electric guitar instrumentalists

electric guitar instrumentalists

Can female guitarists answer these questions for me please? (email me your answers)?

I am in my final year of media studies and for my final year dissertation I am researching the subject of “women and the electric guitar”.
I would be very grateful if you could allow 5 minutes of your time to answer the following questions:
1. How did you become a guitar player? When? Why?
2. Were you influenced by any guitarists, or female guitarists, in particular? What are your musical tastes?
3. How did you learn the guitar, acquire your skills?
4. Explain your experiences as a female guitar player. (Eg. Finding a band, concerts, stereotypes, going into guitar shops…)
5. Do you ever feel discriminated as a female guitarist? What are the advantages and obstacles of being a female performer?
6. Do you think female instrumentalists are still marginalized in comparison to male performers?
Thank you for your time,
Sylvie Francis
sylvie_francis1@hotmail.com

I’ll email you my answers in few minutes, but you’d get way more answers if you asked in Rock and Pop. ^_^

Edit: Answers! Woo!

1. How did you become a guitar player? When? Why?

I started playing in 2003. (I was 13) I loved writing lyrics and thought I should take up an instrument so I could write proper songs.

2. Were you influenced by any guitarists, or female guitarists, in particular? What are your musical tastes?

Until a few years ago the only female guitarists I was really aware of were Charlotte Hatherley from Ash and PJ Harvey.
I was influenced by Charlotte and the other guitar player in Ash, Tim Wheeler quite a bit but I was influenced a lot more by Carl Barat and Pete Doherty from The Libertines. I really like Nick McCarthy and Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand as well.

My musical tastes are pretty varied. I can’t really pin it down to one time or genre.

Here’s my list from myspace if you’re interested:

ABBA, Adele, Alice Nine, All Time Low, Amy Winehouse, Arctic Monkeys, Aretha Franklin, Art Brut, Ash, Asian Kung Fu Generation, Asobi Seksu, Babyshambles, Be Your Own Pet, Belle and Sebastian, Basement Jaxx, The Beatles, Billy Bragg, The Black Mages, The Blizzards, Bloc Party, Blondie, Blood Red Shoes, Blues Brothers, Blur, Bob Dylan, Bright Eyes, The Brilliant Green, Cathy Davey, The Chalets, Charlotte Hatherly, Cheap Trick, The Clash, CSS, The Cure, Daft Punk, Damien Rice, David Bowie, Death Cab For Cutie, Dirty Pretty Things, Dolly Parton, The Donnas, Draco and The Malfoys, The Dresden Dolls, Duke Special, Fionn Regan, Fleetwood Mac, Foo Fighters, Franz Ferdinand, Gallows, Green Day, Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Giant Drag, Harry and The Potters, Hot Hot Heat, Howling Bells, The Jam, Jape, Janis Joplin, Jarvis Cocker, Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins, Jerry Fish and the Mudbug Club, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Eat World, John Lennon, Johnny Cash, Kanye West, The Killers, Kirsty MacColl, Led Zeppelin, Lemon Demon, Less Than Jake, Lightspeed Champion, Letters to Cleo, The Libertines, Lily Allen, Liza Minnelli, Los Campesinos!, The Long Blondes, Martha Wainwright, The Mighty Stef, Mundy, Muse, My Bloody Valentine, Neutral Milk Hotel, Nirvana, Nobuo Uematsu, (early) Oasis, Operator Please, Patrick Wolf, The Pipettes, Pixies, PJ Harvey, Pulp, Queen, Ramones, Reel Big Fish, The Revs, The Remus Lupins, Rilo Kiley, Robbie Williams (oh, the shame!), Rodrigo y Gabriela, Rufus Wainwright, Save Ferris, Sons and Daughters, The Sounds, The Streets, The Strokes, The Subways, Switchblade Kittens, Tenacious D, Thin Lizzy, Tommy February6/Tommy Heavenly6, Utada Hikaru, We Are Scientists, Weird Al Yankovic, The White Stripes, Willy Mason

3. How did you learn the guitar, acquire your skills?

I had informal lessons for an hour every week for about three and a half years.

4. Explain your experiences as a female guitar player. (Eg. Finding a band, concerts, stereotypes, going into guitar shops…)

I’ve never been in a proper band. I’ve jammed with people a lot, but it’s never amounted to anything concerte. I’ve never really had trouble finding people to play with. A few of my friends are musicians but we’ve got very different tastes in music.
I had a music teacher in secondary school who didn’t expect any of his female students who played guitar to progress past open chords, a male friend of mine assumed I couldn’t do hammer ons and pull offs and that I didn’t know any scales.
My local music shop is owned a woman. Most of the staff are male, but for the most part they’re pretty approachable.

5. Do you ever feel discriminated as a female guitarist? What are the advantages and obstacles of being a female performer?

Not really. Boys are more willing to talk down to you. I think it might have something to do with feeling threatened.
Advantages: You stand out more.
Obstacles: It can be hard to make people take you seriously.

6. Do you think female instrumentalists are still marginalized in comparison to male performers?

To a degree. Like I said above, it’s hard to be taken seriously. All girl bands are seen as a novelty and female musicians in all male bands are usually seen as token members.
To young children, rock music is seen as a predominantly male thing, so more boys than girls take it up. A lot of the girls I know who play guitar start playing at a later age and don’t intend to progress very far, they just do it for fun. Boys, on the other hand are more competitive and think they have to be better than everyone else.
There are a lot more female musicians and bands in the indie scene than there are in the charts but I’m not sure if that’s going to change.

Uncover the musical secrets at MusicFest
As the final countdown for Vancouver Island MusicFest (VIMF) 2010 gets underway, it’s a great time to take a closer look at the sweet musical magic that will come together on July 9-11 on the Comox Valley Exhibition grounds.
Live loop pedal jam by multi instrumentalist Elliott Cheng

Easy Pieces

$1.34

Live drums, bass, guitar, turntables & keys run through samplers & effects. They broke up in & moved to other projects including Fog (Ninja Tune), Dosh (Anticon), Hymie’s Basement (Lex), & Neotropic (Ninja Tune/Mush) but here is a sample of their output….