Crossing the Electronic Divide

Guitar synthesizers gained prevalence in the 1980s thanks to the work of guitarists such as Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, and Allan Holdsworth. This chapter explores how the guitar synthesizer challenged prevailing ideologies of technology, technique, and tone in the guitar community and was ultimately a commercial failure. It traces a brief history of the electric guitar and the synthesizer and their subsequent conjoining. The chapter discusses three cases in detail: Metheny’s use of the Roland GR-300, McLaughlin’s use of the Synclavier II, and Holdsworth’s use of the SynthAxe. The chapter concludes with an examination of the critical reception of the guitar synthesizer and speculates about the future of technological synthesis across the analog/digital divide.

Davis, Miles Dewey III, (1926–1991)

Jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Davis is one of the most significant artists in the history of jazz. He stood at the forefront of post-World War II developments in jazz, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, postbop, and jazz-rock fusion. His trumpet playing was renowned for a breadth of timbres, unique spatial arrangements, and emphatic use of the middle register. As a bandleader he hired and subsequently launched the careers of some of the most important and innovative jazz artists, including tenor saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and John Coltrane, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, pianists Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, guitarists John McLaughlin, Mike Stern, and John Scofield, drummer Tony Williams, and bassist Marcus Miller. His 1959 recording Kind of Blue remains one of the best-selling, most critically acclaimed, and iconic jazz albums of all time.

“See clearly … feel deeply”: Improvisation and Transformation: John McLaughlin Interviewed by Daniel Fischlin

On the cusp of a North American concert tour in late 2010 and hot off the release of To the One, his musical meditation on Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and his own lifelong spirit-quest, celebrated guitarist John McLaughlin agreed to a CSI request for an interview focusing on improvisation and spirituality. In addition to being a prodigious musician in every respect, McLaughlin has had an exceptional, if not unparalleled, trajectory through the crucible of twentieth and now twenty-first century music.

Cashew-Apple Fruit Growing in the Florida Home Landscape

HS-1127, an 11-page illustrated fact sheet by John McLaughlin, Carlos Balerdi, and Jonathan Crane, describes this tropical fruit, suitable climate for optimum growth, propagation, production and spacing for the home landscape, soils, planting, care, and pruning, harvest, ripening, storage, and use and nutritional value of the cashew apple. Includes references. Published by the UF Department of Horticultural Sciences, April 2008. HS1127/HS377: Cashew Apple Fruit Growing in the Florida Home Landscape (ufl.edu)