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How to make your guitar sound more flamenco
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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 RE: How to make your guitar sound mo... (in reply to nhills)
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The strange thing about the older models is that the difference in their voices came from, not only the different designs but tweaking the sound by the different makers.
When factories took over a lot of the old school methods, they had time problems with labor to be able to tune the voices properly, and much more of this was lost by many builders who had retired and not passed on their system of tuning. So due to constraints of cost, etc a lot of tuning techniques were lost.
However, there are still a few top builders in Spain who have been able to retain some of the older methods and they are still using some of the older systems to voice their instruments. And the last I heard was that they would not care to have that level of their art revealed.
A guitar factory in Spain has expressed the desire to come take a fine tuning class at my shop, but there seems to be a fly in the ointment with my sales associate, whether this is a good idea, since I fine tune this factory's design they are making for me. If they knew the process, then they could by-pass my employment and sell their work directly to the public.
Well, this is something to think about but as far as I'm concerned I'd like to see the level of the playing field raised for all guitar builders so that they could prosper to a more lofty level of their art, and players would be better served in the process.
And I might add that much of the older sounds are being drowned out by a lot of the newer styles and loudness that is so brash that it hurts my head and saddens my heart to hear the beauty of the old voices being taken away.
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Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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Date Jun. 7 2013 20:11:33
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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RE: How to make your guitar sound mo... (in reply to jshelton5040)
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John,
I don't know if I should argue these points, as I have nothing to gain by even mentioning what I do to voice a guitar, but the builders I have taught this system to, seem to think it works for them.
It's proprietary but I can tell you that it works, and my sales agent talked to a long time friend of his in Spain, a top builder, and he mentioned that he does something very similar to the techniques I use.
So, the idea is not that it works but how long has this Spanish builder been using these techniques. I started working with it about 25 to 30 years ago.
And for you guys to make fun of this is just plain disrespectful to the art. BTW, this is not the end all to every guitar's tuning but just another way to fine tune the voice in an instrument. I have developed this for my personal use and have taught it to others who wanted to learn it.
And if the information has recently come privately from my agents long time builder friend, to confirm this, then it makes you less than accommodating to those who don't think like you.
And if you know Charles Fox, the California builder, then he called me in 1995 to tell me that what I had told him that I learned 25 years before about certain top graduations, were being discussed at a guitar convention as being a new trend.
In other words, it would be best not to sit in judgment about things you haven't investigated, or tried to experiment with for yourselves.
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Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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Date Jun. 8 2013 1:25:26
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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RE: How to make your guitar sound mo... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
If you were to take a modern artist and put an 80 year old Santos or a 60 year old Barbero in their hands and record it digitally it would sound "modern" to the same folk to proclaim the idea that there is such a thing a sold and new guitar sound. It does not exist, there are new recordings and old recordings.
It makes you wonder if all the old masters guitars turned out good or if they had some failures from time to time. I played a Santos flamenco 1934, and it had an old coughing style to it, very expressive and a voice of its own, very different from other guitars I've ever played. And I've played a few Barbero flamencos..
But what impresses me is the basic differences with the articulation, not only between the old style guitars but from the old to the new styles. I find the newer styles to be more comfortable and forgiving for the more modern techniques, or is it that many of the older styles didn't quite make the grade for the freedoms of technique, as they should?
I say this because I've heard and played some of the older styles that had good, what I would call, modern articulation....Quite a few of the older Condes had it. So I think the differences in these styles was essentially developed by the personal style of tuning the voice by each builder, with a knowledge of the European standards of luthiery but practicing their independent techniques to brand the guitar with their own personal stamp.
I know that with my own tuning techniques, I avoid quite a few failures in my tops due to going further into the top's idiosyncrasies that have to do with balance and tonal nuance. The more I work with it, the more I learn, but even with a continual learning curve, it's still a continual search every time I do it. It's just that I get better in learning what to do, not to hurt sound, etc.
The idea is to improve the sound, not hurt it.
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Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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Date Jun. 8 2013 7:45:56
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: How to make your guitar sound mo... (in reply to Tom Blackshear)
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quote:
And if you know Charles Fox, the California builder, then he called me in 1995 to tell me that what I had told him that I learned 25 years before about certain top graduations, were being discussed at a guitar convention as being a new trend.
hee hee, The steel string world reinvents the wheel every five years and then tells the flamenco classical builders about the new stuff that we should be doing to stay up to date. But that stuff does not work for nylon string instruments; our wheel was already round and rolled perfectly to begin with.
One of the things that cracks me up, the ones that tell you you're not building right unless you employ really thick ribs. Sure fella go ahead and make a flamenco with 4mm thick ribs and see what happens.
I used to hang out in the MIMF forum a lot, finally could not take the steel string builders any longer. There are some nice guys there though. One interesting rule they have is that participants are not allowed to drone on and on about a topic unless they actually have practical experience with that particular aspect of guitar making. The discussions are much tighter because there's less extraneous BS from those who have not actually built guitars. Anyone can comment, but the ones who don't have the time put in on a certain topic get cut off before they swallow up all the oxygen in the room.
The down side is that topics on MIMF don't get as loose and freewheeling as they do on the Foro and the focus is not flamenco guitars, so there is a lot of poor speculation on the part of those who have built guitars, but not flamencos. The Foro is clearly better as a place to glean information about flamenco guitars, but a lot of readers here jam up the transmissions of the ones who actually build. IMO. There's a huge difference between speculating about what you think you know about making flamencos and actually sitting down for five, ten fifteen or fifty years really building them.
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Date Jun. 8 2013 12:11:11
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: How to make your guitar sound mo... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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quote:
Have you heard Manuel Cano’s Evocación de la Guitarra de Ramón Montoya? That’s played on Montoya’s Santos Hernández, on loan from Montoya’s widow; it was recorded in 1964, and the sound is just amazing. I’ve never heard anything like it — comparing recordings with records.
I'd like to check this out. But I ask what mic was it recorded with. In Spain a recording studio in 1964 you never know. Was the room live? What does this recording sound like compared to his other recordings?
I think the tape merely muffles the sound so the frequency range of the instrument is limited to mimic an old recording that picked up the room. A lot of 'cut' dropped out between an old mic and a powerful guitar. Older mic were engineered to 'hear' a different set of frequencies than mics today. I liken it to camera lenses. Old lenses have single coatings and the pictures look crisp and high contrast and modern lenses are coated differently and filter light in another way. I think there is a corollary with a and an old lense, they both report reality in a different way then modern lenses and mics. Then add vinyl and older film stocks ...
I base my statement on the idea that I've palyed a lot of old guitars and played them next to new guitars and the old ones can run the gamut of weezers to power houses, pretty much like new guitars today. I've played Santos and old Condes and Estesos that had cut and guts. Lots of them today are mellowed out too much, but a few still kick. Check out the 1924 Santos in Richard Brune' video series "Guitars with Guts" I've played that guitar too, it belongs to a guy in Berkeley, where I used to live. And it is powerful and modern sounding. Write to Brune' and ask him if that guitar is not a powerhouse to put up next to any new guitar. In fact if you are in the Bay Area he might let you play it yourself. You may rethink old vs. new guitar ever after.
Older guitars tended to be made with smaller plantillas than today and a small plantilla with tightly braced top can have a different envelope of sound or presence than a guitar with a bigger plantilla. So I'll give you that, design changes, small platillas can render certain values of sound, and the trend has been to make larger and larger guitars. The classical world scaled back on that before the flamenco world, so I think people tend to understand a modern flamenco guitar as big plantilla guitars. It's difficult for me as a builder to articulate absolute rules about how different sizes and schemes of bracing effect sound an it is a messy topic.
But regardless of whether it has a small or large plantilla I still can't come to parse it out as old fashioned sound and new sound, to me there are certain archetype sounds which you get with small or large bodies and how tightly you brace the top. You can push a guitar to sound more breathy or more nasal depending on where you want to go, but all that has been known for a long long time.
I can't separate old from new. There are old guitars which share the same attributes of sound with new guitars, I have a friend who has a Granada built negra which is small and it has a small beautiful voice, but the voice has something pleasing. Some might call it 'old sound', but the guitar is only 15 years old or less. To me it's not a matter of old or new, but a matter of which style guitar you want to build and going after that area of the envelope of sound that certain designs emphasize more than others. The Granada negra does not sound like a new Reyes, which is in vogue now, it's a different style and the maker had a different intention in mind. It's like which flavor do you want to learn how to make. One is not better than the other and you certainly don't have to put tape on it to get a sound out of it.
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Date Jun. 8 2013 12:54:27
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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RE: How to make your guitar sound mo... (in reply to prd1)
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Wood has a natural tendency to give against string tension, with age, until it finds its equilibrium to match or marry with certain strings. Call it a developed string torque or an articulation that sets in when the wood bends to its natural peak resistance..
With age, the strings tighten up the top wood and the wood opens up in its sound for a few reasons, one being the pectin, starchy substance in the wood pores, gets blown out of the wood by sound vibration.
I help this along with my fine tuning applications until I reach a certain tension, then I stop and let age take care of the rest. So, with-in this technique, I finish out the voicing and articulation to where everything is balanced, then allow age to bring in the rest.
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Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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Date Jun. 10 2013 21:25:08
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