{"id":146869,"date":"2025-02-16T06:40:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T14:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=146869"},"modified":"2025-02-16T10:48:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T18:48:03","slug":"new-yorks-acoustic-guitar-project-takamine-has-inspired-92-songs-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/new-yorks-acoustic-guitar-project-takamine-has-inspired-92-songs-and-counting\/","title":{"rendered":"New York\u2019s Acoustic Guitar Project Takamine Has Inspired 92 Songs\u2014and Counting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Artist
Photo: Noah Evan Wilson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many songwriters believe guitars contain songs, and their job is to retrieve them. If that\u2019s the case, this 2007 Takamine GS330S is packed full\u2014as evidenced by the signatures of 92 artists who\u2019ve found songs inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dreadnought, a now-discontinued model with a solid cedar top, is the original Acoustic Guitar Project guitar. The brainchild of mega music fan and advertising creative Dave Adams, the Acoustic Guitar Project<\/a> challenges songwriters to write and record a song in one week on a specific guitar. Adams started the project in 2012 in New York City with this Korean-made Takamine, purchased on Craigslist, and ultimately expanded to 55 cities around the world, each with its own project guitar. (Full disclosure: I\u2019m the volunteer curator of the project in Syracuse, New York.) To date, the project has inspired more than 1,200 songs, all of which can be heard on the project website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TAGP-Guitar-option-1-photo-Noah
Photo: Noah Evan Wilson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

 The first project songwriter on the NYC guitar, whose signature can be seen over the rosette, was Brandon Wilde. He\u2019d been through the music-biz wringer with the band Thisway, picked up by a major label in the late \u201990s and then abruptly dropped. Adams was blown away by Wilde\u2019s talent but frustrated with his slow pace of production. \u201cHe could write a song in an hour, but then he would spend too long producing it,\u201d Adams says. From that observation came the idea to foster creative work by imposing restrictions: one guitar, one week, and one song, captured in an unedited live take with only a portable recorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the New York project guitar has some recognizable names (e.g., Adam Levy, Jean Rohe, Doug Wamble, Gary Lucas), collecting well-known artists has never been the point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn my opinion, one of the most important parts of life is to create something from nothing,\u201d Adams says. \u201cSo it doesn\u2019t really matter who\u2019s wielding it. Every single person is creative, because they have their own set of experiences and only they can write a song from that perspective. This project is a creation machine. All that matters is an artist realizing, \u2018I can finish one. I can finish another one.\u2019 I just want to be a creative spark.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n\"Acoustic<\/a>\n

This article originally appeared in the March\/April 2025<\/a> issue of Acoustic Guitar<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This well-used dreadnought is the original guitar of the Acoustic Guitar Project, which challenges songwriters to write and record a song in one week on a specific instrument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":146875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"This well-used dreadnought is the original guitar of the Acoustic Guitar Project, which challenges songwriters to write and record a song in one week on a specific instrument.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1146],"tags":[1963],"ppma_author":[1559],"class_list":["post-146869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vintage-and-collectible-guitars","tag-march-april-2025"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/TAGP-Guitar-option-1-original-crop.jpg?fit=1200%2C839&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1559,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"jeffrey-pepper-rodgers","display_name":"Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/About-Us-8.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/About-Us-8.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.jeffreypepperrodgers.com\/","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, founding editor of Acoustic Guitar<\/em>, is a grand prize winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and author of The Complete Singer-Songwriter<\/em><\/a>, Beyond Strumming<\/em><\/a>, and other books and videos for musicians. In addition to his ongoing work with AG<\/em>, he offers live workshops for guitarists and songwriters, plus video lessons, song charts, and tab, on Patreon<\/a>.\r\n"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146869"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147157,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146869\/revisions\/147157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146869"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=146869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}