ubiquity of culture or tradition can sometimes increase the danger of it being lost; Information that “everybody knows” isn’t written down or recorded simply because everybody knows it. However, it can quickly become lost once cultural transmission is interrupted. The classic example of this is ornamentation and other performance practice of the Baroque era. But there is another striking, yet almost completely overlooked, example from recent times; the evolutionary narrative of right-hand technique on the electric guitar and electric bass. Right-hand playing techniques on both these instruments have changed dramatically, and these changes are reflected and documented in instruments made during the last 80 years. On most fretted instruments right-hand technique is often not thought about much by players (Dick Dale excepted); the left hand is where it's at – that's where the notes are made! And yet an examination of electric guitars and basses from the 1930s to the 1970s shows a sea-change in the right-hand technique both instruments, one that appears to have gone mostly unnoticed by players and writers on the electric guitar.

The early electric guitar was dominated by the Hawaiian-style instrument (also known as a lap steel). Although most musicians are aware of distinctive (technique Hawaiian playing – the use of a steel bar to fret the notes – players often forget that the right-hand technique of the time was equally distinctive, in that players did not typically rest the right hand on the bridge or strings, the better to encourage the long ringing sustain typical of Hawaiian playing. Since the main sonic feature of the Hawaiian guitar is its singing sustain, it makes sense that manufacturers would design the instruments to maximise this effect by enabling them to be played in a way that didn't damp the strings. The patent for the 1932 Rickenbacker "frying pan" electric Hawaiian guitar states that its "horseshoe" pickup, which completely encircles the strings, was designed to also be used as a hand rest to just such an effect. Early electric players tended to use this tone-sustaining right-hand technique when playing Spanish-style instruments and playing other music genres such as jazz, and country and western. These early electric Spanish-style guitars typically had places to rest the palm in the manner of Hawaiian guitars. Exceptions were those electric guitars that were based on acoustic guitar – both flat-top and arch-top designs. Before the early 1950s, electric players, even when using arched-top guitars tended to use this type of right-hand technique, suspending the right hand over the bridge in order to not use the strings.

However, in the 1950s a playing style that utilised right-hand  palm muting – used by acoustic blues players – was adopted by rock 'n' roll electric guitar players, and has since become the standard technique for electric guitar. Although ubiquitous today, the new palm-muted style did not become dominant overnight. There was a gradual but constant change in playing techniques from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. Electric guitars made during this time reflect in their designs to this new right-hand style. Indeed many well-established “classic” guitar designs popular today features which mystify today’s musicians who are unfamiliar with the original intended uses.

 The much maligned 1952 Les Paul tailpiece.

Probably the most notorious of these early right-handed designs is the "trapeze" bridge found on the earliest versions of the Les Paul in 1952 and 53. The bridge on this guitar was designed in such a way that the strings wrapped under the bridge, rather than over it, as was typical on other Gibson models. This bridge has been much maligned. Many, if not most of them have been replaced. Interestingly, the bridge is one of the few aspects of the guitar that Les Paul is reputed to actually had direct input into. If so, it's not surprising since it perfectly fits in with his playing style, which featured long, ringing, Hawaiian like tones.

The even more maligned Stratocaster “ashtray” bridge cover.

Early Fender guitars had a metal covering over the bridge – colloquially known as an "ashtray"– that most modern players do not use. In fact most modern players, if they think about it at all, wonder why Fender even includes such a useless accessory with the guitar. Fender electric basses from the 1950s and 60s also have a metal cover covering the bridge, but its purpose was different – it was to hold a piece of foam rubber against the strings to slightly muted them, in order to create a double bass-like effect. These covers are also discarded by most modern players.

The historical designs of the electric bass document a change in right-hand technique by the position of its finger rest. On the earliest electric basses by Fender the finger rest is on the treble side of the body, close to the G string. This indicates that the player was expected to use his farm to pluck the strings. During the 1960s, the finger rest moved across the body to the bass side of the instrument, close to the E string. This indicates that now it was the thumb that was supposed to rest, while the fingers pluck the strings. (Typical right-hand fingering technique of the time, which continues to be the most popular way of playing today, is to use the first and second fingers an alternating motion, similar to right-hand classical guitar technique.) Beginning in the late 1970s, many manufacturers start to omit finger rests altogether. This may be tied to the rise of funk-style "slap" based technique in which the right thumb is used to strike the string in a hammer-like action. Speaking from experience, it's very easy to accidentally hit a finger rest when slapping and popping. Finger rest on basses have not altogether disappeared, but when they are found today they are almost always on the bass side. The one exception to this are replicas of early 1950s instruments.

Unawareness by modern players of historical right-hand technique (we are now talking about 60 to 80 years ago – almost on the cusp of living memory) has resulted in modern players often regarding the earlier iterations of these instrument's configurations as just plain bad design. Nothing could be farther from the truth; the designs did exactly what the designers intended them to do. It's just that, for today's electric guitarists, the left-hand no longer knows what the right hand was doing.