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RE: What IS the purpose of a flamenca negra?
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a_arnold
Posts: 558
Joined: Jul. 30 2006
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 RE: What IS the purpose of a flamenc... (in reply to gj Michelob)
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quote:
I can’t imagine the length and complexity of this thread, had there been a significant distinction between a blanca and a negra
Just to throw another cat amongst these pigeons: Don't forget that Torres, just to prove his point that the back and sides wood is irrelevant to guitar tone, built a classical guitar with back and sides of papier mache, then challenged guitar experts to tell the difference.
I think that guitar still exists in a (French?) museum somewhere, although the back and sides have begun to decay.
Having said that, I own a few guitars, and happen to have blancas and negras by the same maker in two cases (or four cases, depending on your definition of "case"). One pair was made in 1967/1971 (Manuel de la Chica) and the other in 2006/2010 (Salvador Castillo). Each pair has the same string length. All have pegs. With the same strings on all, in an admittedly subjective pairwise comparison , I do hear more sustain, mellowness, tonal variety, and a more classical sound in the negras -- the negras are also noticeably heavier than their blanca counterparts. I suspect (without proof) that it is the mass of the B/S wood rather than the species that makes the difference. But random variations in the wood or the construction are probably an equally important factor.
In the end, there is no way I can quantify something like mellowness for another listener. So, even though I have the best possible basis for comparison, I can contribute nothing to this thread -- except to point out that I can contribute nothing, mainly because the subjectivity of such judgment is a serious obstacle to meaningful discussion.
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"Flamenco is so emotionally direct that a trained classical musician would require many years of highly disciplined formal study to fail to understand it."
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Date May 27 2010 18:51:09
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Exitao
Posts: 907
Joined: Mar. 13 2006
From: Vancouver, Canada
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RE: What IS the purpose of a flamenc... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
Diogenes will tell you.
So one day, this Stoic/Cynic philosopher was walking down the street with a lit lantern in the middle of the day and someone asks what he's doing.
This guy, probably the source of inspiration for Mad Magazine's snappy answers to stupid questions replies "looking for an honest man."
Now anyone who knows about the school of Cynicism knows that the response was pure sarcasm.
Yet, this minor event is remembered over 2,000 years later for something completely different than what it was.
I bet Diogenes could point out the general cause behind such a misremberance pretty quickly... and come up with some pithy thoughts about it.
quote:
If all thing being equal. Imagine 2 identical tops, neck, bridge, thickness, grain etc etc etc.
Only the sides are different in material, one a cypress the other rosewood.
there MUST be a difference in tone yeah?
Yeah, so same plans, same luthier, same everything except one's a blanca and the other morenita.
What could we expect?
Or should I just be buying whichever sounds nicest and looks prettiest?
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Callidus et iracundus.
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Date May 29 2010 0:38:03
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: What IS the purpose of a flamenc... (in reply to estebanana)
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Diogenes was a sarcastic standup comedian, he just missed living in the time of TV and Jerry Seinfeld. It's said he roamed around the city with the lamp all the time looking for an honest man. He probably did it once in the market place for 15 minutes and you know how the ancient world was, what with no TV or cell phones, people had to relate the days events to one another for entertainment. They probably talked that into a much bigger thing.
Imagine that, they had to be inventive and self entertaining. Sofa manufacturers must have had it really hard back in the ancient world.
Andy Warhol would be amused and perhaps he was that Diogenes 15 minutes has lasted for 2000 years.
Diogenes had that bowl too. When someone asked him about it he shrugged and dipped his hands in the stream to drink. Then he broke the bowl because it was not essential to drinking. Or something like that. Or was that the Bodhidharma? I confuse them.
I try to think of something deeply important to say about the difference between a blanca and a negra, but I can only dredge up names and places like Victor Borge or Steve Martin or The Library at Alexandria or the Mitchell Brothers theatre and how one of the Mitchell brothers killed the other one like Cain killed Abel. None of this is guitaristic in the least and yet I can't shake it. I'm trying to find some biblical parallel or parable to explain the difference, and while my mind searches through the most likely books of the old testament where blancas and nergas are spoken of; Songs of Solomon, any passage about Kind David and his lion gut strung harp, any passages about scantily clad dancing girls. Certainly there must have been flamenco in Sodom and Gomorrah? Right? I get nothing.
It must not be that important, I can't find a biblical reference to it, Diogenes never did any of his proto performance art about it and all I get is a supreme hunger for doughnuts.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date May 29 2010 1:15:54
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Andy Culpepper
Posts: 3023
Joined: Mar. 30 2009
From: NY, USA
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RE: What IS the purpose of a flamenc... (in reply to a_arnold)
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quote:
Just to throw another cat amongst these pigeons: Don't forget that Torres, just to prove his point that the back and sides wood is irrelevant to guitar tone, built a classical guitar with back and sides of papier mache, then challenged guitar experts to tell the difference.
That's completely untrue. Brune believes, and I agree with him, that Torres was just trying to ascertain exactly what role the back and sides do play in tone production. Although cypress was considered to be a back and side wood of lower quality to be used on cheap folk music instruments, Torres used it on many of his finest instruments. Don't forget Torres was an incessant experimenter constantly trying new things in order to better his craft.
In fact the back (one half of the air pump that is a guitar) plays a huge role in tone production, and having an active back was one of the main factors in the guitar emerging as superior to it's predecessor, the lute, for concert hall performance. Think about the extremely stiff, rounded back of a lute. It's one of the reasons that the lute just doesn't have the power.
The more I build, the more I realize how much the back affects the sound of a guitar. Canadian cypress (actually it's a cedar) has a noticeably different tap tone than Spanish cypress, or Monterey cypress, and each contributes a different sound to the finished guitar. And of course rosewood is completely different from either (it's way heavier).
I've had the experience of starting out with a stiff cypress back, and playing the guitar "in the white". It just wasn't giving me that characteristic "honk" or "bark" of a blanca. So I just started sanding the back plate, and a little on the braces too...believe it or not the sound just got better and better! I mean really remarkably so. And more flamenco.
Last but not least, don't forget one of the primary laws of physics: a more massive object will take longer to get moving, but will also keep moving longer and be harder to stop. This is very important in the difference between rosewood and cypress. Want a guitar with quicker attack, with lots of dryness and little sustain? You're going to want cypress because it makes a much lighter guitar. Rosewood, just the opposite. Heavy guitar, slower attack, lots of sustain.
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Andy Culpepper, luthier
http://www.andyculpepper.com
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Date May 29 2010 18:27:50
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: What IS the purpose of a flamenc... (in reply to Andy Culpepper)
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quote:
In fact the back (one half of the air pump that is a guitar) plays a huge role in tone production, and having an active back was one of the main factors in the guitar emerging as superior to it's predecessor, the lute, for concert hall performance. Think about the extremely stiff, rounded back of a lute. It's one of the reasons that the lute just doesn't have the power.
The reason the lute does not have the same kind of power as a guitar is not because of the back, my dear. It's because the lute is a totally different animal. There are guitar designs today with non active backs, like Smallman's, that are powerful. Lutes are not as wimpy as you might think either, it depends on the kind of overtone support for the fundamental note a particular lute is capable of generating.
Backs go both ways in guitars: stiff and reflective and flexible and reactive. Flamenco guitars seem to work better with flexible reactive backs, traditionally speaking. But a less flexible back can be a component on a guitar that generates a lot of power. Personally I don't follow that school of thought in my own building, but go play a Smallman with a thick heavy back and like the sound or not, you can feel power.
Lutes have a different kind of power and so do ouds. They have less tension, but often a lute or oud has a surprising amount of carrying power. Lutes and ouds also have a totally different kind of envelope of sound than guitars. They call it "bloom" and it's not a quality that can be compared to a guitar because it is a different quality of projection.
You can't impune the lute to elevate the guitar, just like you can't dismiss the gamba and elevate the cello. You have to respect and get with history of sound, and it's not as simple as one preceeds the other in neat orderly fashion. Some of the best qualities inherent in lutes were left behind as the baroque guitar developed and on down the line. To gain more power in the way we typically think about power in a string instrument some desirable color or tone in the older style instruments was sacrificed.
The Vihuela is a flat backed instrument that can be made with a back that is rigid or sensitive to vibration. The shell like back found on the Chambure Vihuela or the thinner flexible back that is speculated in earlier vihuelas, does not seem to affect the basic power range of the instrument. Or move it too far away from its structural cousin the six course lute.
When you say the density differences between rosewood and cypress create a basic format for sound; faster to move less dense/slower to move more dense, you're on to something. But try not to get that part of it tangled up in lutes as the precursors to the guitars, it's a separate issue. Lutes work and sound that way because of the top structure and respectively so do guitars. Lutes were around for about 400 years in their various permutations and they were made specifically to make a certain desirable envelope of sound. People understood how to make loud and powerful then, but to apply that to a lute would have negated the properties which make them alluring and the music written for them sound good..
There are a lot of other components to the discussion of the lute and why it wandered off into the sunset and not all of it is because it is less powerful in the way a modern guitar is powerful. It's more about how the keyboard families became predominant.
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Date May 30 2010 1:53:43
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a_arnold
Posts: 558
Joined: Jul. 30 2006
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RE: What IS the purpose of a flamenc... (in reply to Andy Culpepper)
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quote:
quote:
Just to throw another cat amongst these pigeons: Don't forget that Torres, just to prove his point that the back and sides wood is irrelevant to guitar tone, built a classical guitar with back and sides of papier mache, then challenged guitar experts to tell the difference.
That's completely untrue. Brune believes, and I agree with him, that Torres was just trying to ascertain exactly what role the back and sides do play in tone production.
Completely untrue?
Sorry, deteresa1: You are wrong there. What I said was not untrue. Torres DID build such a guitar. I am citing Romanillos -- the unquestioned prime authority on Torres.
Here is the Wikipedia entry that cites Romanillos:
"To prove that it was the top, and not the back and sides of the guitar that gave the instrument its sound, in 1862 he built a guitar with back and sides of papier-mâché. (This guitar resides in the Museu de la Musica in Barcelona, unfortunately it is no longer playable)."
Do you really feel so comfortable dismissing Romanillos and Torres? Seems . . . I don't know . . . a bit overconfident?
I'm not saying Torres and Romanillos are right and you and Brune are wrong -- in fact, I tend to agree that the back wood does matter -- mainly because of its mass and reflectivity, but I think there are 2 legitimate sides to the argument and I'm willing to respect Torres and Romanillos on a topic with so many subjective variables to resolve.
There are 65 surviving Torres guitars that Romanillos has documented. Of these 25 are cypress, 19 Rosewood, and the rest various other woods, including maple and, yes, papier mache. There is no evidence anywhere as to which (if any) material Torres thought was superior. In Torres' day the choice of B/S woods may have been influenced as much (or more) by economic or aesthetic considerations as by sound.
Or maybe Torres was less mired in certainty.
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"Flamenco is so emotionally direct that a trained classical musician would require many years of highly disciplined formal study to fail to understand it."
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Date May 30 2010 20:22:34
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. Any luthier will agree that a guitar has to be conceived as a whole. Of course top wood is #1. But the design and woods used will determine the rest.