Honorary Google Doodle Marks Les Paul's 96th Birthday

Google have long been known for their quirky search engine doodles to commemorate historic dates or people – see this video montage of the best of them here, incl. Leonardo Da Vinci, Sherlock Holmes and aliens to name just a few!

Happy 96th Birthday, Les Paul!

Today (Thursday 9th June 2011), Google have honoured the late great Les Paul with their interactive doodle; a Google guitar. The interesting instrument that kind of resembles an electric guitar is accessible from the http://www.google.com search engine webpage (see image below). Can you see how they have designed it to spell GOOGLE – cool, huh?!

Google Doodle honouring the late Les Paul

When you mouse over the strings you can strum the instrument. The notes on the LH section of the strings are (top to bottom) – C, E, G, B, G, B and on the RH section (top to bottom) – A, D, F#, A.

These notes create three chords sounds: G Major, C Major and D Major. The chords make up the well known I (G), IV (C), V (D) chord progression that is common in rock n roll, country, pop and blues music styles.

There is more to this interactive doodle, you know. If you click the small black box in the bottom RH corner it will record your playing. You can then overdub yourself, just like Les Paul did in the late 1940s or alternatively you can create a URL to send to your friends and let them play along, as if you were a duet!

Google have done a great job honouring Les Paul with this fun doodle. Well done!

RIP, Les!

My original blog post commemorating the first anniversary of his passing in 2010: http://imaguitarist.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/les-paul-rip-1915-2009/

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