Editing Fred Frith (section)

==Musical style and instruments== <!--This section is linked from [[Guitar Solos]] and [[Live in Japan (Fred Frith album)|Live in Japan]]-->
===Guitars and playing technique===
Fred Frith has used a number of different guitars, including [[experimental musical instrument|homemade instruments]], over the years, depending on the type of music he is playing. For the more structured and refined music he has often used a [[Gibson ES-335#Other|Gibson ES-345]], for example on his solo album, ''[[Gravity (Fred Frith album)|Gravity]]''. For the heavier "rock" sound, as in [[Massacre (experimental band)|Massacre]], he has used an old 1961 solid body Burns guitar, created by the British craftsman Jim Burns. On his landmark ''[[Guitar Solos]]'' album, Frith used a modified 1936 Gibson K-11 guitar (q.v. for details).

[[File:FredFrith's setup April2009.jpg|thumb|250px|left|Fred Frith's setup in April 2009.]]

For Frith's early unstructured music, as with [[Henry Kaiser (musician)|Henry Kaiser]] on ''[[With Friends Like These (album)|With Friends Like These]]'', and his early table-top guitar solo performances, he used a homemade six- and eight-string [[Multi-neck guitar|double-neck guitar]] created by a friend, Charles Fletcher. Frith told ''[[DownBeat]]'' magazine in 1983: "It was the one and only guitar that he ever built ... he constructed it mainly out of old pieces from other guitars that I had, and for the body I think he used an old door."<ref name="downbeat" /> The possibilities offered by homemade instruments prompted Frith to start creating his own guitars, basically slabs of wood on which he mounted a [[Pickup (music technology)|pickup]], a [[Bridge (instrument)|bridge]], and [[Strings (music)|strings]] stretched over metal screws. "The basic design of the instrument is supposed to be as rudimentary and flexible as possible," Frith said, "so I can use an electric drill to bore holes into the body of it to achieve certain sounds ... ."<ref name="downbeat" />

Frith uses a variety of implements to play guitar, from traditional [[guitar pick]]s to [[Violin#Bows|violin bows]], [[Percussion mallet|drum stick]]s, egg beaters, paint brushes, lengths of metal chain, and other [[Found object (music)|found objects]]. Frith remarked: "It's more to do with my interest in found objects and the use of certain kinds of textures which have an effect on the string ... the difference between the touch of stone, the touch of glass, the touch of wood, the touch of paper – those kinds of basic elements that you're using against the surface of the strings which produce different sounds."<ref name="downbeat" />

In a typical solo improvising concert, Frith would lay a couple of his homemade guitars flat on a table and play them with a collection of found objects (varying from concert to concert). He would drop objects, like [[ball bearing]]s, dried beans, and rice on the strings while stroking, scraping, and hitting them with whatever was on hand.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sfbg.com/36/32/art_music_groundzero.html |title="Ground Zero", May 2002 |work=San Francisco Bay Guardian |first=Derk |last=Richardson |access-date=22 November 2006}}</ref> Later he added a live [[Sampler (musical instrument)|sampler]] to his on-stage equipment, which he controlled with pedals. The sampler enabled him to dynamically capture and loop guitar sounds, over which he would capture and loop new sounds, and so on, until he had a bed of repeated patterns on top of which he would then begin his solo performance.

=== Effects and amplification ===
[[File:FredFrith April2009 (cropped).jpg|thumb|210px|right|Fred Frith performing in [[Seattle]] in April 2009.]]
;Effect pedals:
*[[Pro Co RAT]] [[distortion]]
*[[Boss Corporation|Boss]] FV-50L volume foot controller
*[[Boss Corporation|Boss]] RC20-XL Looper
*[[DigiTech]] [[Digitech Whammy|Whammy 4]]
*[[Line 6 (company)|Line 6]] DL4 delay
*[[EBow]]
*[[Electroharmonix POG]]
;Amplification:
*[[Fender Amplifiers]]