Ricardo -> RE: Pulsation (Apr. 27 2010 22:30:56)
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I first heard the term from Anders, and wondered if it was his own personal term for something I understood already as a player. After some discussion, the jist of it is that it does relate to how you play the guitar. For example, some guitars really deliver the goods when you play them harder and harder. It seems these instruments have "high or hard pulsation". If you don't play them with a heavy hand, then it could seem the guitar is stiff and dull sounding. Conversely if you have a guitar that is very easy and the sound jumps out with a lighter attack, (I assume you would call it low or soft pulsation??) then the heavy handed player may run the risk of driving the guitar too hard and making a bad or "brash" sound. Perhaps some other terms are stiffness, or easiness to the way the guitar responds to your playing technique? Here I found Ander's thoughts: quote:
Ok, I´m back with one of favorites, Pulsation. Thats one of the most important things in a guitar that suits you and its the one you cant adjust because its built into the guitar. In popular words I would call it stiffness or softness of a guitar. Its something you feel in you right hand, it has to do with how you produce sound. Its also something you cannot adjust by changing string tension. Yes a little bit, but a stiff guitar feels stiff with low tension strings and a soft guitar feels soft with high tension strings. Pulsation you control mainly by thickness of soundboard and how heavy its braced. These two things interact and also affect the sound of the guitar. If the soundboard is to thick, the guitar might be trebly but also with lack of nuance and dynamics in the basses and midrange. If to thin it becomes bassy and with lack of dynamics in the trebles and high midrange. Guitars with a to strong bracing system tend to have this unpleasant nosy sound. There´s no right pulsation. It depends on the player and some pro´s like stiff guitars and some like soft guitars. From my experience, a typical stiff guitar is a Conde and a typical soft one is a Reyes. So you see, that you can find all kinds of pulsations in all categorys and its a waste of time to discuss which is best etc, because its so personal. One of the problems with the internet info you get about good guitars is that the info comes from people who knows very little about guitars, hence the enourmous amount of info about sound and very little about playability. There are lots of "clever" persons writing about how good this and that guitar sounds without being able to really test it and play it with a good strong flamenco technique. If you dont have that techique, you wont be able to test the guitar fully. Its like testing a formula 1 car under speed limitations. Everyone with money can buy a good guitar, pluck the strings and write a raving review on the internet. If you do so many times some people will consider you to know a lot about good guitars, but the only info you get is a personal comparision on how good guitars sound when plucked. I hope you understand what I mean with "plucking". thats something that has very little to do with playing flamenco. Flamencos dont pluck strings. So what has this to do with a standard beginner or intermediate flamenco player: Its difficult to get it right the first time. Thats why guitars are being sold. Some people want to think they have a strong right hand and buy or order a stiff guitar (macho type) what they have is maybe an uncontrolled right hand and so, the guitar they buy will always be overpowering them. My personal goal is to build a guitar which is just right of course. but its relative, so it might be just a tad to soft or stiff for someone. Now I´m being very honest with you guys, and please give me credit for that because its not what is normally considered good for business and very few luthiers are saying that their instruments might not be correct for all players. In fact most luthiers are very afraid of talking about how their guitars work and thats leads us back to Rons dilema: all this talking about sound. Its so much easyer to talk about the right sound than he right feel of a guitar and this leeds to this misunderstanding that if you have a guitar with a good sound (relative as well) you have a guitar that´ll always be perfect for you
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