Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods and David Serva who went ahead of us too soon.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
|
|
|
RE: Blanca vs Negra - is only the wood different? Or are there other differences?
|
You are logged in as Guest
|
|
Users viewing this topic: none
|
|
Login  | |
|
   
estebanana
Posts: 9000
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
|
 RE: Blanca vs Negra - is only the wo... (in reply to tijeretamiel)
|
|
|
When I lived briefly in Micronesia we had a moderate plot of land in front of our compound that was planted with papaya, banana, mango, pineapple, coffee and ginger. The coffee was not mature enough to really sustain a big coffee drinking habit, which we had so we relied on one of the Air Mike captains or any friends going to Hawaii to bring back an ice chest filled with frozen Starbucks whole bean and corn tortillas.
The rest of the in situ fruit crops were producing at full steam. The bananas were especially good being the small sweet ones whose name I forget, but not those huge sour and disgustingly ubiquitous Cavendish monstrosities. The papaya was even better and some what sexually provocative, at least to me, as it hung swaying from small trees that grew to just over my head in height. The fruit dropped and pulled heavily at its branches and was shaped with little nipples at the lower ends that I dreamed one night we had a forest of breasts living with us. Almost every morning I ate a papaya that I had picked at twilight the previous night. The bright salmon pinks and orange reds of the interior peppered with the glossy black seeds drew me out of the dream revery that these fruits were sexual objects. They smelled like the acidic volcanic soils that they grew in, musty and at the same time floridly refreshing to smell.
Everything about these fruits growing in their natural range brought me to understand them as food you could observe ripening on the tree or bush. After some time I became adroit at knowing which one to pick so the taste would be perfect the next day. I learned when to cut the hank of bananas off the tree and hang them from the eves of the veranda that joined our two small houses that the family lived in. The house was built on a ridge that looked southwest to the south of Sohkes. There was a depression in the ridge between our two houses and the veranda or lanai or covered bridge that joined the houses was left by the Japanese after WWII. It was a pit dug in the ridge for an anti aircraft gun. Sometimes kicking up soil in the papayas a 50 caliber shell casing would work to the surface. My wonderland of fruity girl treats was littered sparingly with the tarnished brass of war.
After Micronesia the tropical fruits don’t hold allure to me anymore because it’s disappointing that bananas are sour and mangoes are bruised, not to mention papaya piled in ugly boxes and picked two weeks too early.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 28 2023 3:52:02
 |
|
estebanana
Posts: 9000
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
|
|
RE: Blanca vs Negra - is only the wo... (in reply to mark indigo)
|
|
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: mark indigo
quote:
This is a very strange forum
I'm with you TrickyFish, at times this is a very strange forum. I don't get the random talking about food either. Those responsible may like to correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way I can understand it is to see it as being passive-aggressively rude and dismissive of the topic, the thread and/or the OP.
I can't see anything wrong with the question.
If the question is naive or misjudged that can be pointed out without derailing the thread or covertly ridiculing the question (and by implication the OP).
I have always assumed that a cypress bodied flamenco guitar and a rosewood bodied flamenco guitar were constructed in the same way, the difference in the woods producing the different qualities in the guitars.
If individual luthiers make negras and blancas in different ways, all they had to do was say so. If individual luthiers make each guitar differently according to the customers requests, all they had to do was say so. If individual luthiers don't want to reveal their methods, they don't have to say anything at all. I don't think the question was asking any one luthier to speak for all luthiers.
If questions like this are shut down in this way by self-appointed moderators, then the many people who "lurk" will be less likely to post them, and the foro will suffer as a result. It's pretty quiet at times...
The three or four people who make guitars that responded to the question all said about the same thing. The people who look really closely at how guitars are made answered the question adequately. The OP was encouraged to ask more questions.
What do you want for free? Should we get up on our hind legs and beg for table scraps? Why can’t we guitar makers have a place where we can talk to each other, instead of being the unpaid educators?
Ask good engaging questions or offer some encouragement to educate.
When someone asks a good repair question or a question about the health or care of their instrument they get advice that’s as good as any website. See the post about taking strings off or leaving them on for leveling frets. That’s a solid thread about a substantial topic.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 1 2023 15:51:37
|
|
estebanana
Posts: 9000
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
|
|
RE: Blanca vs Negra - is only the wo... (in reply to tijeretamiel)
|
|
|
Another reason certain guitar making questions are difficult to answer is that there are not any good simple answers.
To those who don’t make guitars, but study them carefully there are a lot of traditionally or commonly held assumptions that folks arrive at. The problem is once you have built for several years or a couple decades the answers can become even more elusive. If you read the books that are written to address the engineering behind the guitar it will provide you with some sort of acoustic talking points about body air resonance information and other mathy kinds of statistics, but for flamenco guitars in particular, it’s not easy to figure out why the string tension and bridge /top/ wood combination works.
There is a lot of non verbal intelligence that instrument makers develop and many top makers have said to me personally that it’s not a requirement to be able to articulate this intelligence verbally. Among them them who said this were Ervin Somogyi, Gene Clark and several others who are still around who’d probably not want to be quoted.
So if someone says answering that question is like “-asking a painter how they paint the sky” then it might be that exact thing. How does a guitar player impart ‘aire’ into accompaniment? That’s a very hard question to give a definitive answer to because the seasoned guitarist has a backlog of musical non verbal information in their mind. They have a way of creating aire that might be difficult to explain, if they even understand how they themselves do it.
Guitar making is a bit different because it moves slowly and has reference points to woods and dimensional information along with weights and measures, but this stuff is only a map at best and it guides the maker on the journey. You follow a map and you do your best to navigate the actual terrain. The process of building is the terrain, the map is made up of all the dimensions and shapes. It’s like sheet music, it’s up to the musician to make it come alive.
Some guitar makers can build well and talk well, some can build well and understand there is stuff that’s strange to talk about because it’s difficult to verbalize without making treacherous generalizations. Then there are those that take advantage of this mystery to perpetuate their own self styled bullsh&t. It’s better to be honest and talk about what’s real instead of make up crap that sounds awesome, but is not being realistic. I guess I’m trying to say just because someone has answers for these questions doesn’t mean another guitar maker doesn’t understand it, but recognizes it’s a can of worms to open up.
You learn which battles to fight because certain topics are brain drains and it’s possible the public at large doesn’t need to know the difference between how one maker sees the difference between Blanca’s and Negra’s from the terrain view. Maybe just play a lot of them and decide which ones work for you.
And if anyone goes into a side sub chat about mangoes, maybe that’s to buy time to write a splendid answer to a mind bending question…lol. Marduk got a great negra because he listened to me going in about mangos. I didn’t ask him to explain his relationship with kangaroos, but had he wanted to tell me I’d have been game.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
 Attachment (1)
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 2 2023 5:29:24
|
|
ernandez R
Posts: 633
Joined: Mar. 25 2019
From: Alaska USA
|
|
RE: Blanca vs Negra - is only the wo... (in reply to estebanana)
|
|
|
Wouldn’t you know it, spent the afternoon reworking my plantilla, rounded the upper bought shoulders and the lower bought buttocks, dropped the soundhole 3/8” although I didn’t want to for any sonic reason, just wanted to get a grip on my last fret before the sound hole to not be a mystery. Still sticking with 18 full frets in my homage to DDG.
In regard to your long last comment: there have got to be a lot of wrong pathways for sure but we humans excel at learning from mistakes, it doesn’t matter if it’s a fine mango chutney or evaluation, it’s bred into us. The cool thing about something creative verses a trait critical to survival, some might beg to differ, is that their are as many flavors as palettes, I hate sweet chutney ;), but in the end one isn’t going to starve to death… I see guitars as no different.
Now, if you want to fight to the death we can discuss coffee…
The monk of mokha is my next non fiction read…
HR
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
Attachment (2)
_____________________________
I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy,
doesn't have to be fast,
should have some meat on the bones,
can be raw or well done,
as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.
www.instagram.com/threeriversguitars
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 2 2023 6:49:38
|
|
estebanana
Posts: 9000
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
|
|
RE: Blanca vs Negra - is only the wo... (in reply to ernandez R)
|
|
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: ernandez R
Wouldn’t you know it, spent the afternoon reworking my plantilla, rounded the upper bought shoulders and the lower bought buttocks, dropped the soundhole 3/8” although I didn’t want to for any sonic reason, just wanted to get a grip on my last fret before the sound hole to not be a mystery. Still sticking with 18 full frets in my homage to DDG.
In regard to your long last comment: there have got to be a lot of wrong pathways for sure but we humans excel at learning from mistakes, it doesn’t matter if it’s a fine mango chutney or evaluation, it’s bred into us. The cool thing about something creative verses a trait critical to survival, some might beg to differ, is that their are as many flavors as palettes, I hate sweet chutney ;), but in the end one isn’t going to starve to death… I see guitars as no different.
Now, if you want to fight to the death we can discuss coffee…
The monk of mokha is my next non fiction read…
HR
Open waisted bodies are different than more closed waisted bodies. The air moves through them differently because the more closed waists are like baffles or a Venturi tube, or something like that. The big D45 steel string bodies and the really tight waisted Viennese guitars are different in how the air pressure in the box works. You might want to try making one of your designs with a tight waist and build them at the same time.
I’m not suggesting your designs are bad, but given the proportions it would be interesting to experiment with the Viennese shapes too. I think you would figure out a new thing.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 2 2023 7:40:44
|
|
mark indigo
Posts: 3445
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
|
|
RE: Blanca vs Negra - is only the wo... (in reply to estebanana)
|
|
|
quote:
The three or four people who make guitars that responded to the question all said about the same thing. The people who look really closely at how guitars are made answered the question adequately. The OP was encouraged to ask more questions.
I have no issue with the answers that were given, but the OP wasn't encouraged to ask more questions before you started the food thing. Given what I have already posted about that, I see derailing the thread by talking about food as the opposite of encouragement to ask more questions.
quote:
What do you want for free? .... Why can’t we guitar makers have a place where we can talk to each other, instead of being the unpaid educators?
I'm not asking for anything, other than showing people a bit of common courtesy (and I only mentioned my own lack of knowledge of how guitars are made to show how easy it is for someone who has been learning and playing flamenco guitar for 30 years and who currently owns 3 blancas and 2 negras to make those assumptions, NOT because I'm asking, much less demanding, answers). Escribano very generously provides us with this forum for nothing, I think you do already have a "place where we can talk to each other", and no-one is forcing you to be an "unpaid educator." However, on the Home page of the foro it says "Lutherie We have established guitar makers on this forum, so ask away." which IS an encouragement for people who maybe don't know as much as you to ask questions. But no-one is making you answer anything if you don't want to. If you think the questions are stupid, don't answer them. There's no need to be rude to people.
_____________________________
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 5 2023 23:23:33
|
|
 New Messages |
 No New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
 Locked w/ New Messages |
 Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET |
0.078125 secs.
|
Printable Version
