Tingting
Joined: Mar 21, 2025
Posts: 1
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Posted on Mar 21 2025 07:24 PM
Hi everyone!
I’m Tingting, a surfing beginner from China, and I’ve recently been deeply inspired by surf culture. As part of a school project, I’m creating a video to share surf culture with Chinese audiences on social media. While researching, I discovered this amazing forum and thought it would be the perfect place to learn more about surf music, which seems to be such an important part of surf culture.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these two question:
“What does surf music mean to you?”
"What is your first impression to surf music?"
It could be just a few keywords or a short sentence—whatever comes to mind!
If you’re comfortable with your response being used in my video, please feel free to share (it could be in many forms, but best in videos!), and I’ll make sure to credit you in the final edit.
Thank you so much for your help! I’m really excited to learn from this community and share the spirit of surf culture with more people.
To the Best Surf Guitar Music!
Tingting
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synchro
Joined: Feb 02, 2008
Posts: 4523
Not One-Sawn, but Two-Sawn . . . AZ.
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Posted on Mar 21 2025 09:29 PM
I’ll weigh in, but I’ll answer your questions in reverse order.
I grew up about 3,200 kilometers from Southern California, so we had no ocean beaches, but when I was fairly young, I would hear clean, twangy guitar music on the radio station my older sister listened to, and I loved it. My first impression of Surf music was from hearing songs like Pipeline and Wipeout on the radio. Being from the inland north of the US, I barely knew what surfing was, but I knew that the surfed in California and I knew that California was warmer than Minnesota, so I was enthusiastic. Perhaps the best way to sum it up is that it left an impression musically, but also let me know that there was a wider world out there, and that people on the other side of the country were doing interesting things and playing interesting music.
To me, Surf music means going back to a simpler time, and a time when music was simple and straightforward. My father’s tastes were from before Rock n’ Roll, but he respected the Ventures and at least some of what they played was Surf influenced. The fact that he liked it, told me that Surf had lasting musical value.
Flashing forward to the year 2025, Surf is still meaningful, and stands on its own as a legitimate form of music, which only became possible when electric guitars became popular. That clear, bright sound is as moving now as it was when I was a small child, and Surf remains popular, because at heart, it’s just a great way to express yourself on the guitar.
— The artist formerly known as: Synchro
When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.
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RobbieReverb
Joined: Feb 28, 2006
Posts: 2375
San Jose, Ca.
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Posted on Mar 21 2025 09:51 PM
Welcome to SG101, and to the surf community, Tingting!
Short answer to you questions...
Surf is more than a hobby for me. It is a passion.
My first impression is, Wow!!! That is powerfully moving.
For a longer, explanation, I did an interview for Pi Records (Thanks, Ryan!) detailing how I got into surf music. It's a long journey, that you might find interesting. I have attached it to this post. As far as using anything from the video, for your project, you would have to get the approval of Ryan at Pi Records.
I hope that your project goes well, and that you have a long, productive love affair with instrumental surf music.
— Bob
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weird_oh84
Joined: May 24, 2023
Posts: 204
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Posted on Mar 22 2025 03:21 AM
Welcome TingTing!!
For me, Surf music has a very powerful rhythm section with beautiful, reverb drenched repeated melodies and chords on top… played LOUD!
It can also be , but certainly not required, rooted in either Latin or Exotic scales…although those tend to be the tracks I gravitate towards the most.
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