Now anyhow, I'm nowhere NEAR that league of course, but I thought I'd try gut string... partially out of sheer historical curiosity for what fiddling was like back in the day, partly one last effort to find a setup my dear old student fiddle would like.
First.. gut strings. Really interesting. They do take a while to settle in, and are obnoxious for the first day or three, slipping out of tune every time you look at 'em it feels like. They're also a little slick under the bow at first - I'm finding I need more rosin to not go all slippy-slide on them. The neat thing though is- no need for fine tuners at all. The pegs work *great* with gut all by themselves. You'd almost think they were made for the stuff. ;)
And yet... interesting as this is, it's not enough.
See, I'm finally hitting a wall with this old fiddle - not the Tennessee one*- but rather my "good" violin, a student strad copy from the 1920's or so. It's beautiful, but...I've tried all manner of things from pestering my teacher on technique to different strings to having my luthier friend tap the soundpeg around - and none of it is helping.. I just keep hitting that point of saying "I know I can sound better than this - I do sound better than this on other violins." It's the first time I've really outgrown an instrument (kid stuff aside) and it's an interesting experience.
It's not like say a rifle, where there's this definable metric of "how close together are the holes?" Rather there's this vague uncomfortableness at this tone and that scratchiness, and never quite being able to get the sound you want... but there's that same growing sense of "I'm tired of not being able to tell what the limiting factor is - me or the tool.. and I think it's the tool." Worse, I find it actually harder to practice now, because I get frustrated easier.
So... I'll be doing the "sell and reallocate" dance again in life soon. Probably selling my nylon-strung folk harp and the strad copy to afford a really *nice* violin I can really keep growing in to. Luthier friend has some ideas there - great to have someone around you can really trust to help point you in the right direction.
In the mean time, it's fun to play with the gut, and wonder about times way back when. Sure it's not an Edinburgh sheep (or cat?) stretched over that bridge, but there is something homey about it nonetheless. And it really does help the smoothness some. Neat experience.
In other music news, the guitar is coming along okay - folk harp technique translates fairly well to finger picking I'm finding, but it looks like I'm just going to have to buckle down and learn some chord positions by rote, at least to start. It's like multiplication tables all over again! Yes Cap'n Tightpants, We work before we play. Still, I keep finding myself amazed at just how versatile the guitar is. It feels like having a whole piano on a board right there at your fingertips! No wonder it's so popular.
So yeah, stay tuned. Next week I'll be amazed at how much faster you can get places with one of those newfangled horseless carriages. Early adopter, that's me. :)
* which finally gave up the ghost- the soft spots in the upper bouts gave way and the neck collapsed. :( Sure sounded nice while it was together though. Luthier friend says it would be more work to rebuild it than even to make a new one. bother.
5 comments:
"stay tuned" = bad pun alert.
It's interesting to hear your take on these issues ... many of which I've also experienced in the past. I'm probably now a tolerably accomplished old fuddy-duddy, but I know what works for me, and which strings I prefer on the guitars.
(By the way, know anyone who's interested in a 1963 "00" Martin classical guitar? Mine's available for the right price.)
Oh. Oh dear. Trust me, that was so totally unintentional. Yikes.
So.. any chance we'll hear your expertise on guitars anytime soon at your place? Please? :)
Good luck selling your baby there!
Hmm ... I might have to do something like that. Hadn't thought about it, but ... hmm.
I've been playing since 1969, but have taken the last couple of years off, so I'll need to work on it a bit, first.
Thanks for the suggestion ... and for the good wishes. It's a nice guitar.
I've been playing, at times in my life professionally, since I was 4 started on violin and piano...40-ish now.
With everything but pianos (family owned one piano and that was the one I was gonna play, I didn't have piano money as a kid) from violins to mandolins to banjos to guitars to ukes to pedal steels to bass guitars, pretty much anything you can fingerpick or bow or use a plectrum on, I went through a number of instruments before I found the right fit. by about age 26, I'd found the ones that fit and made sounds I liked and my musical isntrument collection has been static since then other than my feeble attempts at learning the pipes. Someday dammit, someday. Local piper said, "Lad, ya started too late, takes a lifetime to make a good piper" but I'm hoping to prove him wrong.
But to audiences, and to myself I sound like me when I play a type of instrument no matter what variant of instrument it is. My picking friends around here, if I go into town and walk down the street full of clubs I can here guitar player buddies of mine and people I've worked with coming out the open doors of the clubs and know who they are without asking or looking as often as not. "Yeah, that's Django Porter and his dad, Hey Russ must be playing across the street, etc." and they all have more than one version of their instruments they gig with.
Half of the instrument is you and that's the distinctive part. Hendrix sounds like Hendrix whether all fuzzed out or playing though a clean Fender Twin...
As for guitars of a reasonable price point if your guitar died and you don't have guitar building money, I like small bodied flat tops, not dreadnoughts for fingerstyle and mixed picking and a Super 400 size archtop for flatpick work, resonators for specialty stuff, Semi-Solid body for Nylon or gut string work, but I found a cool guitar in the small bodied parlor range like my 35 Gibson L-1 reasonably cheap that I keep at my folks house up north so I have a guitar when I visit besides the tele I customized I have a habit of dragging around (speaking of breakage, it's durn hard to break one which is one of the reasons I've stuck with them so long).
Anyway, the cool little parlor guitar that lives in my parent's closet is a Simon & Patrick made in Canadia and sounds really good for living room fingerpickin and even gigging, for what it cost me (bout 500 bucks). Never replace my small body Gibson but it isn't too far off in fit and sound.
Pardon the longwindedness but, hell, I ain't been around in a while pestering ya so I made up for lost time :-)
Fun tales, thank you!
I don't think I really believe the "started too late" thing either.. I figure if a kid of 15 can do it, I can learn it in 15 years. Though there may well be some brain rewiring involved, and it seems harder I think.
It is funny how different the same instrument can sound in different hands - or the reverse of course - how consistent a person's sound is across instruments. Like being able to pass around your vocal cords. Weird.
Thanks for dropping by! :)
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