Greetings from the land of lost musicians! It’s been a while since I wrote the last blog post, as it’s been a very busy month.
- Alexandra is preparing for IB prediction exams, and I am helping out with Mathematics
- Panos is preparing for his classical guitar middle level exams
- The Wonder Woman (that is Eleni, my beloved wife) and me have been preparing our house for the summer (yeah!)
- I’ve been working on my choro skills, practicing some well known tunes like Nao me Toques
- ExtraordinaryInstruments has required a lot of attention from me lately, as I did a major redesign to improve usability of the web site
I didn’t mean to start this blog post with such a long bullet list, but I guess that’s what I did!
Radial Bracing
Oh, I almost forgot! Luthier Richard Morgan has sent me a set of amazing photos that present his unique new radial bracing system that he created. This will be a standard feature of all his new instruments.
I am excited with this development, as I have been discussing a lot of innovations with Richard. This one may be important as bracing contributes significantly to the type of sound an instrument produces. I posted more pictures at the ExtraordinaryInstruments.com, but I also wanted to share it here in case you didn’t see it.
Wonder what bracing is? Bracing is a system of wooden struts which internally support and reinforce the soundboard and back of stringed instruments. Bracing allows them to withstand the stress applied by the strings with minimal distortion (but that’s a whole other blog post).
Extraordinary Instruments – progress!
I’m very excited with ExtraordinaryInstruments! I’ve waited until I really knew what I wanted to do with it, and I’m so happy with how it turned out. I had in my mind all the musicians I know when I was creating it, and made sure it had the qualities of my blog (weird sense of humor being the main one, ha!). My target was to make it modern and interesting, while helping musicians find what they are looking for!
Specifics: It now features instruments from Richard Morgan, but a much greater variety will be added soon! After that, it will be a great place to discover new instruments and luthiers.
The land of lost musicians
Back to Panos: he is studying hard for his exams, but I think he needs to spend more time working with scales to develop stronger fingers and better sound. It’s one of the things all musicians have to do. Me included.
On the other hand, I much better go see the sunset instead. UGH, I guess I have to do both.
Un Dia de Noviembre – again!
Back to practicing for a sec: I uploaded on Youtube a better and complete version of Un Dia De Noviembre by Leo Brower. This is a nice piece of music and I recorded it with a mandolin and guitar, and took a short video playing the first part.
After recording it, I thought of a new way to play it, to eliminate the need for a guitar! This is what most (or all?) mandolinists dream of: find a way to eliminate the need for any other instrument except mandolins (ha!)
I better go to bed to continue my dreaming there…
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