The Mathuitar
I grew up amongst music and musicians. We had a wide variety of musical instruments at home:
- a few wooden recorders;
- at least one guitar;
- two upright pianos;
- a bandstand’s worth of brass instruments;
- also a violin;
- and maybe even a flute.
My two older sisters were always playing something. I went along by default and for many years was a passable ‘First Second trumpet’. Then one day, at the age of about 15 and after a particularly discouraging event at band practice, I just stopped.
Years went by and I played no music at all. Then for no particular reason I decided to learn to play the guitar. I bought a cheap one as a complete beginners set wth books and electronic tuner and started to learn some simple tunes. It didn’t take very long before I could manage two or three of the simpler party favourites. Then I hit a wall. Further progress needed more practice than my busy weekly family and work schedule permitted. I stopped progressing. In frustration, I almost gave up entirely on a second instrument. Then an old adage came to mind.
'A bad workman blames his tools, a good one fixes them'
Could it be that the problem was not my personal ability? Perhaps the instrument itself was to blame! I began researching the theory of both guitars and music. As I dug deeper and a question began to form. Is it possible to make a guitar that is both easy to play and musically versatile? From this question the Mathuitar project was instrumented in order to enumerate the score.