Grisha -> RE: Grisha tries out a Conde Felipe V (Guitar Salon) + other guitars (Dec. 25 2009 11:50:30)
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Hello, friends! Merry Christmas! I see you've found the videos. These were shot during my brief visit to LA a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine offered to take me to GSI to try guitars and meet the staff. When I got there I found a few guitars lined up for me to try. The stuff was very nice and had a very good knowledge of flamenco repertoire. I just sat there trying the guitars, sometimes stopping to tune and make comments. I think these guys spliced the videos to make them more concert-like. But it was not intended to be a concert. These vids represent my "off-season" playing shape. About the harsh sound... My nails were super short and re-glued three times. They were not smooth because pieces of dried glue were stuck underneath my nails. They were still okay for flamenco, but were not suitable for classical at all. Because of this I refused to play classical repertoire. To me, as a player of both classical and flamenco styles, nail size and shape is very much like what gearing, aerodynamics and and tires is for a car racer. You wouldn't have the same setup for a slow, curvy track and an oval high-speed track. My nails were shaped for speed and clarity, rather than cantilena. They sounded too aggressive for classical music. I view playing different guitars to be similar to driving different cars. You need to feel the car, drive it, test its limits before you can really extract all the performance out of it. Each guitar you see in the videos was in my hands for about 15 minutes tops. It was not enough for me to feel comfortable with them and discover each one's individual strengths. To me Reyes was the best of the bunch. It sounded sweet when I played super soft, and with the slightest modulation gave me that dry punch, "sandy" sound that Vicente has when he accompanies Jose Merce on the "Del amanecer" album. Most flamenco of the bunch, I thought. Excellent thoughts on "pulsation". Here's what happened to me. After I finished my DMA classes I started to really practice the guitar again. I played about 8 hours a day, all-out. My Connor is a classical guitar, with a very high action and hard tension strings. It never buzzes under normal hard playing, and you have to punch with all your power to make the sound break. I was frequently criticized for playing soft... No, it sounded soft because I was using a heavy guitar. Because I like to have that punchy sound sometimes, I taught myself to over press to produce it. My new plastic nails can take all the power, so I was not handicapped by anything. So I thought... By last August I started to miss a lot of notes in concerts, discovering that somehow I was not able to control all that muscle power that I developed. In September it got a lot worse. Clearly, lack of practice was not an issue here - on the contrary, I overplayed and hurt my hands. That's when I met Lester DeVoe, just a few days after realizing the problem. He offered to lend me the guitar I play now. It sounds amazing in my opinion, but for 2 months I could not play it well, as every note buzzed. My muscle memory didn't let me go softer than certain level, and I was losing control. The strings were feeling mushy, and I couldn't play scales. Now I am back in the game, as my fingers finally adjusted to the much softer instrument. I just tried to put my old high tension strings on it and discovered that they are too tough, although my scales sound faster and cleaner. I changed back within an hour. Now that I have 2 different guitars I don't have to compromise any more. Having a softer, low action instrument for flamenco makes a lot of sense.
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