JOSE DIAZ

Give a guitarist a few toys and turn him loose. You never know what might happen. With even just a guitar and amp, the possibilities are already infinite. Throw in some reverb and delay and the walls that block in the sonic realm fall away quickly.

I have long been a fan of songs produced by humans but there are other songs from the animal kingdom that the human race has so far not produced anything on par with. The pinnacle of natural music for me, are the songs of whales. Humpback and Blue whales are my favorites. Emulating them on guitar is easy but actually performing an entire song from an individual or pod is something I have yet to achieve. The problem lies in the availability of such songs. Documentaries give a lot of information about these creatures but only snippets of their songs. I’m sure there are some full length recordings in some field researchers’ archive somewhere.

I’m sure whale-song has been done before as far as recorded music goes, but I just want to do some of my own for the sake of it. I’d like to take an actual song in its entirety and do my ‘cover’ of it.

Some of my older equipment that still works is the prime stuff to use on such a tune. The Gibson Sonex 180-Custom guitar and the Peavey amp with the old Marshall 4X12 cab worked perfectly so many years ago along with a digital delay and some reverb. The guitar, with the pro-tapered volume knobs gave smooth volume swells and the denseness of the instrument made it possible to gently squeeze out odd sounds. Ah! Such awesome memories!

The power of sound should never be underestimated. Whales can probably see the ocean floor, prey, and companions for thousands of miles around with sound. ‘Sonic Eyes’ are surely far more powerful than optical ones. Right now I’m trying to imagine what it feels like to hang thirty or so meters below the sea surface and sing in moans, whistles, clicks, and rumbles.