Professor Rich Perks

Bio: Professor Rich Perks is a guitarist, composer and musicologist. He is one of Europe’s leading exponents of the fretless electric guitar, has extensive experience as a session musician and has performed all over the world. In 2023 he won first prize in the International Microtonal Guitar Competition (composition), for which he now sits as a jury panel member. His research and publications span the extended performance possibilities of the fretless electric guitar, guitar-focused musicology/analysis, the combination of composition with improvisation, and intercultural collaboration. He co-edited the book 21st Century Guitar: Evolutions and Augmentations (Bloomsbury, 2023) and has published widely. He is also series editor for Practice Research in Music (Routledge), Deputy Chair of the annual international conference The Guitar in Popular Music, and a peer-review member for the Journal of Popular Music Education.

Key research areas: fretless electric guitar; guitar-focused musicology and analysis; instrumental affordances; combining composition with improvisation; intercultural collaboration.

• 21st Century Guitar: Evolutions and Augmentations (Bloomsbury, 2023)
• Curse of the Sandman (for solo microtonal guitar fretted in 8-EDO + electronic effects) (Musical Composition; First Prize winner in International Microtonal Guitar Competition, 2023)
• ‘David Gilmour: Defining the “Melodic” Guitarist’, in The Routledge Handbook of Pink Floyd (Routledge, 2023)
• ‘Strung Together: Realizing Music-Cultural Hybridity within a Limited Time Frame’ (research-grant-funded intercultural music-making project in San Francisco, 2017; Music & Practice, 2021)
• ‘Fretless Architecture: Towards the Development of Original Techniques and Musical Notation Specific to the Fretless Electric Guitar’ (Music & Practice, 2019)

ORCID: 0000-0001-9878-9027                         Email: rperks@acm.ac.uk