mandovark
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Post by mandovark on Aug 21, 2014 11:07:53 GMT
Fantastic stuff. It really shows how playing at that level isn't just about exceptional technique - there's some very deep musical knowledge and understanding in there too. It's a real lesson for all of us who can only dream of playing like that.
Thanks for sharing!
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mandovark
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Post by mandovark on Aug 21, 2014 8:25:21 GMT
"Forever intermediate" sounds like a pretty damn good place to be. Further to the post by Andy about "digging in" and how some guitars want more attack than ones normal playing style brings. I mentioned earlier having that issue with the David Oddy handbuilt I tried. I've now also had that same issue with a Lowden F25, although I didn't need to give it much extra to get it singing beautifully. I hadn't realised about this feature of acoustic guitars at all. Though I've only noticed it on these two particular guitars - by coincidence(?) the only handbuilts I've ever tried. Maybe they're more subtly made to enhance a particular playing style than the mass produced factory guitars? Mark I think there's a lot of truth in that. I tend to find that good handmade instruments have a way of telling you how they want to be played. My Oddy cello-mandolin is the proverbial cannon - it can do softer tones, but it really likes to be played hard and is great for accompanying fast ceilidh tunes. My Brook guitar is the complete opposite - it responds beautifully to a light touch (with fingers or a pick) and has a lovely natural reverb to it that really suits gentle playing styles. This is why I think it's so important to choose the right builder if you're going down the handmade route. There often isn't much real difference in build quality between builders at a similar price point (anyone who was making turkeys and charging £2k for them wouldn't be in business very long), so it's about finding the builder whose instruments are best suited to the player. I'm sure that all of us who have tried a few handmade guitars have our own list of well-respected builders whose instruments we just don't get along with - they sound great when other people play them, but they're not right for us.
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mandovark
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Post by mandovark on Aug 20, 2014 16:46:19 GMT
I'm not really a dreadnought fan, but that's a nice-looking guitar. I've only ever played small-bodied guitars made from all mahogany, and I tend to associate them with a warm but fairly delicate sound. I never really thought of it as something that would transfer to a bigger guitar, so I'd be interested to hear how it sounds.
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Post by mandovark on Aug 20, 2014 8:04:05 GMT
Well, I've heard some luthiers say that most of the tone is in the top, so I wouldn't worry too much.
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Post by mandovark on Aug 18, 2014 11:10:46 GMT
Saw this when it was on Sky Arts. I was hoping they might do similar programmes with other guitarists, but I've never seen any more appear. Did anyone else start drooling in the Monteleone section, or was it just me?
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Post by mandovark on Aug 12, 2014 8:29:22 GMT
Well I learned that apparently I'm a cheap and inferior maker of mandolins. I wear the badge with pride I wouldn't worry too much, Dave. Other than Sobell, the other examples of top Celtic mandolin makers mentioned in the post are Fylde and Moon - both of whom, as far as I'm aware, make only flat or very slightly curved top mandolins. In my experience, the real issue of quality in mandolins is mass-production models that use tops pressed into a big curve to imitate the shape of carved-top mandolins - some of the far-eastern copies of the Gibson F5 are among the biggest culprits.
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Post by mandovark on Aug 9, 2014 9:46:54 GMT
I got all three as well. It's not an entirely fair challenge, because at least one of the guitars is a completely different body shape to the others. I've played a few Baby Taylors, and they're nice enough little travel guitars, but even if someone made a $100,000 one I'd like to think I could still tell the difference between that and a dreadnought - for starters, they're about a quarter of the size, so it's not really surprising that it sounds thinner. Unless I missed it, we're never even told what body shape the custom Martin is.
Surely for this test to work, we'd need three guitars of the same basic body shape.
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Post by mandovark on Aug 9, 2014 8:49:44 GMT
I like the hybrid 12-56 gauge that a few companies now produce. D'Addario call it a Bluegrass set. It sounds balanced in standard tuning and is heavy enough on the bass strings that they don't become flappy tuned down.
I prefer 13-56 on guitars set up for slide.
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Post by mandovark on Aug 8, 2014 11:44:27 GMT
I had a K & K mini fitted in my new Brook and I've been impressed by it so far. It's much closer to the natural sound of the guitar than any undersaddle pickup I've tried.
One of the best acoustic pickups I've ever used was something called a McIntyre (or Macintyre?) Feather. It was a passive, bridgeplate pickup like the K & K. I had one fitted in a Moon 10-string bouzouki that I bought from TAMCO a few years ago. I don't know whether they're still available - I never saw them for sale anywhere except TAMCO, so if Trevor is around maybe he knows something. Based on my experience, I couldn't understand why they weren't better known.
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Post by mandovark on Aug 4, 2014 20:35:56 GMT
Interesting thread. I'm afraid that the music industry will continue to target teenager because, if half my work colleagues are at all typical, it isn't just young people who like young people's stuff. I was called, in a good-humoured way, the "grump in the corner" because I groan when my colleagues in their forties and fifties rave about children's films, such as 'Transformers' and 'Planet of the Apes'. I'm one of those grumpy old women that see everyone around me becoming more juvenile every day. Even programmes like - oh dear, I've forgotten - the archaeology programme where they have three days to complete the dig, can't present archaeology without leaping around, jumping up and down and putting an artificial time limit on the excavation. No, I'm afraid today's 'teenage' years extend in many cases well into the forties, so they do have a lot more money spend on rubbish.
Reminds me of an ongoing argument with a friend who likes Strictly Come Dancing. My position is essentially that it's formulaic crap designed to provide employment for D-list celebrities, self-promoting politicians and retired athletes trying to break into television. Her position is that it's really all about dancing and that the dances are complicated and difficult to learn. I suggest that this is ample reason to watch it performed by skilled professionals rather than Joe Calzaghe and Victoria Pendleton.* She offers the rejoinder that if you want to watch dance, there aren't many options on TV. I point out that while this might be true, one week the Bolshoi ballet were on BBC2 at the same time, yet she still chose to watch Strictly. At this stage, she suggests that I perform an action that would seem to require a contortionist rather than a dancer. * That said, I will definitely start watching if the BBC decides to reverse the format and make Anton du Beke go 12 rounds with Joe Calzaghe
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Post by mandovark on Aug 4, 2014 17:03:45 GMT
My pipe dream (and I realise how naive it is, but it is a dream) is that the music industry will change. That the music will come first and not the money. I firmly believe that that's a more long term lucrative model than the get rich now fiasco that's caused the Music Industry to get into the state it's currently in. Hear, hear. One of the things that both amuses and saddens me about shows like The X-Factor is the number of contestants who go on it saying things like "music is my life" and "music is the only thing I've ever wanted to do", but it quickly becomes obvious that they've never learned to play an instrument, written a song, joined a band, played a gig, done an open-mic night, etc. They've absorbed the industry's way of thinking that "making music" is what you do after you've been discovered and signed to the big record contract. They also can't name any influence who isn't a recent platinum-selling singer. Compare that to musicians like Cream, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Hendrix, etc, who were listening to obscure American blues players and figuring out new ways to interpret that tradition long before they became mainstream successes. It would be nice to think that it could still be possible to be both innovative and popular.
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Post by mandovark on Aug 4, 2014 15:15:44 GMT
So perhaps there are not parallels with the TV industry, but certainly emulating their vision and bravery in radical repositioning may help the failing music industry. If they do nothing, their days are surely numbered. I suppose the next question is whether that would be such a bad thing. Unlike TV, if the music industry collapses, it won't take music down with it. People will still go on playing and singing, just like they did before the major record labels existed. It might even turn out that the small, independent labels supporting more creative talent are better equipped to survive than the big multinationals. That doesn't sound like such a bad thing to me!
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Post by mandovark on Aug 4, 2014 14:15:44 GMT
Thanks for posting this, scorpiodog. Really interesting stuff. I wonder how far the TV comparison works. They're right to say that subscription networks like HBO tapped into a market that wasn't being catered to by more formulaic TV series, and now that they've shown it's possible to have big successes with complex tv shows like The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, True Detective, etc, the game is definitely being raised even for networks that have tended to go for more populist fare. What I wonder about is whether there is the same 'ignored' audience in the music industry. It isn't as if complex and challenging music doesn't exist: it just isn't (generally) what's being sold by the big record labels. I also wonder how well the model of investment in high production values and talent works as a comparison. Take a series like Game of Thrones. HBO can market it as unlike anything else on TV because they've backed it with a budget that allows them to do the special effects on a huge scale and to stack it with talent. Other networks (including the BBC) have tried to compete with cut-price knockoffs, which have usually failed because they look like, well, cut-price knockoffs. This doesn't necessarily work the same way in music. Throwing money at a musical project doesn't necessarily make it better than the alternatives. Think of it this way. To put on a concert, One Direction need light shows, dancers, costume changes, autotune, digital effects, etc. Martin Simpson needs a guitar and a microphone. TV networks can make money out of complex TV shows because they can sell them on quality: in effect, they can say to their audiences "watch cheaper TV if you want to, but it won't be as good as what we're showing". That isn't necessarily the case in music.
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Post by mandovark on Jul 31, 2014 7:21:55 GMT
That may be a factor, but I've played plenty of other guitars where I haven't had that reaction. For whatever reason, Fyldes just don't seem to suit my playing.
I get on far better with their mandolin-family instruments. I have a Touchstone mandolin and I've been impressed with the couple of octave mandolins that I've had the chance to play - unfortunately, they're much harder to find in shops than the guitars.
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Post by mandovark on Jul 30, 2014 20:05:00 GMT
Thanks for sharing this, Bernd. Some lovely looking guitars in there. The ebony on that Leonardo is stunning. It's a shame the Albert Lee video isn't a bit longer - I was enjoying that!
I really wish I got on better with Fylde guitars. I love the look of them, and I always think they sound great when other people play them, but I've had to consign them reluctantly to my 'lovely guitars, but not right for me' category. Every now and then, something makes me go back and try again - last time was hearing Ken Nicol play his signature model. And every time, it's just not quite right. I've tried a few in Forsyths in Manchester, and when I hand them back to the salesman and he plays them, they sound great. But somehow they just never seem to work for me.
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