Alex’s project documents the historical progression of the guitar as well as associations shared between specific guitar models and musicians. The project is accessible to the public through a website, which uses a number of pages to chronologically separate guitars. Each page heading is labelled to identify the identity of that era, i.e. the 1950’s-1964 are labelled “Rise of Rock”.
The site is very well done for a variety of reasons. When you are first brought to the home page there is a simple explanation of what inspired it and what the site hopes to accomplish. Also, it is very easy to navigate. The sites simplistic layout makes it such that a less than average user would not be intimidated or have any issue with exploring its content. The styling is nice and there is a uniform consistency to formatting which makes its presentation seem more professional. Alex states on the home page that he hopes the site will inspire others to learn the guitar. I think that his use of historical moments and historical icons of the guitar in the sites content was an effective way to accomplish this goal.
Although I did enjoy the textual content of the website, I did feel this is an area which could use some bolstering. Although the historical moments were great for the sites mission, I felt as a user that Alex’s site had piqued my interest and now I had even more questions. I would like to see some more information on the guitar models, specifically, what defined their specific appeal. Throughout the presentation it was repeated that it was focusing on big moments in musical history and guitar models; not the specific used by the musician in the historical moment. This had me asking the question, why? What separated the Fender Stratocaster from the Rickenbaker 235? What defined their appeal? As a person with limited knowledge of the history of guitars, I found the site in some ways bred these questions.
All in all it is a very good site. It’s easy to navigate, clean, professional, and has lots of interesting content on the history of the guitar. Alex mentioned during his presentation that he had an interest in eventually including sections on the bass and drums, and I think that’s a great idea.
Steve Boyles Digital Humanities Blog 