A prepared guitar is a guitar that has had its timbre altered by placing various objects on or between the instrument's strings, including other extended techniques. This practice is sometimes called tabletop guitar, because many prepared guitarists do not hold the instrument in the usual manner, but instead place the guitar on a table to manipulate it.
The idea of altering an instrument's timbre through the use of external objects has been applied to other instruments as well, most notably John Cage's prepared piano predeceeded the prepared guitar.
Read more about Prepared Guitar: History, Custom Made Instruments, Books About Prepared Guitar Techniques
Famous quotes containing the words prepared and/or guitar:
“After school days are over, the girls ... find no natural connection between their school life and the new one on which they enter, and are apt to be aimless, if not listless, needing external stimulus, and finding it only prepared for them, it may be, in some form of social excitement. ...girls after leaving school need intellectual interests, well regulated and not encroaching on home duties.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)