Surf Music

“Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar, that wet, splashy sound.”—Dick Dale, the King of the Surf Guitar If you think about it, surfing is as sonic as it is physical. The sound of the ocean is the first song the Earth ever played. The ocean creates its own music. An angry sea sounds violent; the cannon crack of a barrel hitting flat water is an audible monster that will wake all of the senses. The gentle brush of small waves lapping onto the shore is a sound humans have used to lull themselves to sleep for eons. Then there’s the rarely heard, otherworldly howl of a tube, only heard from inside said tube—this is “surf music”, but just one branch of the surf music tree that has roots and limbs sprawling and intermingling throughout the past, present, and future.