estebanana -> RE: How to make your guitar sound more flamenco (Jun. 8 2013 12:54:27)
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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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