setelah stranough guitar builder online customer servicenya lama banget balesnya, gw memutuskan nyar luthier gitar yang lain saja, di bandung banyak kok. tadi sore gw sempet ke jalan tanjung no 13 buat ngeliat showroomnya secco, tapi ternyata rumahnya tutup, gak tau tutup hari ini apa emang udah gak buka lagi. kabarnya pendiri secco, Ki Anong Naeni tengah sakit.

besok sehabis kuliah, gw ama kakak temen gw ada rencana buat mengunjungi pabrik gitar genta yang ada di jalan moch ramdhan bandung, sekalian ke aristone, di jalan ciateul tengah, langsung nyari gitar yang udah jadi aja, tapi kalo bisa mesen ya mesen aja. udah siapin kamera, laporan menyusul

sebenernya banyak sekali luthier gitar di bandung ini, ada asia guitar lab yang ada di sekitar jalan menuju lembang, asia guitar lab ini dimiliki oleh om guiles de neve, nggak tahu deh nama asli beliau siapa.

o ya, gw mau share nih tempat-tempat luthier di bandung, luthier itu para ahli alat musik berdawai, jadi kalo mau reparasi/service gitar atau mau build atau mesen handmade guitar atau custom guitar, anda bisa menghubungi tempat-tempat berikut :

Stranough Guitar Builder & Music Inst.
Jl. Surapati 239 D ( Suci)
Bandung – 40123
Phone / fax : 022-2512511
website : www.guitarmade.com
mail : info@ guitarmade.com

terakhir mereka gak bisa melayani gitar akustik, trus mereka nawari gitar applause tapi sampai sekarang belum di reply, jadi sementara gw simpulin dulu online customer servicenya kurang ok (ntar bakal diupdate kalo udah di bales)

secco handmade acoustic
jl tanjung no 13 bandung

genta guitar
jalan moch ramdhan
bandung

aristone
Alamat : Jln. Ciateul Tengah 15, Bandung..
Telepon : 022-5227073

garage guitar custom
e-Mail : garage_guitars@yahoo.com
Phone: +6285720063888 (call / sms )
YM : moenir_adjaawww@yahoo.com
www.garageguitar.multiply.com
Cetarip Tengah 7 no 1 Kopo KEncana-Bandung

Luthier Joko
menerima:
-Custom
-Service
-dll
Alamat:
Jln. Cigadung Raya Timur.
Gg. Sekemirung RT/RW 02/10, no.23B.
Patokannya Perum Paras Cigadung.
Kontak:
022-92080680

Bud’s Guitar Lab. (Kang Budy)
Jl. Rancabolang 3
Ciwastra
Bandung
HP. 08157176225

asia guitar lab aka guiles de neve
(lupa kemaren alamatnya, pokoknya di jl menuju lembang, cari aja di google)

ntar lagi deh bakal ada update, pokoknya mulai sekarang bagi yang mau belajar gitar atau buat musisi yang nyari gitar lokal yang berkualitas, bisa menghubungi kontak diatas, atau langsung kunjungi showroom mereka. buat yang nyari gitar coba liat dulu aja di showroomnya aristone, di jalan ciatel tengah.

cintai produk-produk dalam negeri

Steve Earle is touring his album of Van Zandt songs entitled Townes. Last night he played the Barbican to a sell out crowd. Steve had a bit of a crisis on his hands with his main Martin and my buddy Graham Parker fixed it for him. In fact Graham fixed it twice. Yesterday he got a call saying that his temporary fix didn’t last too long – Steve changes his strings after every gig. So Graham replaced the nut. Whilst doing so he noticed that the strings were too close to the neck. This caused the strings to slip off the neck every so often so whilst replacing the nut he made amends to the where the strings sat on the neck. I’m getting technical here, I’ll stop.

As a result of Graham’s help Steve’s guitar tech Russ Garett gave Steve two complimentary passes. We met up with Steve and Russ before the gig and had a brief chat. Steve was in pretty good form chatting away about his signature guitar. Graham explained that Les Paul used to get $50 for every guitar made. Steve explained that he got more than that, about $150. “Wow!” Graham and I said. “Yeah but I just give it to charity,” Steve replied. “When you make a load of money doing what I do as a Marxist what else can you do with it?” What a guy!

The gig was awesome. Steve was on great form chatting away talking at length about his relationship with Townes. How Townes heckled him in 1972 when Steve was just 17, how they became friends, how Townes visited Steve’s house and saw Steve looking bad and his arms looking worse.  Steve also said how appreciative he was of the audience’s reception of the album and how his only regret was that Townes wasn’t around to enjoy it with him.

Steve got two standing ovations and seemed really humbled. Graham and I made our way onto the stage and made some movies of Russ striking the stage where Russ explained a bit about Steve’s set up.

Backstage Steve told Graham that the guitar felt great, “Plays like a fucking Martin should!”

Was a great evening out. Great to see Steve play on such fine form and meet the man. A true gent.

Read about the trip backstage.

Graham Parker and Steve Earle

If I can find the time, one of the things I like to do every evening is practice the fiddle. I’m not good, but I’m getting better. There’s definitely a calming effect from it, like a walk on a mountain trail. I follow a trace left by someone else, but I never see things exactly the way they did. Sometimes I only find cacophony, and other times the effect is ethereal. It’s something that a psychologist could probably analyze with dramatic and devastating results, but I try not to consider the implications of this habit. It is, at least, constructive and it keeps me from being a complete consumer.

While music has had a continuous influence in my own life, I believe it to have had influences throughout the generations since we became Jewish and before. (If you haven’t read my previous posts, you may not understand that comment: the BRCA gene is passed on through some Jewish family lines. Until my close relative was diagnosed with it, my family had no clue that we shared this Jewish heritage. Now we suspect that the gene was introduced through my great-grandmother, Amelie Von Marquet Kuhnhausen.)

The proud owner of a new piano, purchased from a piano wagon out of Portland, Oregon. Photographs of her wedding to Karl (Charles) Kuhnhausen grace the top of the piano. This piano sits in my music room.

In my music room sits an old piano, which joined our family before 1906 (I have a photograph of the Jewish great-grandmother sitting proudly before it, published on a custom postcard which once carried a postmark of that year). The piano doesn’t get much play now. My daughter had been taking lessons on it before she died, and her music sat on the piano for months before I finally cleared it off into the piano bag she used to carry it to town. Now that music stands by the abandoned piano, both of them artifacts of people who have completed their turns on earth.

I recently laid another piece of music on the piano, as if someone had been playing it on the piano and got up and walked away. I think this music was from one of my German ancestors, and I had to special order it from the local music store. It is a booklet containing the music and text of a Passion of St. Matthew, composed by a minor baroque choir master, Johannes Georg Kühnhausen. Although this piece hasn’t caught on in the American choir repertoire, there are indications that performances of it have been laid to CDs twice in the past decade in Europe. The church where he was choir master when he composed the work back in the year 1700 held a special concert featuring the Passion a few years back. I haven’t been able to get a copy of the CDs, but I would love to hear it sung. I think it would be marvelous to be able to hear the words and music an esteemed musician who might be my ancestor composed so long ago.

The violin I play on is one I inherited from my father, who played it at all his Old Time Fiddlers Association gigs. The story goes that he was given this fiddle by my mother’s uncle, one of the generation who immigrated from Germany in the early 1880s. Uncle Paul, whose photograph shows a young hunter/frontiersman, supposedly played this fiddle…or perhaps violin…his entire life. Where he got it is open to debate.

The violin is like my playing: passable, not outstanding. I sometimes squeak on the E string: it may be the bow I use, or perhaps (God forbid), my playing. I’ve shown the violin to luthiers, and nobody swoons in recognition of a missing masterwork. The violin is stamped “Hopf” on the back. You can go online and see the discussions about violins like that. There are some that are genuine gems, others that are factory trash. One reviewer put it like this:

"A large number of makers of this name have operated in Klingenthal, Markneukirchen, and
elsewhere in Germany for generations. Some were tolerable workmen ; others most indifferent.
Most of them used to brand their work, and the name Hopf may be seen branded on productions
of the very commonest class, which are hardly fit to be described as violins."

My opinion is that our violin is one that is fit to be described as a violin, although it carries that brand. Eighteen or more luthiers built Hopf violins, and that was only within the Hopf family. Other makers used the name to denote the style of violin they produced, although their standards were less rigorous than the original makers. From what I can find, our violin stands apart from the lesser makes in that it was built to stricter standards. Inside, you will find corner blocks that support the structure of the box. These were discarded by imitators. This violin features a single-piece carved back, with the grain canted to allow for maximum strength where the back would be most vulnerable, at the points of the cutouts. (See the photograph below) There is the matter of the quality of the wood, too, but more convincing to me is the family history.

The Kuhnhausens, according to my grandfather’s two family histories, owned and operated an inn called Gasthaus Von Gruinen Garten at the village of Grossbreitenbach, in Saxony. Although he was certain that his parents migrated directly from Grossbreitenbach, my grandfather also placed the Kuhnhausen family in a nearby German town, curiously named Kühnhausen. Like so many hopeful genealogists, he claimed that we had once possessed a Von in front of the K name.

What my grandfather didn’t mention is that Grossbreitenbach has a strong musical history. Fine pipe organs were produced here, destined for cathedrals and churches throughout central Europe. Perhaps he was not aware of it, but my grandfather also overlooked the existence of the Kuhnhausen who was a minor baroque composer of church music.

So we have a family living in or near a famous musical center, possibly with a talented ancestor to their credit. Now, consider that the Hopf family of luthiers were located at Klingenthal, a town on the border between Saxony and the Czech Republic. Both of the villages associated with our family were within a few miles of Erfurt, a scant ten miles apart. Klingenthal is to the southeast, about twenty miles away from Grossbreitenbach, although with the winding local roads, it may have seemed farther. Klingenthal is another German burg with musical connections. It is perhaps best known for a style of concertina developed there, quite unlike the English concertina I play. This one is a heavy cubical beast with what seems like hundreds of buttons on each end. It is popular amongst polka enthusiasts and some East Europeans. Polish immigrants play polkas on them. The Klingenthaler concertina also made it to Argentina with the Germanic diaspora, where it is used to play tango music.

With a musical family in a musical village, a family that owned an inn, and was probably living comfortably for a while, is it inconceivable that one of the children would be encouraged to play the violin using one of the instruments produced in a nearby village by a well-known family of craftsmen? I have no idea when this violin was made, but I have a feeling it left the maker’s bench sometime in the 1830s. Uncle Paul may not have been the first family member to play it. Probably he wasn’t. Paul was born in 1875, one of the younger children of Karl and Amelia Von Marquet Kühnhausen. (Our family did away with the dots over the u when they hit these shores, perhaps to avoid complicated explanations such as the one a German friend named Jürgen had to give when he introduced himself: “My name is Jürgen, with two pricks.”) Paul was in the second shift of immigrants, not one of the sons that Karl took with him when he deprived Herman (father of the writer of the family history I quote below) of his ticket to America (see Illegal Immigrants, published on this blog in June, 2009). Paul was only around ten years old when he arrived in America.

According to my grandfather, the second Herman F. Kuhnhausen, Paul “loved music and got a violin and learned to play it quite well. The violin was the principle means of entertainment in pioneer days. Neighbors would get together and spend the day playing their musical instruments, and some were quite good at it considering they learned by themselves and helping one another.” Later in his book, Herman describes a neighbor, Henry Frank Troh, who organized a local band. “To start the music, he would say, ‘Ince, Swiy, Thri, Spail, Meir, Pete, Jebe [Herman's transliteration]‘ In English this would be “One, two, three, play, me, Pete, and Jebe.’ ” Herman recalls being thrilled by the shining brass instruments the band would play from the back of a wagon covered with star-spangled bunting on special days. If Uncle Paul got a violin, maybe it was one that the Trohs brought with them from Germany. It was hard to find instruments like this in the backwoods of Washington State in the late 1800s.

Amelia Kuhnhausen brought Paul and the remainder of her family to her half-sister’s home in Chicago, and later the whole bunch of them moved West in response to the ad placed by Antone Wellenbrock in German papers in that city. Mrs. Geisler, Amelia’s half-sister, was a child of their mutual mother’s second marriage, and she had moved to America with her husband years before. “Amelia Von Marquet,” according to Herman’s first book, History of the Kuhnhausen Family, “was the only child in her family, as can be assumed from all the facts I can gather. Her father passed away when she was a young lady. Her mother remarried and had two more daughters. They grew up and were married in Germany and came to the United States with their husbands. Aunt Schneidler and Mrs. Geisler were the only names I knew them by.”

He goes on to state that Amelia inherited her father’s estate, including “Gasthaus Von Gruinen Garten (Guest House Von Green Garden [Herman's translation]) in Grossbreitenbach.” She met and married Karl Edward Kuhnhausen in 1857, bearing eighteen children over all. Twelve of them survived, ten boys and two girls. Grandpa, a backwoods author who relied mostly on the unreliable witness of family members descended from these twelve, reported that the Kuhnhausen family started “losing the Inn, so they were beginning to immigrate to the United States as they could.”

Unfortunately, as is the case with a lot of these home-made genealogies, facts as conveyed cannot always be trusted. When Karl Kuhnhausen passed away in 1899 a local paper carried a brief obituary written by one of his sons, Hugo. This son stated that Karl had been born in a town called Hofgarten, in Saxony. That was probably an Americanization of the village of Hopfgarten, Saxony, around a hundred kilometers east of Grossbreitenbach, near Dresden. My experience as a genealogist has been limited to English-speaking environments, although I’ve been privileged to work with the internet, which extends my reach considerably beyond what my grandfather was able to do when he wrote his books. Perhaps this only demonstrates that people in Germany moved, too. Karl (buried in Glenwood as Charles) may have been born in Hopfgarten only to move on to Grossbreitenbach, where he met and married my Jewish great-grandmother.

So how does this relate to the violin I’ve been playing? Hopfgarten still lies within reach of Klingenthal. It’s just in the opposite direction. In fact, it lies between Klingenthal and the other big concertina capital of Saxony, Chemnitz, where the Chemnitzer concertinas originated.  I’ve discovered no evidence linking Hopfgarten with the Hopf family of violin makers. But isn’t it a coincidence?

A strong morning light picks up the way the luthier used a single piece of figured wood for the back. Notice how the grain was angled to provide maximum strength where the points are located above and below the cutouts. Decoration is used sparingly, with a single crescent of black mounted at the base of the neck.

The origins of this violin are likely to remain a mystery. I’m not really interested in spending effort, time and money on a definitive analysis. I enjoy fiddling with its history, creating stories about what it’s been through in its lengthy career. I enjoy putting my hands where people of an older generation placed theirs, with reverence and talent, and hearing the echo of their tunes.

C’est au début de l’Avenue Trudaine, dans une petite boutique à la devanture bleue donnant sur rue, que l’atelier de lutherie de François Varcin a trouvé racine depuis 2003. Rencontre avec un artisan animé par son métier.

Quelques violons et violoncelles sur le côté; sur le plan de travail, un morceau de bois qui a déjà pris la forme d’un instrument de musique. L’atelier du 5 de l’avenue Trudaine vit aux rythmes de cet artisanat qui remonte à plusieurs siècles. Le 9ème arrondissement, François Varcin le connaissait déjà. « Avant de m’installer ici, mon atelier se situait rue Cardinal Mercier. J’ai déménagé pour un espace plus grand et plus lumineux mais aussi pour cette avenue que j’aime beaucoup. Elle est assez calme, assez verte et cela est très appréciable. Je m’y sens bien pour exercer ce métier qui demande de la concentration. » Cette passion, il l’a découverte adolescent à travers son professeur de violon qui a su lui transmettre l’intérêt et le respect pour l’objet. Il suit sa formation à Méricourt dans les Vosges, un des principaux centres de la lutherie en France. Puis, il commence son activité qui s’oriente principalement autour de la restauration ( lorsque l’instrument est très endommagé) et de la réparation ( entretien courant) des instruments du quatuor à cordes ( violon, violoncelle et alto), exceptée la contrebasse . Autre aspect qu’il affectionne particulièrement : la fabrication d’instruments. « Créer des instruments, c’est malheureusement quand j’ai le temps, c’est un peu la « cerise sur la gâteau » de mon travail. J’essaie de me laisser du temps libre pour cette démarche dans mon emploi du temps».

« C’est dans le tour de main du luthier que le talent s’exprime.

« La profession de luthier est très complète, elle demande des qualités multiples mais avant tout de la patience. Ce que j’aime, c’est le dessin, le travail du bois mais également l’aspect plus « design » de mon activité même si, vu de l’extérieur, on pourrait penser que l’on reproduit toujours le même modèle. En réalité, la marge de manœuvre est vaste, jouer sur les courbes est un vrai moment de bonheur. La dimension visuelle et tactile est fondamentale. L’oreille, elle, est satisfaite à la fin. ». Au cœur de ce métier, il y a l’amour de la musique. Les clients sont des musiciens professionnels, des professeurs de conservatoires ainsi que des amateurs. « Au delà de la passion des instruments, ce qui m’anime c’est également le fait que je contribue à faire vivre la musique. A l’ère de l’ultra-communication, la musique est un moyen de communication qui permet un échange direct avec les autres. Ce que je souhaiterais, c’est qu’en présentant mon travail, les gens aient envie de devenir musicien! ». Entre art et artisanat, dans cet atelier, les frontières restent floues. Mais, comme il le dit si bien : « Ce n’est pas au luthier de dire s’il est un artiste ».

Déborah Antoinat

Article publié dans l’édition d’octobre du magazien parisien Le Bonbon, édtion du 9ème arrndissement.

In another few weeks, I’ll be putting my cigar box ukuleles up on the wall for a show at a local restaurant.  The past couple of days I’ve been outside sanding and perfecting the necks.

My photographer friend has some rather artistic shots of the necks in the bright sunlight.

The weather has been beautiful for working outside — a cool 83 F and the humidity is dropping to less than tropical.

Initially I was going to put Sitka Spruce on the tops of all the cigar boxes, but then I realized that probably people would like some of the cool “Punch” and “Cohiba” boxes as they are.  So only a few will have Spruce tops.

I’ve been collecting the cigar boxes for more than a year. When I get over to St. Petersburg every once in a while, there is a great restaurant the Columbia at the end of the pier.  The meals are great and they often have an empty cigar box or two.

Then there is Ybor City nearby.  Some great cigar shops line the streets.  Ironically I am not fond of cigar smoke.

But the boxes are cool.

Para aqueles que se interessaram e curtiram o post anterior sobre customização de guitarras, hoje coloco aqui um vídeo muito legal que dá uma ideia dos limites que essa prática oferece, ou seja: nenhum! Sim… nenhum, pois sua guitarra pode virar qualquer coisa maluca que saia da sua cabeça, desde que você queira e procure os serviços de profissionais competentes, tais como essas luthierias que recomendo como a Guerra Luthier localizada em São Paulo, a Oficina da Música de  Porto Alegre  e a já mencionada N.Zaganin também em São Paulo. Agora veja esse vídeo que mostra algumas guitarras personalizadas que nos dão a impressão de terem vida própria.

My trip to the luthier proved very beneficial, but not for the reason I went there.

Some background: I was quite sure that my new(ish) nylon string guitar had bad intonation. You could tune for open fret, but when you played a note it always sounded sharp. The harmonic didn’t seem to match the 12th fret. I’ve always thought I had pretty bad pitch detection, so I lived with it, but increasingly it became more annoying, especially when I played from a capo. So, I lined up a local luthier to have a look at it.

The luthier is Paul Sheridan, who makes about 10 guitars a year, mostly for overseas buyers. Fantastic guitars, lets come back to that in a moment.

He slings my guitar up on his bench, and immediately begins checking – with ruler and magnifying glass to verify the frets are correctly spaced, and then with a tuner to check frequencies. I was suprised that he wasn’t using a stroboscopic tuner, “Yeah I’ve always meant to buy one, and I’ve been through about four of these (Korg analogue needle variant) so I could have paid for one by now.” Basically, the guitar was pretty good up to the 12th, it starts getting a little bit messy after there.

“If you’ve got a really good ear you’ll hear it, but otherwise it’s pretty good.”

What? I’ve always thought my ear was really bad. “If you’ve been playing for a long while, your ear will improve, you might start to be able to hear the discrepancies.” One thing I mentioned was that I do tend to pull on the strings when fretting, which he noticed while I was playing some stuff later on.  “You should watch that”. Basically “no fault found”, operator error

While I was there I got him to show me some of his guitars. He builds them all out of Australian woods, and has moved to a “lattice brace” on the sound board, basically a grid pattern instead of the traditional fanned bracing. When I played his personal guitar, immediately it has so much sound and body, it was just beautiful. While he continued to work I must have spent 3/4 of an hour just playing it and enjoying it. He didn’t seem to mind, we talked about the sounds (describing different sound qualities is as hard as describing the different tastes of red wine) – and talked about all sorts of other things.

Turns out he doesn’t play the guitar much – but is starting to get back into it. He also seemed at a bit of a life-juncture; wasn’t getting as much joy as he used to from his work. I had to remind him once or twice during our conversation “You’re living the dream!”

He was intrigued with my playing style; well at least I thought he was, maybe he was just being polite We talked about arranging fingerstyle songs, and the classical guitarists he builds guitars for, talked about guitars, and life in general.

He pulled out another guitar, one that he had built with a traditional fan braced soundboard.  I played it for a while then apologised profusely “I like this one better!”  I am a bit of a boring taditionalist, but what is comes down to is what sound you want.  I like a crisp brightness over mellow warmth.  Pauls lattice style gives that warmth – and huge volume and projection – whereas my little Japanese styled guitar is crisp and bright with low volume and projection, but the pickups and amplification make up for it, which is what I wanted to achieve.

I’ve come to realise that in the nylon guitar scene there seems to be two types, Japanese style and European style.  I know this is a gross over generalisation, but at a very simple level when you play a guitar it is either full of warmth and body (European style) or crisp and bright (Japanese style) or neither (look for another guitar )  Volume, projection, ease of play all come into it, but on purely a sound point of view there are the two basic characteristics, and you can’t have both, they are opposite types of sounds.

So I wasted about two hours of Paul’s time playing his wonderful guitars and talking his ear off (I love to talk about guitars and playing them, hence the reason this blog exists).  I came away with a bit of new clarity about what I should be expecting from a guitar, and the realisation that the “problems” with my guitar were actually problems with me.  Thanks Paul.

Even better was him walking me through the construciton of his guitars – all his milling and machining gear, how he forms each part, his use of carbon fibre (?!), his special humidity controlled room for drying and seasoning; basically all the hands on side of guitars.  Fantastic!  I must build myself a guitar or two at some stage in my life

…and probably the biggest tip I got from Paul, when I asked him how I will know when I find the right guitar for me – “It’s like falling in love with a woman, you’ll just know.”

JAW

Sugiro, para assistir, apertar o botão HQ, que melhora bastante a qualidade da imagem (reduz a fragmentação pixelada)

Tudo começou com uma dica simples no Guia do Overmundo, intitulada Flautas de Bambu. A partir daí mantivemos contato.

O Jaime Ollivet, exemplo de generosidade intelectual, está aprumando o espírito e se desfazendo das cargas excessivas para viajar de volta à terra natal dele, o Chile.

Ficou aqui na Ilha, com saídas ocasionais para o arquipélago do mundo, durante mais de 30 anos.

Antes de partir, transmitiu conhecimento ao Guilherme Trevisan, brasileiro, que fica em Florianópolis como referência do trabalho de luthier do Jaime.

No vídeo, ambos falam um pouco sobre as flautas, dizem o que vão fazer da vida e tocam juntos um blues ao final.

Contatos:

Guilherme Trevisan: 48 9991 1848 e gtrevis@hotmail.com

Jaime Ollivet: 48 9166 4069 e jaimeflautas@hotmail.com

Links alternativos para assitir ou baixar o vídeo:

Overmundo

Vimeo

So there I am, sitting on the Double Six beach, watching another Bali sunset, and my peripheral vision informs me of a presence two benches along. He is a wizened, weather-beaten man, looking as if he is made of leather and held together with nails. He is holding an equally battered guitar, which he cradles as if it is the only thing of importance in this life.

We make eye contact – me with curiosity, him with diffidence. He sits beside me, instinctively choosing my right side – the one with the ear that works. We talk. His name is Budi, from Kalimantan, and he settled here a long time ago. From the looks of him, it was probably around Independence Day. I look at his guitar; he tells me that it was made in Jarkarta and cost 800,000 Rp. I think to myself , hmm – perhaps they saw him coming? 

But then I look at his guitar again, more appraisingly this time, and note that it is old and worn – but well looked after, and clean. The fretboard varnish is worn unevenly all the way down to the 14th fret. The tell-tale marks of a player who is unafraid to let his instrument sing tell their own story. He notices my gaze.

“Do you play?” he asks. Well, I did once. Badly, and a long, long time ago. He gives me the instrument and sits back expectantly. I can hardly remember chords that were once so familiar and my fingers feel like the breakfast sausages served at a two-star hotel. For a moment, I am the sober patron who has just been bullied into singing karaoke by his drunken ‘friends’ and is about to die on-stage … but I begin to tentatively explore the strings.

It is like an epiphany. This instrument is … well, let me tell you. It is perfectly in tune. Oh yes, the strings are screaming for replacement, but despite that, the sound is still harmonically rich, with overtones that can only have come from a luthier who knows his woods and his craft – and is so unconsciously skilled that he makes the superhuman task of creating a near-perfect instrument seem easy. The action is light and precise, with the individual notes of every chord being within a cent or two all the way up the fingerboard. The thing is harmonically balanced, with the 12th fret providing perfect octaves and all of the harmonics ringing true.

I play like I’ve always played. Truly, badly, briefly. But what a pleasure it is to hold this instrument and try to coax some simple blues riffs from it.  Like someone else’s docile but faithful dog, it is reluctant to yield its affections to a stranger. But to my surprise, it does yield, and soon begins, like all good instruments, to almost play for me. On hearing the ancient and familiar 12-bar pattern, Budi’s eyes come alive. I hand him the guitar, recognising that age-old muso ignition point where he must either play now or quietly die inside.

So then Budi plays. I am transfixed. It is traditional blues, but with influences from everywhere he has been and everything he has seen. It’s rough and ready, and like a diamond, technically flawed in places. He plays and sings from his heart and soul, not from his head, and my forearms are dimpled with goosebumps from hell in the warmth of the Bali evening. His voice is etched with acid and honey, and there are overtones of broken glass and bourbon, poverty and loss. He frequently stops, usually about half-way through each song, trailing off with an unseeing stare at the horizon, muttering softly “Saya lupa, saya lupa …”  I often forget words to songs too and I understand. He asks me to identify the exotic and mournful chords that he plays, but can’t name. It doesn’t matter. His music is the core of his being, and I am awed.

He will probably never give a concert, or be a performer in the cafes and bars. He probably would not manage to survive the crucible of the recording studio with his soul intact. The wolves of the recording industry would rend the flesh from his bones and dilute his soul enough to break his spirit anyway. I suspect he doesn’t really want public adulation - the act of creation is enough for him. He has no need to be stroked by a large audience – simple recognition by peers is enough for him. His music is his essence.

Budi reminds me of another artist – let’s call her Hellena - that I met in Seminyak. To financially survive, she works behind a bar. To emotionally survive, she writes songs and paints. To me, her paintings are very appealing. Being a Westerner, way too accustomed to being able to purchase whatever I want, I offered to buy a beautifully evocative guitar-themed piece  that resonated with my own psyche. She refused. “My art is part of me”, she said. “I can not sell it, because I would lose it …”  Just as for Budi, her own Muse has a personal relationship with her, and has not yet given permission to share the channelled talent with the world at large.

And that is the rub. Perhaps the best art is to be seen, and experienced, but not owned by any individual. Perhaps the best music is supposed to be heard, but not commercialised, lest it be diminished in some way. I don’t know. I do know that my life has been enriched by serendipitously meeting these two people. Thank you Budi; thank you Hellena.

Those are two words you don’t see together very often (except in the case of Lady Gaga’s avant-garde fashion creations…).  Today, Apartment Therapy highlighted the work of a Georgia architect-turned-luthier who got inspired to start building wooden instruments (including some old-school ones like the cittern) via his architectural work with wood and veneers.  The instruments are gorgeous–take a look!

Alors là je ne pouvais pas garder ça pour moi ! Je suis tombé sur une sorte de perle rare en allant dans une Brocante. En effet, sur un stand assez commun aux autres se tenait un carton avec un bouquin de lutherie posé dessus mais ce n’est pas tout…

La très gentille dame me dit qu’il y a, à l’intérieur le bois pour fabriquer un violon, du bois qui vient du canada (de qualité visiblement) et que son fils violoniste a “boudé” car il n’était pas intéressé.

Seulement, en fouillant un peu plus j’ai découvert qu’il y avait des dossiers contenant des photocopies de manuels, des plans, des gabarits, des notes en tous genres. Je vous ai donc fait une petite vidéo pour vous présenter ce qu’il y a à l’intérieur, de manière assez rapide.

Bon, j’ai pas l’habitude de faire ça alors s’il y a des “euh”, “voila” et d’autres mots un peu timides c’est du à l’excitation et au fait que c’est pas franchement naturel pour moi de faire ce genre de vidéos, mais c’est le contenu qui compte n’est-ce pas?

Voila la vidéo :