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Pulsation
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Ricardo
Posts: 14902
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: Pulsation (in reply to Jeff Highland)
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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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CD's and transcriptions available here: www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Apr. 27 2010 22:30:56
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HolyEvil
Posts: 1240
Joined: Nov. 6 2008
From: Sydney, Australia
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RE: Pulsation (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo 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. haven't read this, so does it mean that a high pulsation guitar will feel like it's having high tension strings on it even if it's low tension strings etc? Funny talking about de conde, my teacher just bought a conde negra a26(or a25, whichever is the negra). I had a play of it an asked him whether it was high tension strings cuz it felt like it, and he tolde it was his usual normal tension proarte strings.. In my guitars strung with all the same strings - pro arte normal tension, de yamaha feels like the lowest tension and the macias the middle of the 3 and the anders the highest tension.. Does this mean that the anders had the highest pulsation and the yamaha de lowest? Cheers
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Date Apr. 28 2010 1:23:08
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Anders Eliasson
Posts: 5780
Joined: Oct. 18 2006
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RE: Pulsation (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
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? Its a very good explanation of the term. The word pulsation I use because its not a strange word in Spanish (Pulsación) used to describe the power you use to make something do something, in this case, to make a guitar vibrate. Since flamenco is a Spanish artform, played on a Spanish instrument, I think its normal that some Spanish words are being introduced and used. I know that for you native English speakers, its something you are not used to. But in other languages we import a lot of words from other cultures (the computer world is the best example) Its good to be openminded and learn from others. I know perfectly well that you guys use the word pulsation in another way, but I will let that be your problem. Most of you guys have accepted words like compás and soniquete. If you talk to good piano players, you´ll see that its not something special for flamenco guitars. Ron, I agree with what you say. Patrick. I have also tried a very nice DeVoe with a (in my case) horribly high pulsation. It would be a very nice guitar for very few players and the owner didnt like it at all, but I repeat, the guitar was very good. What you write about ´recovery´ is another good way of describing the term. You could also use the word 'elasticity' (if it exists) I will continue using the word 'pulsation' because thats what I´m familiar with and IMO its the word that describes the term the best, but maybe I should write it in Spanish: Pulsación.
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Blog: http://news-from-the-workshop.blogspot.com/
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Date Apr. 28 2010 19:47:48
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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RE: Pulsation (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Personally, I like a medium pulsation. I have played Reyes that were too soft (for me) and Condes that seemed a bit stiff--but a friend has a '73 Gravina media luna that I really like. Classical guitars exhibit a wide range of pulsation as well. The quest for most guitar makers who build to spec. is to get the tension built into the guitar that will fit the average market potential. There is no doubt that this building average is not going to work, but for a few players, but this can be adjusted with different tension strings; even different string brands, to bring most guitars into a very close tolerance toward most playing styles. For example: I played a 1958 Pimentel of Mexico City with medium tension strings and it was perfect for my technique without being too stiff. So, the way I build guitars is to build them to comply with my technique, and this will fit about 80% of the market's playing style. This is a personal adjustment that any guitar builder should be able to make with his own product. And if the builder is a player, then it's just a matter of knowing how to make adjustments to fit a particular style. And generally speaking, the length of a building career will be the common denominator, as to the quality of build. But I have to admit that some younger builders have an innate understanding of what makes a guitar work, so all is essentially relative in each individual shop. There is no perfect rule to fit 100% of all guitars for the market due to each individual player's needs, but the end result is that a guitar should fit a larger percentage of players, and this normally takes a certain critical analysis supported by a great deal of experience.
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Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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Date Feb. 7 2015 16:16:27
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