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RE: FINE TUNING A GUITAR
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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 RE: FINE TUNING A GUITAR (in reply to estebanana)
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Stephen, there are two things I hate to do, and that is making necks and bridges, so I'm farming them out to Manuel so that I can save time for the other parts of the guitar that I truly like to build.
I've built as many as 6 necks at a time but at this stage of the game I feel that I should keep the wood in raw form so I don't waste it if I get sick and don't build for awhile, or decide to change to another head-stock style, etc.
But I admire the enthusiasm of you younger builders who are so full of energy and chutzpah. Your dreams are more easily put into practice, even when you are making corrections in your path of workmanship. I wish you well.
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ORIGINAL: estebanana
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Stephen, let me know how your latest build is going. What style are you working on? Are you concentrating on a particular style as your signature model?
I'm working on necks right now. I'm building them five at a time. I hope that is not too mass production for the purists.. 
When I am not ranting, I'm researching and sourcing materials on the internet. Japan is a big first world country, but it is an island chain and the supply line works much differently here than in the US or Europe. I have to plan further in advance to have material delivered on time. I have to be more careful about how much and what I order because send backs are expensive, time consuming and difficult. I've come to appreciate the problems of building that Europeans and Americans don't have vis vis the supply chain and perhaps that got me thinking about how difficult it is to begin an edition of guitars made in more than one place.
It also made me think a lot about how much fuel is used to mover materials and finished guitars around the world. Not that from where I stand they have to move any farther, but you just become hyper aware of how supply lines operate if you live here rather than California, where most everything is easy to acquire.
So I'm looking at necks sourcing carbon fiber for the necks by establishing direct contacts with the primary suppliers in the US. I'm going with my old company Aero Space Composites in Pleasanton CA. I've been buying supplies for them since the mid 1990's. So much of my work is not even in the shop, it's administrative and buyer oriented, and I'm just one guy, not a factory. Yuko is also working to translate my website into Japanese and I stand by to answer questions and explain things like the difference between 'blancas' and 'negras'.
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Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Oct. 17 2013 12:11:29
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estebanana
Posts: 9372
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: FINE TUNING A GUITAR (in reply to Tom Blackshear)
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The prelude of the 5th cello suite has a fugal section after about 25 measures of free wheeling it through c minor scale chord arggegios. Then it breaks into a great little fugue which is specific to that suite. The lute suite is totally different. The thing that is tricky to to make one line sound like a a multi voiced fugue. Your imagination fills in the empty parts when you hear a back an forth between bass and melody and inner voice and outer voice. His brilliance is that he weaves four lines in your head by giving you one line to play. He does that all over the violin partitas as well.
Still not following you on how the toccata and fugue in D minor does not sound like Bach. It sure as hell does not sound like Buxtehude. Even thought Bach is known characteristically for tightly woven counter point that references the tonic center, he can also take you way outside the harmonic norms of his times. There are sections of Bach keyboards pieces that are quite dissonant, he understood that too.
And the other thing to remember about Bach is that he was a kick booty improvisor, he could do tricks like construct fugues on a five or six note theme a challenger would give him and create a piece on the spot. The Toccata is like a calling in the spirit in a blues pice where the guitar player plays some outside bendy grace notes in free time and then launches into a groove with a beat.
When Bach composed that toccata was just sitting at an organ thinking he was Lightnin' Hopkins starting a blues Then he sat on that big fat nasty D minor chord for along time an remembered he lived in the 17th century.
Then guy who built the organ then looked up at him from where he sat in the pews and and said: "Dude that sounds bitchen, do it again."
Sorry Tom to have to explain Bach in your thread. Hope you don't mind the diversion talking about classical music.
Can I stop holding in this fart now?
Speaking of farts, I think Spaniards and Gypsies are fart 'o' phobes. Anything below the belt is nasty and forbidden, it's bad manners to fart and bad manners to talk about farting. I get that, but I don't really care. I'm not Spanish. I'm not one of those flamenco enthusiasts that strive vainly to try to be Spanish and put on Spanish mannerisms. I'm a big ugly American who loves flamenco, but also farts and plays the cello. And I also burp. In Japan it's cool to Burp at the table. It means you like the food. So I fit in better here than trying to be a wanna-be Spaniard like so many flamencos. I think Spaniards secretly detest people trying to be Spanish, but since they are polite and strive never to fart, they are mute on the subject and suffer non farting Spanish posers.
One of my best friends is a Spanish molecular biologist and he talks about farts all the time. He lived in the US for 18 years so perhaps some of our bad American manners rubbed of on him. However he used to say to me, "Condi, I hate it when Americans try to be Spanish, what are those fart knockers thinking?" He calls me Condi after Condoleeza Rice because she is so uptight and he thinks I am uptight so he named me Condi. He makes up nick names for people and when he does not like them he uses the word fart in the nick name. He made up this great word in Spanglish 'Fartknockero' A fartknocker.
I really hate smoking, I can't stand being around smokers. It's one of the major things wrong, in my opinion, with flamenco. Besides killing off Moraito, which totally sucked, smoking stinks more than farts. When Spaniards ask me if I mind if they smoke, I say hey no problem, mind if I fart?
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Oct. 18 2013 11:42:38
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