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Jason Moss. Interview. Review.

August 28, 2008 admin Music

Jason Moss | 2008 | Interview |

Jason Moss

Jason Moss is a talented young singer/songwriter who’s looking to break out with heartfelt lyrics and a grasp of rhythm and melody. Jason was kind enough to chat to us and share some of his writing processes and how age is just a number.

TT- Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Jason. When I heard your music, especially Lost for some reason I thought ‘here’s someone who writes lyrics separately from his music’…. is that how you approach your songwriting?

MP3 feature: Come Back Home

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A poigiant picking structure keyed into the melody with seamless turnarounds.

JM- Actually, I tend to write most of my lyrics while creating the music. It’s tough to come up with lyrics when I don’t have a basic musical structure to follow – like trying to build a house without a blueprint. Once I come up with an idea of how I want the music to sound, writing lyrics is essentially just “filling in the blanks” – finding words that fit within the structure I’ve created, and communicate what I want to say.

“Lost” was written way back in eighth grade – before I even had an approach to songwriting! I was simply following my instincts; I remember sitting down, writing, and recording the first draft of that song all in one night. Some of my best songs have come from that method of writing – just pouring out whatever it is I’m feeling onto paper.

TT- Well, there goes my theory! I know when I try to write, it’s much easier to play and write because things tend to fit together better, so with you there’s a basic melody before the words make themselves known?

JM- Pretty much, yes. Sometimes I’ll write lyrics without any musical backing or melody in mind. These lyrics usually end up getting reused, sometimes months later, when I sit down with with a guitar or piano and write. Anything that isn’t put into a song right away eventually gets recycled, and pieced together with new material to create a finished song.

TT- How about your guitar playing? Do you see it as accompaniment for your lyrics?

MP3 feature: Face my fears

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Strum along anyone? Simple and understated, highlighting that breathy, angel like lyrical texture which is popular amongst male singer-songwriters.

JM- At this point, yes. Things didn’t start like that – I was a guitarist before I ever wrote my first set of lyrics. However, I’ve always tried to establish my vocals, and furthermore what I’m trying to say as the “lead” – like a guitar solo in a rock ballad. Everything else in the song surrounds and supports the lead, but never takes the listener’s main focus.

TT- So when you play out, what setup do you prefer? An onboard pickup or mics?

JM- Definitely an onboard pickup – I use a Fishman Rare Earth humbucker that I installed in my Taylor 210. I like to move around on stage – and the pickup gives me more freedom with less feedback.

TT- Jason, I’ve heard some comments that you’re a little young especially for the genre of music you’re creating. How would you respond to that?

JM- Age is only a number, and in fact – I’ve been able to use it to my advantage in the way that I market myself. People find it incredible that a sixteen year-old kid can create acoustic music with feeling and depth, rather than scream into a microphone, or turn up the distortion on an electric guitar (which is cool too!). I don’t think I’m too young to be creating this genre of music, as a lot of what I’m writing about is based on personal experience. If kids my age can find comfort and support in hearing about someone who’s going through similar experiences, then I must be doing something right.

Jason Moss

Links:
Jason Moss http://www.jasonmossmusic.com/images/myspace/website.png

No comments interview, Jason Moss, mp3, Music, tab

Ida Landsberg. Interview. Review.

August 23, 2008 admin Music

Ida Landsberg | 2008 | Artist Interview

Ida Landsberg possesses a uniquely unforgettable voice and vocal talent. With a classical training in singing, piano, flute, music theory, Ida always seems to find her own particular way to portray the vocal element of a song. I first heard her on Beautiful love, I was struck by how light and bouncy her vocals were yet retained an intense level of expressiveness. Then I realised many of the songs consistent of just a guitar and Ida’s vocals. Yet they remained harmonically rich despite the use of space between musical motifs and phrases. Ida kindly took some time to speak to us about how a vocalist would like to workin the framework of a solo guitar accompaniment.

TT -I know it’s strange to interview a vocalist like yourself for a guitar blog, but I really feel that a strong vocal segment can enhance a guitar line- have you worked with any guitarists before and what was that experience like?

IL- Actually my musical activity in the last years was pretty much based on a collaboration with a guitarist, Simone Salvatore. We met 8 years ago and put together a jazz quartet, but first for budget reasons and after for free choice, we reduced the group to a trio (voice, sax, guitar) and then to a duo (voice and guitar).

Before we tried to play in duo, my guitarist always feared that something could miss in the ear of the audience, a bass, the drums or the completeness of a piano – which, I think, is the biggest enemy of any guitar player. And so our work on the songs that we were playing was mainly concentrated on compensating other instruments that could be missing in our musical ensemble.

It took several years to Simone developing the walking bass, so that nobody would tell that a bass was missing and now he is working on imitating the big band brass section and some rhythmical percussion elements.

But all these years, because of our “fear of the silence” – the fear that there couldn’t be “enough sound” to satisfy an audience – we tried to imitate a big group of musicians that accompanies a singer.

In these last months, something changed in our philosophy. We didn’t want to be anymore “a singer accompanied by another instrument”, we wanted to become two soloists that communicate together. We finally stopped fearing the silence and even started to use that silence as a musical element, the silence that is able to enhance vocal lines or the vocal lines that underline the expression of guitar sounds.

Simone Salvatore Simone is an italian guitarist currently playing in several jazz, funk and R&B bands. However. his “special project” started in 2000 with Ida Landsberg in an effort to play in smaller ensembles either with Marco Guidolotti on sax or as a vocal and guitarist. Simone also writes for AXE, a strictly guitar oriented magazine and is an IBANEZ guitars and LINE6 amp endorser.

And I must say that it is a big, but very interesting challenge that finally brings a real dialogue into our music. Because it allows us to transform the voice more into an instrument and let the guitar feel much more like vocals.

When people hear about “silence” in music they’re tempted to think that the music gets simpler or easier, but I mean exactly the contrary: the silence gives us the possibility to make our music more complex. It allows us to invent rhythmical patterns, to create tensions and to express our full virtuosity because it leaves space to both instruments.

And all this is possible with a guitar because with its warm strings it mixes very well with the voice. A piano / voice duo sounds much more banal. So I can say that my experience with guitarists is very good because it stimulates a lot my musical development.

TT- Do you think the reason a piano/ vocal combination sounds flat is the lack of ‘space’? I ask because that’s what I love about your recordings… the lovely space in the music.

MP3 feature: Beautiful love With a quick, bouncy, airy, vocal delivery Ida has pushed this song into an upbeat, contempory Jazz piece.

IL- Well, I think it is a combination of “lack of space” and a simple question of timbre. Piano players are used to be autonomous and this is what you hear when they’re playing with other instruments.

They’re even too complete in playing all together, bass, chords, melody and rhythm, so that a voice easily can become superfluous, but if you find a good piano player, he will be able to reduce and to give a chance to the vocals to express themselves.

Above all, I think it is a fact of tone colour, the voice and the guitar have a timbre that sounds very alive. I cannot say that it is because both instruments are “string” instruments but probably because both singer and guitar player have a very direct contact with the string while producing a sound, the singer uses its own body part and a guitar player can influence the sound by touching a cord in a certain way, by hitting, pinching, sliding or muting it, by changing the position of the string contact. A piano always creates the same sound, unless a piano player – like in the contemporary classical music – enters into the piano and starts hitting and scratching the chords by his own.

TT- I see, do you have advice for guitarists who accompany vocalists?

IL- Accompanying a vocalist for a guitar player is a very interesting but hard exercise too, because the guitar player should be able to play in all the tonalities that the singer chooses and the singer will always choose the most difficult ones for every instrumentalist, because he needs to find the tonality that best stresses the characteristics of a song.

An intimate song will be sung in a comfortable tone range for the vocalist, a dramatic song will be sung in a higher tone range. Vocalists need to make a precise research on the best tonality to choose and often a minor second will change the sound of voice and let it become smoother or sharper. Other instrumentalists will choose the “easiest” tonalities while they’re playing, singers won’t, they only choose the most beautiful ones.

When you accompany vocalists in small ensembles in a “jazzy” or acoustic non conventional way (I mean in a way that isn’t the classical folk songs beach guitar accompaniment), there are several things to respect.

My experience is that songs become much more interesting when the guitar avoids playing chord voicings that repeat the vocal lines. And this isn’t that easy because (jazz) singers usually use to modify the melody, so that the guitar player always needs to think “in the future” in order to avoid exactly the notes that will be sung by the vocalist.

In fact, in our album with original songs that we are recording in this moment, the guitar will play a lot of “colours” that are far away from the vocal lines. Other important things are the volume of the guitar or the choice of the guitar sound, that should be similar to the timbre of the voice.

And an advice that works for all instruments and which, at my opinion, is the most important element of all music playing: interaction. Play with your vocalist as if you were talking with him/her. The secret of any really touching music is telling a (musical) story – also if there aren’t any words to say.

TT- So what have you got planned for the future?

IL- We have a very concrete plan for the future: we’re just working on my first album with original songs – some say they sound like Bacharach, which for me would be an indescribable complement, where the guitar will appear, but without being the main instrument.

In this album will appear a lot of other instruments like the piano, a brass section, a sax, a trumpet, bass, drums, percussions, solo guitar with the collaboration of great musicians like Frank Gambale (guitar), Ferruccio Spinetti (db), Andy Gravish (trumpet), Marco Caudai (bass) and others.

While writing the songs I noticed that it is astonishing how much the song style is influenced by the instrument on which you compose it. My songs are pretty much piano based and use typical and comfortable piano voicings and patterns, while the songs of my guitar player use the typical guitar way of writing and accompanying.

The piano voicings I used are almost impossible to play for a guitar because of the extensions or rhythmical patterns, but we can obtain the most interesting result by trying to play my songs in the voice-guitar duo.

The guitar needs to find a way to imitate the piano voicings and will use different tone colours, clapping techniques, harmonics and unusual positions on the guitar to have the same result. I can only recommend guitar players to do the same, they will get a new musical richness.

TT- Any plans to add other instruments into the mix?

MP3 feature: You Don’t Know what Love is In this slower tempo, Ida has adopted a more dense vocal delivery. The interplay between her voice and the archtop is much like a swing from counterpoint to accompaniment.

IL- Actually, while playing our standard jazz repertoire, we already play with many other instruments, it always depends on the club’s or theatre’s requests and (obviously) of their budget. Our most frequent ensemble is the trio. And there are different aspects to respect for the guitar while playing with different instruments.

In our Sax-Voice-Guitar trio, the guitar can play fully and use all the common accompanying styles with walking bass and full chord extensions, because it plays with two soloists. The thing changes when the “baritone sax” starts to imitate the bass lines or when we play with a double bass.

The guitar needs to reduce its own bass lines, to play chords in the medium tone range and try to create a rhythmical section together with the bass. While playing with a piano, the guitar needs to reduce to a maximum, the piano will take over the complete accompanying and the guitar will become exclusively a solo guitar.

I think the most difficult is playing with a drum without a bass. The guitar player needs to split himself and create a rhythmical section with the drums by imitating the bass – but without forgetting the chords that fill the song.

Links: Ida Landsberg www.idalandsberg.net Simone Salvatore http://www.myspace.com/simonesalvatore

4 comments Ida Landsberg, jazz, mp3, vocals

Mario Proulx. Interview.

August 15, 2008 admin Luthier interview

Mario Proulx | 2008 | Luthier Interview | “Canadian Bluegrass”

Mario Proulx is one of the best kept secrets in bluegrass guitars. The Canadian builds guitars out of his Ontario workshop which many describe was having “a real whomp to them”. They are possibly one of the most powerful guitars I have experienced. Mario builds a limited number of traditionally inspired dreadnoughts and a modified OM shape per year.

I caught up with him recently to chat about Canadian Luthiers, build philosophies and the weather.Repairman and flatpicker extraordinaire, Bryan Kimsey also very kindly provided us with MP3s to compare several of Mario’s OMDs in various tonewood combinations. These can be found at the end of the interview.

TT – Mario, you’re really well known in the bluegrass circles for building a mean dreadnought, isn’t that a little unusual for a Canadian builder given the L’arrivee influence?

MP – I don’t think so at all, because my influences were the likes of Tony Rice, Clarence White, Doc Watson and Norman Blake. Their’s is the tone I was after, so it seems natural for me to have studied the dreadnoughts. I also have a sound, a distinct tone, in my mind’s ear, of what an acoustic guitar should be, and that tone is what lead me to where I am.

Mario Proulx DB/1
(click for fullsize)

Elegant D18 style with
Adirondack Top
Honduran Mahogany

I’m a Bluegrass music fan(I’d say 80% of what I listen to is Bluegrass), and a Bluegrass player(I’ve played upright bass in a Bluegrass band since 1998 or ’99, but also flatpick guitar, mandolin, and also tease the bow across the fiddle’s cat guts at times), and I’ve long understood that Bluegrass is about tone.

You can’t take Bluegrass music and play it on electric instruments. Doesn’t work. Yet country, blues, even jazz, were able to transition from acoustic to electric, and then mix the two sounds. But Bluegrass can’t do it; we can mic the instruments, and we can even “plug” them in and with today’s technology, achieve a decent acoustic tone, but that tone MUST be natural, or it simply won’t sound like Bluegrass.

There’s an aggression to Bluegrass; Bill Monroe had a chip on his shoulder growing up, being cross eyed and the youngest of the family, yet he also was strong willed. He had attitude! Understand that fact, and you can begin to understand why he took his music where he took it, and why we can’t play his music, correctly, without that same attitude.

I understood that attitude early, and wanted my guitar to have that agressive, in-your-face tone that I was hearing in Clarence and Tony’s tone, especially in their rhythm tone. But I was also drawn to the warmth and more melow tone that I heard in Doc’s early recordings, and especially in Blake’s 70′s albums.

I’ve also not studied with any other guitar builder, therefore I wasn’t influenced by anyone’s building “style”. Jean Larrivee’s influence on Canadian lutherie is due to the relatively large number of people who worked with him before striking out on their own, either because they felt the need to do their own thing, or because Jean moved quite often.

MP3 feature: Angeline Baker
Proulx OMD SE Asian Rosewood|Red Spruce
By Bryan Kimsey

And they in turn have had others work with them, so the Larrivee influence is real, and still growing, but it never reached me, for better or worse. I am completely self-taught.

I strongly suspect, though, that had I worked with or studied with Jean, or Grit Laskin, or anyone, that I’d still have ended up exactly where I am today with my designs and innovations, because it’s simply my nature to dissect everything I touch and reassemble it the way I think it should be.

I’ve done it all my life, from breaking down toys and “fixing” them to make ‘em better, to landscaping my yard to make it fit my vision of what it should have been all along. In short, I’m the poster child for “can’t leave well enough alone” <lol>

TT – So am I right in thinking that your building involves a lot of R&D and refinement?

MP – Oh, completely! I’m always thinking up new stuff, new methods, new materials or new uses for old materials, always working toward my end goal.

Mario Proulx OM/D
(click for fullsize)

Fancy Custom OMD with
Sunburst Adirondack Top
Quilted Maple Back/Sides

Custom fretboard inlays maple leaves falling into water by Paul Bordeaux

Bound soundport

Quilted maple
Sunset sunburst
Curved backstrips

TT – Speaking of new methods and materials, what’s your take on the various finishes- varnish is a hot word now, especially with Collings offering it as an option…

MP – Well, that’s a subject worthy of its own book….. series!

But my findings have been that as long as I’ve kept the finish thin(meaning under .005″, with my ideal of .003″), it doesn’t much matter.

Now, for necks, I’ve long offered French Polished shellac as an option, because of its feel. here, it can make a big difference from players who’ve found their guitar necks to get either “grabby” or slick and hard to hold onto in the past.

The FP shellac feels just wonderful and natural, and being a protein based finish, it never gets slick or grabby to your left hand, and feels very much like an old, time-worn vintage neck where th finish is worn off. And for those who’ve never had issues, I’ll do my usual glossy neck finish instead.

TT – I agree with you on the French for necks. They play great! Although you’re best known for your dreads, I understand the OM/D is great for fingerstyle too…

MP – Since I don’t play fingerstyle at all, I can’t pretend to know what makes a good fingerstyle guitars at all, but I’m often surprised at how many Proulx owners also fingerpick on their’s, and they tell me they(my OM/D and Dreads) work out really well for they style, also. My guitars are very responsive to light touches(especially if I knew the owner plays with a light touch, and build with his/her lighter touch in mind), while also have a lot of headroom when pushed hard, so I guess that helps them cross over.

TT – So how do you alter your build to suite individual guitars? Is it just with the brace shaving or through other techniques? I know for example George Lowden will choose different tops to suite different guitars… including slightly off quarter softer tops…

MP – I view the instrument as a whole, and treat it as such, therefor, if you tell me you play with a light touch, I’ll choose every piece with that in mind, and work each one with the end goal in mind, also. Same as if you’re a heavy handed player who’s really gonna overdrive the instrument: I’ll the choose ad work each and every piece specifically for that.

So, no, it’s not as simple as shaving a brace or two, or choosing a lighter top. If I were selling through stores or dealers, then yes, I’d have to have specific models and try to walk that line, but I don’t, and instead, I can work one-on-one with the player. It’s also where being a player, in the style of the instrument(s) you make, is important, in my view. As a musician myself, I can understand what my client, who obviously is also a musician, is trying to ask for, especially if he/she isn’t sure what to ask for.

TT – Speaking of specifics, I love those curved backstrips on your guitars, where’d you get that inspiration and is it difficult to execute?

MP – Glad you like them! But, I have no idea when or how the idea came to me, but the basic idea was that I wanted to show the back’s join, and not hide it, yet I still wanted some type of backstrip. I’m from the school of thought that we shouldn’t hide good joinery, but instead, let it show. From there, somehow, the idea to curve each line to the same radius as the back somehow made sense. And no, it’s not overly difficult at all, but it does take twice the time of a single backstrip.

TT – More recently, I’ve noticed soundports turning up on your guitars- how would you say they alter your sound?

MP – Surprisingly, I don’t think they alter the sound that listeners here, but it does change the tone the player hears quite a bit. I don’t consider it louder for the player, but rather, the tone is richer, fuller, fatter. Very much akin to flipping on the ‘loudness’ button on your home’s stereo. It doesn’t make it louder, but rather makes the tone richer.

MP3 feature: Bryan Kimsey talks about the OMD

Also surprisingly, I’m not all that sold on it. While I like what I hear from a ported guitar, I can’t say I like it more than unported, and in fact, after a while, I tired of it’s tone. Maybe it’s too much ‘in your face’, but I think it goes deeper than that, and perhaps what I’m -not- hearing in a ported guitar is all the nuances from the radiated sound and tones that can surround the player.

I also find it annoying to sing while playing a ported guitar; seems I’m fighting for space or something. I guess what I’m trying to say is that while I like ported guitars, I love the standard non ported ones.

Now, I’ve recently ported a mandolin(first time for me), and even added a sliding door to it t allow me to play around; this one I like a lot more than the ported guitars, ad I’ve now removed the door because i wanted the port open all the time anyhow.

TT – I gather you have pretty harsh winters up there? How does this affect your guitar building?

Resources:
Vintage style luthiers:
Kevin Hall
Ken Miller
Leo Posch
Lynn Dudenbostel

MP – Well, it affects business because I have a 2 month window where I cannot ship out, generally. Other than that, it’s nothing but great! The cold weather means I must heat the shop(I have a natural gas system), and that means high humidity is not a problem.

I have to run a humidifier about half the year, which is easy and economical, the other 40% of the time i don’t have to do anything in order to remain in the ideal 42% to 47% relative humidity range, and only perhaps 100% of the time see me running a dehunidifier(expensive, troublesome and noisy).

The extreme cold(our town’s coldest recorded temperature is minus 73 degrees Fahrenheit!) also allows me to have some fun with “seasoning” my woods by drying them at extreme cold temperatures, among other things. <wink>

It also means I don’t need air conditioning. Ever. i’ve never lived in, or owned, and home/shop that has air conditioning. We simply don’t need it. In short, this may be the ideal climate to build instruments in.

TT – Thanks for taking the time to do this interview Mario. Would you like to add anything?

MP – I could go on forever; My passion for instrument making, and music in general, runs deep.

Bryan says:”“I found myself with 5 OM/D’s in the house and decided to do this quick comparison. Instead of playing a song, I just recorded some G-licks. The first lick takes place in the 1st 3 frets, the second runs from 10 to open, and the last is kind of a “mid-range power lick”. I used my SE Asian RW as the “standard” for each comparison. The guitars are panned totally left/right for complete isolation. The first guitar in each comparison is always the SEA RW. ”

And here’s a pic of the bunch..

Proulx guitars

Links:
Proulx Guitars http://www.proulxguitars.com/
Bryan Kimsey http://www.bryankimsey.com/

7 comments guitars, interview, luthier, Mario Proulx, mp3, photos

Ken Bonfield. Interview. Review.

July 24, 2008 admin Music

KEN BONFIELD| 2008 | Interview & review|

Ken Bonfield

Ken Bonfield has always been on list of top guitar players from his 1999 inclusion on Lights out and his work on PBS and NPR, his artistry and mastery of various styles is evident in his work. I was really priveledged to be able to interview Ken and post up some MP3s of his excellent playing!

Do stay tuned as Ken gives us an exclusive lesson complete with Tab!

| Black Dog | – I was immediately reminded of Stefan Grossman and John Renbourn at their best with this bluesy-folk tune. If you like Bermuda Triangle Exit, you’ll apprecite this tune!
| Getaway | – A slow aire in the Celtic vein, this slowly evolves into a melancholic masterpiece.

More sound clips at the end of the Interview.

TT- Ken, whenever I’ve heard your pieces, you always sound like you were born with a guitar in your hands… but really how did you start out with the guitar?

Ken: The short answer is that I didn’t start playing guitar until I got one for my 19th birthday, 34 years ago. I dove right in, started playing about 3-4 hours a day, mostly Gordon Lightfoot, Jackson Browne, and John Prine.

TT- So it’s practise practise practise?

Ken: More like play play play. I don’t like to call it practice much, I think it makes it sound like work, and I’ve always played the guitar because I enjoyed it. The fact that others seem to dig what I do is cool, but I’d be playing regardless That said I do manage to get my fingers on a guitar 2-3 hours all the time and quite often 4-5 hours a day

TT: So do you have a fixed practise routine?

Ken bonfield Ken: The short answer is no. There’s no daily routine, per se, but I always play some scales and do some excercises, work on whatever new tune might be appearing on my guitar and experimenting. It’s funny, but since I don’t tour like I used to 35-40 weeks a year, and I’m selective about gigs, I spend most of my time ‘noodling’ trying to find new pieces or find new twists in old material.

I don’t really put together a show until about a week out from the show; my fingers are always in good shape, and it seems that the shows stay fresh. I can pretty much dust off anything and perform it inside a week. If there’s anything fixed about my practice it’s that I really always try to find something new every day.

TT: And you have anything to inspire that new found music?

Ken: Guitars inspire me. New guitars, old guitars, guitars strung with different strings or tuned to a new interval, all that jazzes me up about the guitar. A new tuning, anything can really trip the creative piece.

TT: So different flavours of guitars for different music?

Ken: That really hasn’t been true until lately. At one point I had 3 acoustics, not really a lot for someone who does what I do, and they were all really good guitars, but I realized that they all did the same thing pretty much; they were different versions of the same thing.

guitar cases So, I got rid of one, a Santa Cruz, and then modified a Carruth OM to be a High string, then tuned a Carruth OM down a whole step in standard and put heavier gauge strings on it, then I got a Carruth Baritone that I tune C-C in standard, then up for alternate tunings. So my three main guitars now are all very different, the each have their own palette of colors.

I’m taking this a step further. To celebrate my birthday I got a nice little Breedlove 12-string and a Regal Roundneck Wood Bodied Dobro. If things go well with the 12 I’ll probably ask Al Carruth to build a Baritone 12 for me.

TT: wow, that’ll be some guitar! You seem to have a close relationship and an affinity for Al’s guitars…

Ken: Al is my guy. There are many wonderful luthiers out there, but Al just seems to build Ken Bonfield guitars; they all have balance, but sound big, and the trebles on Al’s steel strings just sound fat. I can’t tell you how many times people think I’m playing nylon strings, but I’m not.

His guitars are also really comfortable for me; I’ve had problems with carpal tunnel and tendinitis in the past, but I can play for hours on Al’s guitars and feel fresh and pain free; part of it is the set-up I’m sure, but his guitars are very ergonomic.

It’s very cool to be able to work with someone who really understands how I hear guitar, and what I need the guitar to do. He’s very patient, he’s come to visit me and talk to me about what I want; it’s really an incredible relationship. I’m very lucky.

| Opal’s Delight | – Jaunty fingerstyle with melodies you wouldn’t necessarily expect in such a piece. A great composition altogether.
| Stealin’ | – Blues-ragtime piece with those great ascending bass tones.

Links:
Ken Bonfield http://www.kenbonfield.com/
Al Carruth Guitars http://www.alcarruthluthier.com/

No comments artistry, guitar, interview, ken bonfield, mp3

Laurent Brondel Guitars

July 8, 2008 admin Luthier interview

LAURENT BRONDEL | 2008 | Luthier Interview |

We present and highly recommend viewing the pdf version of this article first as it contains the most up to date information and more photos.
The HTML version can be viewed below in it’s original, unaltered form.

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See the full issue here – Open publication

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Laurent Brondel is a French native who is currently building high quality, fingerstyle flattops in Maine. Although his aesthetics have clearly been influenced by Stefan Sobell, his tone is entirely unique, combining the seperation and clear mids of the Sobells with traditional Martin dynamics and responsiveness. Laurent builds a several wonderful models including; the A1, dimensionally close to a dreadnaught, the A2 which is his take on the OM and an elegant parlor model, the B4.

SOUND CLIPS | Model B4 Italian/Honduran | Model A1 Englemann/Cocobolo | Model A2 German/Pau Rosa |

TT- Laurent, it’s a long way from Metropolitan Paris to Rural Maine, how did you end up as a full time luthier?

LB- It’s a long story…

As a teenager I was fascinated with lutherie and had wanted to apply and go study violinmaking at Mirecourt, in the French Vosges mountains. But I had no previous experience in woodworking and was not accepted. I also started to play the violin at 15 and at the same time I was in rock bands, did my 1st tour in Germany and started a career in music.

In 1999 I moved to NYC, I had my green card since 1995 but always postponed emigrating because of ongoing working projects in France. By this time I had already stopped teaching guitar and playing gigs to concentrate on recording electronic music and engineering/producing other people’s music.

However I slowly became weary of life in the city, and spending most of my time behind computers, synths and mixing boards. I wanted to go back to singing and playing the guitar.

So on a spring day in NYC, I find myself walking out of a guitar shop on 30th St. with a ’53 Martin 00-17 in my hands. I loved that all mahogany 00-17, which was so easy to play and record, but soon wanted a richer/wider tone. I started buying vintage Martins, Guilds and Gibsons but was never fully satisfied. Most of those guitars were in need of serious work.

After a couple of dreadful experiences with mediocre repairmen I decided to tackle the work myself. By this time I was already living in rural Maine with my wife. We had saved some money and we took a one year sabbatical to figure out what direction our lives would be taking.

So here I am, doing my 1st neck reset on a ’66 Martin 00-18 with an old expresso machine… I bought, repaired and sold many guitars without ever being 100% satisfied. The work became addictive too, with all the challenges and the satisfaction of returning those mistreated guitars back to original playing condition. And I learned a lot, it gave me the opportunity to see how those wonderful instruments are built, strengths and weaknesses.

Soon enough, after a couple of years, I thought, well, I’ve done pretty much everything on a guitar, from neck resets to re-bracing to finish work. Why couldn’t I build my own? I swear I intended to build only one, THE one, for myself, and then move on to other things.

So I ordered a customised Martin 000 kit from John Hall, I wanted to do a 13-fret to the body 000 with a 26.5″ scale. I use dropped tunings all the time. John was very helpful in providing parts and advice, he even called this project the “Amish” guitar because I wanted something very simple in terms on trim, a look-alike to the Martin OM-18GE I owned at the time, down to the banjo tuners. The EIR sides were pre-bent and the Sitka top joined but the rest was up to me… I built this guitar with essentially nothing, I just had a router and a vintage drill press I think, no mold, no sander, no power saw. I took enormous pleasure in this project and after 2 months of part-time work, the guitar came out wonderful. It had the tone and playability I was seeking, it surpassed my expectations. Needless to say I was hooked and the only thing I was thinking about for a few months after this project was building another. So I started buying tonewood…

Meanwhile a childhood friend asked me to find him a vintage Martin in the US, like a 14 fret 00-18 or 28. He really liked the guitar I had built, but we didn’t make the connection until I told him: hey wait a minute, with your budget I could probably build you a guitar! So we became very excited and that was my 1st commission. I built him an OM with an incredibly figured German spruce top and EIR B&S, he was ecstatic when he received it.

So there I was, on my way to do this seriously. I became obsessed with lutherie, reading anything I could on the subject, asking people, trying different techniques. I spent 13 hours in the shop every day I could, sometimes more. You couldn’t get me out of there.

In the summer of 2006 I contacted Buck Curran, I liked the aesthetics of his guitars, very much influenced by Sobell like I was. Buck worked at Pantheon Guitars with Dana Bourgeois and loved my first guitar. He insisted I showed the guitar to Dana.

One month later I was hired at Pantheon Guitars working under Cary Clements supervision… I learned a lot from Cary, Dana and John Slobod. I have to say they’ve been extremely generous with their time, advice and encouragement. I worked there a little over a year and in November 2007 it was time to move on.

TT- So every guitar is an improvement or refinement on the last? I noticed that your guitars are influenced by Stefan Sobell’s, but I take it they are designed differently?

LB- I don’t know if every one of my guitar is better than the last, but I feel I am constantly progressing. Otherwise I would do something else. I think every steel-string builder is trying to find the sweet spot between a guitar that sounds full and a box that won’t self-destruct after a few decades with the relentless pull of the strings (140 to 180lbs…). I definitely try new ideas all the time and note the changes, if any. I am not so much interested in making the same guitar twice, or a hundred times, but rather in making each instrument unique.

I have great admiration for Stefan’s work and he’s definitely an influence, at least in terms of aesthetics. I am very taken by the tone Martin Simpson gets out of his Sobell guitars, but of course I played a few Sobells, including one owned by Simpson long ago, and was disappointed: I couldn’t sound like Martin! They’re beautiful instruments, very versatile, but I think they’re designed for players with a strong picking hand. To get the best of those guitars one has to really “dig in”, at least that’s been my perception so far, and looking at Simpson’s technique seems to corroborate that. Another guitar tone that’s been a great influence is how Michael Hedges sounds on “Bensusan”, I think he played his 70′s D-28. Totally different players and instruments but I hear a similarity between Hedges and Simpson tones: strong attack and sustain, rich overtones but with a lot of clarity and separation. Of course those are recordings, nevertheless they represented an ideal for me.

Stefan’s way of building is totally unique, from his neck-body modified bridle joint to the arched plates and bracing, he developed a totally original concept for the steel-string. I am more traditional in the way I build, at least from an American perspective. I build neck and body separately and those get assembled after finishing. I am moving toward a detachable/adjustable neck with a floating fingerboard and plan to offer it as an option. I have used the same bracing system since my 2nd guitar: tapered x-braces and scalloped tone-bars, inverted Spanish heel neck block butting on a flat and strong upper-brace locked in the rim by the linings. I tend to build delicate and dynamic guitars with a lot of separation and projection and clear mid registers.

Another original builder I pay attention to is Rick Turner, his Compass-Rose guitars make a lot of sense to me, design-wise. An interesting point is that Turner and Sobell try to bring a little bit of the arch-top tone into the steel-string, Stefan from the old Martin arch-tops after which he patterned his first guitars I think, and Rick mentions Selmer/Maccaferri guitars on his Compass-Rose description.

MORE SOUND CLIPS | Model A4 German/Honduran | Model A3 Cedar/Maple |

TT- I know Stefan is fond of european spruce and Rick of carpathian. What’s your take how the various species of topwoods work for your guitars?

LB- I feel I get my best results with European spruce, particularly German. This is what I mostly use. For me it has it all, tone, stiffness, resonance, sustain. It is delicate and resilient and yields a solid tone rich in harmonics.

I have used Italian spruce on a couple of guitars and really like it, it is perhaps a little more delicate than the German I’m used to. I would like to try some Swiss spruce from the Alps and French spruce from the Jura as well when I can source a good supplier.

Carpathian is great, the last guitar I used it on was a myrtle A-3. It was a very powerful guitar with a ton of projection, somewhat reminiscent of Red spruce, maybe a hair more subtle in the dynamics and overtones. Besides most of the stuff is really wide grain and I love the look of it.

At Pantheon I saw a ton of red spruce and like it very much. Although I think it could lack the subtlety of the European spruces, it is a consistently stiff and excellent sounding top wood. I use red spruce for most of my bracing.

Sitka spruce can be great, like Indian rosewood it is looked down upon because there are still large supplies of the stuff and factories use it extensively. There are more average and mediocre sounding Sitka/EIR guitars out there than anything else… However one of my favourite sounding guitars was a 1974 Martin D-28 with a Sitka spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides! Straight bracing, large rosewood bridgeplate, wide grain on the top, what a beautiful sounding guitar… So maybe I’ll use Sitka spruce again one day. Like Englemann I find it is a little more inconsistent in quality than Red or European spruces, so one has to find a good source. By the way Englemann can be great too, the very best pretty close to Italian spruce.

A last word on the spruces: I think the most important factor is how and when the wood was cut. How much sap was in the tree before felling, how it is quartered and how it was dried. These are the most important factors. Also there are a lot more similarities than differences between the species, with a lot of cross-linkage, or in-between.

Finally I’ve used western red cedar and redwood, they have similar characteristics. Very nice low end and rich mid registers, perhaps lacking a bit in the high registers. They are harder to work with, but can be worth it.

I’ve heard people get good results with Port Oxford cedar, pencil cedar, mahogany and koa but have not tried any of it. Although I remember restoring a 1928 koa-topped Martin 0-18k, somebody put his foot through the side, and it was a fine sounding instrument. And my mahogany topped ’53 00-17 sounded so simple and sweet…

TT – With old growth wood stocks rapidly shrinking, do you think we will soon have to rethink our approach to tonewoods? Already we have seen wide grain and colour streaks being more and more acceptable in Adirondack spruce, and 3 or 4 piece backs more common place.

LB- I think builders of the past were much less obsessed with plastic perfection in wood. Torres is an obvious example, with his 3 or 4 piece non-bookmatched tops, and back and sides woods with knots, defects and so on. Although it was probably difficult to obtain instrument quality lumber in provincial Spain at the time. Also looking at Baroque and Renaissance guitars it is rare to see a 2 piece back.

It is difficult to find tight-grained and homogenous coloured red spruce in large sizes and the price is usually prohibitive, so makers (and players) have adapted. How about a 4 piece top? It would be much easier to find smaller red spruce trees of greater visual quality, and the same holds true for back and sides hardwoods. Personally I find a 4, 5 or 6 piece mix-and-match back visually pleasing.

It is changing, but I think players and makers alike are still hanging onto the paradigm developed by US guitar factories the past century. Tastes developed guided by the shadow of Taylorism.

It is more time consuming to join and trim a 3, 4 or 5 piece back than a 2-piece. It also requires more skill and aesthetic sense. To assemble a top with 3 or 4 pieces one needs to join between the grain lines and try to make the joints invisible, and so on. It would be nearly impossible to mass produce such instruments and have an homogenous output.

The same holds true for the choice of tonewoods, the obsession with Brazilian is getting ridiculous. Yes it could be a great tonewood, yes it can look beautiful. So can other tonewoods. The truth is, so little of the Brazilian I’ve seen is outstanding, most is about average and, frankly, a fair amount is garbage. Just because it is Brazilian, makers are building with sets that would have been discarded a generation ago, or would be discarded if it was another species.

There are beautiful sounding and stable tonewoods that have just been barely noticed and we should put our prejudices aside. Also I would be interested in mostly using local, or at the very least national, tonewoods. Often the trade in exotic woods is murky and carries a cost we do not account for, whereas it affects negatively the localities they come from, or oil-based transportation which is totally subsidised.

Obviously it is very difficult to find a substitute for ebony or the rosewoods in the Northern Hemisphere. Maybe we’ll have to get used to either compromise, or slightly change our tastes.

TT- Finally, where do see the future of your guitars?

LB- Refining what I am making now, in small increments. Whereas it is for structural or aesthetic design I always have ideas, or get ideas from others, that I want to put to the test. The concept of a fully detachable adjustable neck really appeals to me, so I have to come up with my own design.

Also I get a lot of inspiration from the past, so maybe in a few years I will build vihuelas and Baroque guitars out of Western Maine tonewoods!

Actually I would like that, to continue building contemporary steel-string guitars and fully explore the world of gut-string plucked instruments. I’ve been wanting to build a Flamenco guitar for a couple of years but haven’t found the time. And lastly I have a few ideas for a harp-like steel-string, a 2 neck affair with fretless and scalloped fingerboards.

Links:

Laurent’s own lutherie blog: http://lblutherie.blogspot.com/
Brondel Guitars http://www.laurentbrondel.com