St Vincent, profile: Musician who helped produce a guitar that is 'sympathetic to the female form'
She hopes other women will be encouraged to pick up a plectrum too
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Your support makes all the difference.Pulling the strings in the music industry?
The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist St Vincent has helped to produce a guitar that is “sympathetic to the female form”. The US musician has joined forces with the manufacturer Ernie Ball Music Man to fashion an instrument she finds comfortable to use – and she hopes other women will be encouraged to pick up a plectrum too.
A canny way to make a quick buck?
She’s got a legitimate concern. St Vincent, whose real name is Annie Clark, revealed she had often struggled with the heavier, unwieldy instruments designed for male performers and wanted to create a lighter model to accommodate smaller frames.
It must be a bit of a hassle carrying round that extra weight.
Speaking to Guitar World, St Vincent, 33, said: “For me a guitar that is not too heavy is really important because I’m not a very big person,” She added: “I can't even play a Sixties Stratocaster or Seventies Les Paul. I would need to travel with a chiropractor on tour in order to play those guitars.”
Not the most glam addition to the entourage…
Luckily she’s found a solution to the problem. Weighing in at just seven pounds, the finished product is “ergonomic, lightweight, and sleek” – and, according to the musician, has “room for a breast. Or two.”
Does it do the job?
There haven’t been any complaints so far. St Vincent decided the best place to test out her new creation in public was at a Taylor Swift concert. She claimed the experience of playing in front of 35,000 “screaming” Swift fans was “really fun and really wild”.
And they say rock ‘n’ roll is dead…
St Vincent said she was “glad to be a beacon for women and for anybody who likes music”. She added she hoped both men and women – “but smaller people and women especially” –enjoy the ergonomics of her guitar when it goes on sale next month.
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