I love old guitars and I have really enjoyed discovering how they made some amazing rosettes. However, I hope no one ever asks me to make a copy of this one. I really don’t know if I would be able to figure this one out.
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Publications and Presentations
When I was fifteen years old my heroes were Carl Sagan and David Suzuki. For those of you who are not canadian David Suzuki is the life sciences version of Carl Sagan, a geneticist who found that he had a talent for explaining science to the layman. I suppose somewhere in my motivations for this blog is that fascination and respect for these two men. Perhaps I can bring the world of historic guitars and guitar-making to people who know little about it and to that end having access to different formats is useful. I enjoy the complete freedom that self-publishing affords but to have someone else value my work enough to publish it (especially in this age of paper phobia) is exciting and offers a challenge in that they demand a certain level of rigour and novelty. I also greatly appreciate those that invite me to speak about my investigations.
The original idea of this blog was to publish articles that would interest the guitarist and the collector of guitars and thereby get them interested in my instruments. I very quickly found that the only thing of interest I could write about was old guitars and my own workshop. I have a few guitarist followers but my main public is guitar-makers or people on their way to learning the craft. So my blog isn’t garnering the desired audience but I have got quite attached to it so I think I will carry on. I do get a lot of positive feedback as well so there is that. I usually mention here anything that I have published so none of this will be new to the faithful reader. However, I would like to list everything I have published and presented in one place.
Publications
The Art of Guitar – María Isabel López Gonzalvez. Photographs of my work. My only contribution was translation of the texts. 2006
Roseta – Spanish musicology journal of the Sociedad Española de la Guitarra
- Guitarra Vicente Arias de 1900 (2010) co-authored with Javier Riba
- Una guitarra para Segovia (2016) co-authored with Elena Gonzalez
- Guitarra de Ignacio Fleta e hijos (2018) co-authored with Leopoldo Neri
A review of basic procedures for an organological examination of plucked-string instruments, Journal of Cultural Heritage Special Issue Wooden Musical Instruments (2017), Elsevier. co-authored with Aarón García, Antonio Manjón and Thomas Holt
Experimental assessment of the effect of an eventual non-invasive intervention on a Torres guitar through vibration testing, Journal of Cultural Heritage Special Issue Wooden Musical Instruments (2017), Elsevier. co-authored with Marco Antonio Pérez, Antonio Manjón and Roger Serra-López.
Adopting a policy of Faithful Copies of Historically Important Musical Instruments as an Alternative to Restoration in Wooden Musical Instruments: Different Forms of Knowledge (2018), Philharmonie de Paris. co-authored with Aarón García, and Antonio Manjón
Las Guitarras de Llobet in Miguel Llobet: Del Romanticismo a la Modernidad (2016) Gran Teatro de Córdoba. co-authored with Antonio Manjón
The Granada School of Guitar-makers (2014) Diputación Provincial de Granada I co-ordinated this collection of writings and I am credited as editor.
Talks
| Tampere Guitar Festival 2006 Tampere, Finland Techniques of the Granada Guitar-makers (5-day course)
Guild of American Luthiers convention 2014. Book presentation – Granada School of Guitar-makers Cordefactum Guitar Festival in Liers, Belgium 2017 Granada School of Guitar-makers Jornadas de la Guitarra de Badalona 2017 Restoration and Investigation of Historic Guitars. with Marco Antonio Pérez Granada, Ciudad de la Guitarra (Exposición de la Caja Rural 2017) Round Table: Ethics and Globalization in Guitar-making. California State University’s Summer Arts – La guitarra española in Granada (2017) Granada School of Guitar-makers II Jornadas Homenaje Antonio de Torres in Almeria 2019, Study processes and research for my copies of Torres guitars. 100 Centenario biblioteca musical Victor Espinós in Madrid 2019, Una guitarra para Segovia: Santos Hernández 1924 |
Last of the 2006 videos
I guess I will have to start making more videos in order to keep up this rhythm of posting.
There is a thread on delcamp right now about selecting Indian rosewood with good advice. The only thing I would add is that this sharp contrast between two colours can also look very good and is sometimes present in Indian.
Then and Now
I have begun taking photos of every finished guitar and trying to keep a careful record. But… why didn’t I do that from the beginning? I have made some instruments with some amazing colour combinations, decorations or downright stunning wood and I will probably never see them again. On the one hand that is the way of a creative line of work but on the other hand we can become inspired by what we have done in the past and the photos make for good publicity 😉
Looking back is good in another way too: Now I can perform certain tasks in a much shorter time and to a greater level of perfection but in the past I did some extra work on decorative elements which today I might shun as unnecessary. I might never do those things again but I would like to have them around to refer to. For the most part my rosettes have become better with time but maybe some of the first ones had a freshness or originality that are worth preserving.
Javier Riba with his Santos Hernández copy
Javier Riba is full professor at the Córdoba conservatory of music, scholar of the guitar, and tremendously musical concert player. He has performed music by great contemporary composers and made a number of recordings of music for guitar and transcriptions. His performances, his work as a composer and his publications contribute to making him one of the best teachers in Spain. The link on his name goes directly to his blog which gives you a lot more information. Here he is playing a Leo Brouwer transcription of sonata K. 208 by Scarlatti. The guitar is my Santos Hernández copy, a guitar which is becoming the one that is most asked about and purchased. The dimensions of the guitar, the slanted transverse bar, the aesthetic and of course the sound seem to be just what many players are looking for. Like the rest of my instruments this model is easy to play and has great tonal range.