#yomequedoencasafestival

If you are a fan of guitar photos you will know that they are very hard to take well. Furthermore, the label of a guitar does not jump out at you in real life nor in a photo. I am always very pleased when a guitarist makes the effort to do that with my guitar. Now, the point of this post is to celebrate generous gestures by musicians to help make this time a little more pleasant. Here is Maria José Tirado with a video.

Javier Riba has done more for my art than anyone ever could and was the first one to make sure that my name was front and centre on his cd. His video offering in this time of confinement is with his son and makes us remember that this time can be very much taken advantage of. Piazolla with Javier’s son Ángel.

Last but surely not least is Fernando Espí whose gift is in the form of sheet music, just see his facebook post of March 16 for details. Here is a little video he recorded before this all started.

 

Video with no sound

I know, we had some trouble getting this one uploaded, couldn’t edit and now we can’t even put music to it. It’s from a longer video so I will be publishing more excerpts from that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl4RHZGRMxY

Short workshop in Finland – 2006

The Tampere Guitar Festival is coming up again in June and I like to remember my experience there in 2006. I was invited to do a weeklong workshop on guitar-making in Granada. The experience and the people were great. In this photo you can see all of the teachers: Aliéksey Vianna, myself, Àlex Garrobé, Lorenzo Micheli and Enrico Bronzi. I guess it is obvious what they were teaching. Midnight canoe rides were fun too with some great sunsets. My students were guitar-making students at the nearby Ikaalinen institute. For a few years the organizers hosted a luthier’s exhibition but I never participated. Actually I think they started that the year after I was there. The teachers and players invited to this event have always been top-notch and it has really become a reference festival.

New series of short videos

Oh my that was a long time ago, before digital cameras. Photo by Manuel Ruiz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLJiuwJL3rE

Greatest Hits

I have just gone through all of my past publications (383 of them) checking for broken links and similar problems. Most of them have been cleaned up and I have selected a few to highlight as particularily interesting or relevant to me.  In the interest of seamless viewing to stave off boredom and cabin fever here they are.

All of the Granada guitar-makers in one photo

Exhibition Tour

Non-tropical woods

La Invencible de Antonio de Torres – my second copy

Just “pop” the bridge off

Teaching guitar-making

My presentation at Summer Arts

Artistry or Craftsmanship?

It’s not about the wood.

How to bring out the beauty of the wood

La Nueva Escuela

Hide glue and hardwoods

The Only Way to Thickness a Top

The Best Wood

Secrets to Building a Great Guitar

Secrets to Building a Great Guitar

pretty wood

Photographs of my work

Granada guitar-makers: The first foreigners

Artesania

Up close with the 1900 Arias

A look inside Torres’ paper mache guitar

Closing the guitar

To Torres or not to Torres.