LEETON'S Jason Richardson has put a creative idea into action by recording Narrandera's iconic big guitar.
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A popular tourism drawcard for visitors to the region, Mr Richardson was able to make the idea of recording the largest playable guitar in the Southern Hemisphere come to life recently.
Aided by a Country Arts Support Program (CASP) grant from Western Riverina Arts and the NSW government, the project was given the green light to move forward.
"I worked with Thomas 'DJ Wasabi' Jones, who is from Matong and remembers seeing the guitar at country music events as a child in the 1980s," Mr Richardson said.
"Those recordings were made into sample-based instruments and local composers were commissioned to write pieces of music.
"Vic McEwan, Fiona Caldarevic and myself created music, which are available online to hear."
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The website where that is available - big-guitar.com - has now had over 1000 visitors and two-thirds of those made their way to the downloads page where the group behind the project has shared the sampled instrument in a few formats.
"It's been good to share this unique instrument with the world," Mr Richardson said.
"Only 10 per cent of the online audience is based in Australia and interest from a couple of websites have driven most of the traffic.
"A German website shared the story and the US-based Disquiet website ran a 'Junto' project which generated 30 compositions from musicians all over the world."
Videos Mr Richardson have also made have reached sizeable audiences.
The project was supported by Create NSW's CASP initiative.
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