estebanana -> RE: Sustain (Mar. 16 2016 5:42:22)
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The reason Conde's have robust thick tops is because it is easier to build a successful guitar with crappy wood if you leave a soft punky top thicker. It's not mystery. The factory guitar are not being made with high grade wood so to hedge against product defect make the top thick. It also happens to generally make a certain kind of voice, with the right bridge. It is not that difficult to make Conde' sound, but why bother to build like that when the customer can simply buy a Conde? quote:
1) What do we mean by sustain? If luthiers and flamenco guitarists talk to each other this is everyone’s business. (2) What amount of sustain do flamenco guitarists want? This is the business of flamenco guitarists (many luthiers are also players so it is their business as well.) These are important questions but they are difficult to discuss. This is partly because we don’t have a shared understanding of the language used. Another problem is that we don’t have access to the same experiences. Imagine all the contributors to this thread being able to sit in a room with a dozen or so different guitars, passing them round, playing them and talking about them. We might get somewhere then. Dreams! I agree with Stephen that the issue is not simply about how rapidly a note decays. I am interested in his terms “controlled supported sustain” and “loose unsupported sustain” but I could not be sure if we would use them in the same way. When I play a guitar long enough to get to know it and adjust my playing to get the best I can out of it I think of how “dry” it is. I suppose the opposite should be “wet”. An example of what I think is loose and floppy would be if you look up Hamza el Din on YouTube and find his album 'Escalay' and listen to the bass note drone he plays. He is an oudi but I think you know that. Hamzas oud bass notes are perfect to illustrate a bass that drones on and on, even 5hough that is not a guitar, a good model sound. Supported sustain would be more like a recording of Segovia playing his famous Hauser. A different envelope of bass sound with a different rate of decay, slightly shorter, but bass that has a colorful overtone shine. Or any Fleta or other heavy braced guitar that sings like an old timey Italian Tenor or Baritone with eco and clarity. Do those examples pardon the pun, resonate with you? _________________________________________ When I think about beautiful treble sound I also usually don't think about guitars as a model, I think of soprano singers Like Bidu Sayao who was a great singer. The Bachianas Braziliera #5 for soprano and eight celli was written for her. When looking for sound ideals in sustain and voice I find myself going outside the guitar world terms and examples because I find them sonically incestuous. Guitars all sound like other guitars, more difficult to get a bearing on what sound I am thinking about. I switched to thinking about guitar sound quality in terms of flamenco singers and opera singers. Mostly older ones from early or mid 20th century. If you listen to sopranos, baritones and tenors you get the whole range. Opera singers are good to compare sustain and overtone qualities and flamenco singers are the metallic eco in a dry flamenco guitar. Once removed from comparing guitar on guitar you get a kind of other definition of sound. Like take four sopranos, Bidu Sayao, Elizabeth Schartzkopf, Leontyne Price and Kirsten Flagstad. Ok ....I want Leontyne Price and Bidu Sayao trebles not the other two. Think most flamencos would Schartzkopf -Flagstad trebles, but I wan tmoslty Bidu Sayao and maybe throw in some Victoria de Los Angeles. I know, I know complicated, but it has some kind of backwards flamenco logic if you can go there. [;)]
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