Posted on January 5, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Violin Rehairing with Roger Foster Review: Violin Rehairing with Roger Foster by Ronald Louis Fernández Reviewed by Ken Altman Originally published in American Lutherie #100, 2009 Violin Rehairing with Roger Foster Filmed and presented by Ronald Louis Fernández DVD, 53 minutes $59.95 from Fernández Music Box 5153, Irvine, CA 92616 www.fernandezmusic.com Bow rehairing is a bread-and-butter job for shops that do work on instruments of the violin family. Professional players may have their bows rehaired twice a year, and even casual players may need to get new hair every year or two. It’s work that can be tedious and that must be done with care in order to do a good job and to avoid damaging delicate bows. I have quite a few bows come through my shop each week for rehairing and repairs, and unfortunately far too many of them have been damaged by careless, unskilled, and untrained workers. Educational materials that would impart knowledge about the craft of bow rehairing might just save a few bows from premature demise. The cover of the DVD case for Violin Bow Rehairing with Roger Foster carries the byline, “This DVD shows how a professional violin and bowmaker rehairs a bow in his shop,” and the video does indeed deliver on that promise. We get to watch the whole process from beginning to end, with Mr. Foster offering comments and explanations along the way. He starts by inspecting a bow for any damage that may need attention, and then proceeds to take the bow apart, clean the various parts, and prepare the bow for receiving new hair. There follows a long sequence showing how the wooden plugs for holding the hair in the frog and tip mortises are made, a critical step in doing a rehair. I thought it was good that he showed this process in real time, conveying the attention to detail necessary to insure that the plugs fit properly. There are cutaway views of a bow tip and frog, which illustrate clearly how the plugs should fit. From there he goes through the steps of selecting the hair, tying the ends, securing the hair in the tip and frog, fitting a spreader wedge, and taking care of the finishing touches. Through each of these steps he stresses the importance of working conscientiously, taking care not to damage the bow. I found this very commendable. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 5, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Classical Guitar Making, A Modern Approach to Traditional Design by John S. Bogdanovich Review: Classical Guitar Making, A Modern Approach to Traditional Design by John S. Bogdanovich Reviewed by John Mello Originally published in American Lutherie #95, 2008 Classical Guitar Making, A Modern Approach to Traditional John S. Bogdanovich ISBN (hardcover): 9781402720604 Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2007, $29.95 Classical Guitar Making, A Modern Approach To Traditional Design by John S. Bogdanovich is a hardbound 310-page volume filled with beautifully clear photography that amply illustrates the detailed text. While the back cover proclaims that the author will “help you develop all the necessary skills, even if you’ve never made anything more complicated than a school woodworking project,” a fairly high degree of proficiency in both hand and power tools is assumed, particularly regarding the use of hand planes. You’ll have to bring your own chops and/or be willing to develop them on the fly. The tone throughout is personal, almost conversational, and we are presented with a lot of biographical material and philosophical ruminations that may seem extraneous to the physical task at hand, but for someone considering a long term engagement with the craft rather than a one-off build, it’s one of the book’s strengths. As a novice, I would have loved to know how a working professional got started, influences shaping their sonic and aesthetic choices, and the many facets of the mysterious lifelong refining of one’s craft. “Part One — Preparation” includes discussions of guitar anatomy with an emphasis on the interrelatedness of the parts, wood types and selection, and shop requirements, including brief descriptions and photos of recommended vises, benches, and generic and specialty power and hand tools. There are clear, dimensioned plans for making a number of specialty jigs, bench tools, and specialty items such as shop-made calipers and sanding disks. One small problem arises in the author’s discussion of the need for concave sanding disks of 15' and 25'. Fabricating these is discussed only perfunctorily, with uncharacteristically no illustrations, and no indication of how to obtain or make the illustrated radius sticks. If we take the author’s suggestion and simply purchase the disks we can certainly make our sticks from them, but the degree of back and top arch is an important, alterable variable, and knowing how to generate alternative radii, short of getting a 25' board, a pencil, and a big room, would be useful. This may be a little beyond the scope of an introductory tutorial, but the growing current reliance on commercial concave disks of limited selection to set the back, while a facile solution to a process Irving Sloane once described as “exacting and tedious,” may lose sight of the fact that many of the great historic and contemporary classical guitar makers did and do not set the back in a uniform dome with its attendant reduction of side depth at the tail block. End of rant. Sorry. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 5, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Lyre-guitar: Etoile charmante, between the 18th and 19th centuries by Eleonora Vulpiani Review: Lyre-guitar: Etoile charmante, between the 18th and 19th centuries by Eleonora Vulpiani Reviewed by John Doan Originally published in American Lutherie #99, 2009 Lyre-guitar: Etoile charmante, between the 18th and 19th centuries Eleonora Vulpiani Two volumes (Italian and English) plus CD Rome, 2007 www.eleonoravulpiani.com No one can question that the guitar has great popularity today and that the lyre-guitar is little known and all but forgotten, but few realize its past significance and the important role it played in the early days of the birth of the classical guitar. Rediscovering an instrument from a forgotten tradition brings with it many intriguing surprises, which is what Eleonora Vulpiani presents us in her self-produced book Lyre-Guitar: Etoile charmante, between the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a small window into the grand world of the lyre-guitar. For those not students of history, let’s back up to the last quarter of the 18th century to a time when Western culture was entering into a Neoclassical era, both intellectually and artistically exploring aesthetics and values of a Graeco-Roman world. It was nothing short of revolutionary (note the American and French revolutions at this time) putting aside notions such as the rule by kings and various religious beliefs, and wanting to be guided instead by principles of reason based on evidence and proof. There was a flourishing of the sciences and a rise of the middle class at a time when people surrounded themselves with Greek inspired art, architecture, and literature. The music of this time celebrated clarity, simple structures, and folk-like melodies that were to be graceful and elegant. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 5, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Les Luths (Occident) Review: Les Luths (Occident) Reviewed by Alain Bieber Previously published in American Lutherie #88, 2006 Les Luths (Occident) catalogue des collections du musée de la musique (vol.1) Les cahiers du musée de la musique #7. Sous la direction scientifique de Joël Dugot ISBN# 2-914147-34-1; 2006; 35€ tax included Cité de la musique; www.citedelamusique.fr I remember my first visit to the musical instrument museum of Paris. At that time it was still a neglected part of the old “National Conservatoire,” the School of Music. I was an early teenager, still in short trousers. The museum was more than modest in its opening days, and very erratic. My dear guitar teacher visited the museum at an even younger age, just a few years after it opened. Being of a family of well-known musicians, he was presented by his mother to the curator. He has a very precise memory of an elderly lady of strict appearance in a grey smock, with a feather duster in her hand. She was Geneviève Thibault de Chambure herself, taking care of her beloved collections. She was specially devoted to this museum and, as time will progressively reveal, an active collector of ancient instruments, among many musical activities. The collection was created in the turmoil of the 1789 Revolution. Its nucleus was the result of the rather high and regrettable rate of death penalties then applied to the local aristocrats. The first “curator” (so to speak) efficiently gathered many instruments in a very short time, and simply stored them. After this rather macabre birth, the collection progressed regularly and slowly with donations and, from time to time, an acquisition or two. Budgets were minimal. The first museum was only opened to the public seventy years later. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 5, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Engineering the Guitar: Theory and Practice by Richard Mark French Review: Engineering the Guitar: Theory and Practice by Richard Mark French Reviewed by Bill Greenwood Originally published in American Lutherie #99, 2009 Engineering the Guitar: Theory and Practice Richard Mark French ISBN (hardback): 9780387743684 Springer, 266 pp. 2009 With Engineering the Guitar, the author introduces a new genre of musical acoustics textbook, aimed at a niche audience of mathematically literate students who are relatively new to the details of guitar structure and guitar building. The book assumes familiarity with basic physics and calculus that includes a modest background in differential equations and Fourier series, and presents some excellent applications of basic engineering analysis that will be appreciated by those who have taken a standard course in the strength of materials. The book parallels a unique course developed by the author at Purdue University, where a dozen engineering students all build identical classical guitars in the span of a single semester with the aid of computer-controlled machining. At the same time, the students are introduced to the basic physics of stringed instruments and to the engineering aspects of guitars. Although the target audience of college engineering students is rather narrow, the advanced level of the book and the refreshing examples generated by the author make it a useful and engaging reference for others who are interested in theory and measurements that relate to the structure and dynamic behavior of guitars. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
