estebanana -> RE: New vs Old (Jan. 25 2011 1:14:32)
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Tom, You're basically cashing in on the imprimatur of Reyes' name by associating yourself so closely with his design. To a certain extent yes you have done a service to clarify guitar making to those who would like to build that plan. But on the other hand you drive it home over and over again that you are the one who has drawn the plan and that's great, but you're not expressing the other side of what it takes to grow as a guitar maker. In not voicing that side you're confusing the issue of original work with bench copy work. I have no problem with you drawing any other guitar makers plan, but if you think for five seconds that I or anyone else trained to design from the ground up can't do the same thing you'e mistaken. You just happen to be in the seat of power and have a reputation so doors get opened to you to publish. Several of us who know how to analyze could do the same job without being sinverrguenza about hogging up the credit and being such self promotional bloviators. The part that you are leaving out is salient, that is that copying is the road to understanding how the guitar works. We all do it from the beginning and that is how we learn to compare. But how about handing someone a yardstick, compass, T square and triangle and telling them to draw a model based on an orginal plantilla? People would wash out a lot faster, but those who could stick with it would learn how to parse through a design by any luthier and understand how it works. It' s like that novel by Somerset Maugham, The Razors Edge . The protagonist Larry seeks a life of contemplative learning and turns from his high born position to travel to the East and study Buddhism. Eventually he gets to a great master and practices away up in them thar North Indian hills, but after many years of study finally figures out that in order to self actuate he must burn his books, trust himself, and travel back into the world. Eventually any mature guitar maker will have to burn the Barbero plan, the Santos plantilla and the Reyes plan. You have to walk the razors edge alone. Students copy, mature artists invent themselves. ( If you don't want to spend the time to read the actual novel, I recommend the film The Razors Edge starring Bill Murrray as Larry. ) It's great that you have drawn this plan, but a plan is only a plan, it's like a standardized cafeteria recipe that anyone can make. It's accessable and it's universally understanadable on the surface. It is not teaching people how to cook from scratch or how to learn to taste. And thats fine, it's a starting place, but strive to not confuse it with the real work of knowing how componets of cuisine work together to make food. A master chef invents recipes according to his or her knowledge and exeperience in addtiion to looking up the occasional recipe on the internet. A cookbook is a good start if you want to learn to cook, Julia Child wrote a great one which changed the history of cuisine in America, but at the same time she presented particular recipes, she also stressed the importance of learning to work the classical components of cuisine to invent fior one self. The part of guitar making that you are leaving out is the hard work that people like Reyes did to arrive at that guitar. It's not as simple as spoon feeding people a plan and then turning around and playing a victim if someone calls you on it. Julia Child had huge balls and she gave credit where credit is due. And sure there's more than one way to reach your goal of being a guitar maker, but to impune by negelcting to mention the other more difficult path of actually working with sauces and gravies made from scratch is to throw out guys like Reyes himself. No one handed him a plan of a guitar purchased from GAL he had to learn from the ground up with compass, triangle, T square, making successes and failures along the way until it became clear. No one handed Maugham a plot sketch for any novel, he stole his ideas fair and square, internalized them, and then transformed them into his own ideas by a difficult long process of learning to write a novel. I suppose you'll have some moist victimish rebuttal to my missive and that's great too. I could give a shiet, just stop throwing the master Reyes under the bus for the sake of your own ego. May the sheep be with you, S. P. S' I'm not angry or disgusted, I'm still amused, but growing less so with the internet.
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