YouTube is a breeding ground for wacky guitar videos. Take the insane electric guitar builds by BurlsArt, for example, like a six-string made entirely of skateboards, or an otherworldly guitar built using epoxy resin. Or think of Ichika Nito's impossibly virtuosic solo with just one finger, and a jaw-dropping lead played on one string.
Indeed, it’s stretching the creative boundaries that gets a creator attention on the platform, and Bernth Brodträger has certainly caught our eye with his latest video.
The guitarist – an Ibanez endorsee and educator with over 650,000 subscribers – has committed the unthinkable, at least in the eyes of acoustic guitar aficionados, and filled the soundhole of an Ibanez cutaway strummer with water.
Now, if there’s a part of you that dies inside at the thought of a perfectly good guitar being drenched with water, fret not, as it does, in fact, make for some pretty incredible sonic results.
Using the waterlogged acoustic, Bernth plays an original composition rather fittingly titled Waterworks.
An enchanting piece of music designed to dispel any worry as to the fate of the guitar, Waterworks is crafted with meandering arpeggios, artificial harmonics and even some quick-fire alternate picking runs, while the sloshing of the water contained within the guitar’s cavity makes for a soothing audial backdrop. Check it out above.
In an interview with Guitar World earlier this year, Bernth reflected on his choice to set one of his prized Ibanez guitars ablaze to promote his first instrumental solo album, Elevation.
“Maybe it was a bit dramatic,” he said, “but it was a statement about all these articles that were going around, every single one of them saying ‘guitar music is dead! Nobody cares about guitar, especially shred guitar.’”
