And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!

I've played the classical guitar for many years – in fact, to be truthful, for many, many years. I learned guitar when I was a fanatical teenager. I and a friend of mine did what only fanatical teenagers can do: we spent three weeks doing nothing but playing guitar, about ten hours a day, and at the end of it, we were pretty good at it. We knew all the chords, we could do the fancy Spanish rhythms, and we knew the intricacies of PIMA, a system of plucking the strings with the fingers of the right hand. Bert Weedon would have been proud of us.

My friend later became a priest, and went off to Nigeria to teach the Africans how to play Reggae, as well as to introduce them to Jesus. I, on the other hand, became an atheist, and didn't have much opportunity to play guitar. This didn't stop me from buying the things, and for a while I had a large collection of guitars.

The various guitars I had accumulated over the years were taking up space in my house and I decided to sell them all. The Hondo II electric guitar which was so heavy I couldn't lift it was passed on to some other budding guitarist, along with the small amp it came with. I got as much for it as I had originally paid. The 12-string was sold for a profit, as were two of the three nylon-strung guitars. Finally I was left with just one guitar, a nylon-strung guitar which went back into its case and stayed there.

Years later, I had kids and they needed bed-time stories and songs. The old guitar came out and the fox went out on a chilly night, down the way where the nights are gay. I speculated as to what would happen when I would be sixty-four, thinking it still a long way away. I racked my brains for songs to sing, and I realised then that I was still pretty good at the guitar. From time to time the guitar would come out of its case and I kept the nails on my left hand short.

Time passes and, as Mervyn Peake said, teeth lengthen. The aforesaid kids grew, and strange to say, they loved music just as I do. Eldest daughter worked very hard for an important exam and to reward her, I offered to buy her something significant of her choice. What would she like? A bass guitar. So the bass guitar was ordered on-line from a very good German company¹ and I ordered a big bass amp to go with it. The guitar was a great success; the amplifier slightly less so. At 25kg in weight, she can't lift it, so it sits in the music room. Neverthless, she's able to play the bass now. But rarely does so, because a bass on its own is a bit dull. She finally admitted that what she needs is a lead guitar to jam along with.

I debated long and hard, and finally decided I should buy myself an electric guitar. I looked at a few in America when I was over there at Christmas, but couldn't contemplate the hassle of carrying an electric guitar home on the plane with me. There's enough trouble carrying ordinary luggage. So I decided I would buy a guitar on-line when I got home.

I decided to go to the same on-line guitar company in Germany. They've a huge selection of guitars. But electric guitars are peculiar. If you want to buy, say, a clarinet, there might be ten different models available. But with electric guitars, there will be at least 500 different models – that's no exaggeration. And the price will range from less than €100 up to €10,000. The really expensive ones are copies of guitars that famous guitarists have played. But what's the difference between all these different guitars? What extra do you get for your money? This is not a simple question with an easy answer.

I couldn't understand all the different options, so I eventually decided on three things that I wanted my electric guitar to have:

• Guitars are sharply divided into Fender-style guitars which have all the tuning heads on one side of the head of the guitar, and Les Pauls, which have half the tuning heads on one side the rest on the other side. It doesn't make a whit of difference to the sound or the playability, but guitars are all about style, so I chose the Fender style. It just looks better. There's probably nothing cooler than an electric guitar, so why make it less cool?

• The next decision was what colour to get it. For me there is no question - black. Musicians wear black, whether they are orchestral players in black suits or heavy metal rockers in black leather. Anything else just isn't music. So the guitar had to be black too. This was harder than I thought it would be. There are plenty of black guitars, but they tend to have white accessories. Fender, for example, make a very nice black guitar but it's got an ugly white scratch plate on it. That defeats the purpose in my view. If it's going to be black, it has to be all black.

• My third requirement was a tremolo bar. This allows the note to be bent up or down, and by wobbling the bar you can get the effect known variously as tremolo or vibrato. It is a rapid variation in pitch and is used by most players on long notes to make them sound more lyrical. The same effect can be achieved by a fingering technique and having learnt on a classical nylon-strung guitar, I'm well able to do this, but the tremolo bar is that little bit more flexible in what it can do. This feature would jack up the price slightly, as the cheapest guitars don't have tremolo bars, but I reckoned it was worth it.

A scan of the hundreds of guitars available on line was quickly reduced to a few once my three criteria were taken into consideration. The least expensive was the Ibanez Black Knight, and since I don't know much else about guitars, I ordered it, along with a simple 15W amplifier.

One thing I have against the company I ordered from – when I looked at the guitar to see how long it would take to buy, I was told it was not in stock that it would take 2 to 5 days to order. As soon as I placed the order, this was immediately changed to an order time of three weeks. I think this is rather mean. I could have cancelled the order there and then, but I really liked the look of the 'Black Knight', so I decided to wait the three weeks.

Two weeks into the wait, I received an e-mail to say that it was going to be delayed further, and it ended up being about five weeks before the guitar was sent to me. Despite all this, I would still highly recommend this company as a place to buy guitars. I haven't found anywhere in Europe cheaper, they have a huge range of instruments, and they are very helpful any time you've a problem.

Finally, after about five weeks, the guitar and amplifier arrived, and I am now experimenting with it.

Playing an electric guitar is not like a classical guitar. Firstly, the amplification means that all your mistakes are amplified as well as the music. You have to be much more accurate in your placement of every note. Secondly, the amplifier itself is significant. It can do straight amplification, which means making the sound louder, but it can also introduce lots of effects such as distortion, chorus, phaser and echo. All of these are hideous when used in the extreme but when used subtly can make a great difference to the sound. I have to experiment to find the sounds I really like. I think I'll end up with just two sounds, a sort of clear sound with a bit of reverberation for playing chords and a searing metal sound for solos.

The original idea of buying the electric guitar was so that I could accompany my daughter on her bass, but this hasn't happened yet. She's in the throes of the most important exam of her life, which will determine which university she goes to, what course she studies, and in the long run what career she ends up with. Everything else is put on hold until the exams are over in mid June.

Then we can jam together.

Gnomon

16.04.09 Front Page

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