Archive for June, 2011
Day 1 of GFA Convention
The GFA convention is off and running in Columbus, GA. For those of us who can’t be there the GFA has a convention blog going that you can check out here.
Here’s the latest ‘Spotlight’ segment, in which Vinny shares with us Segovia’s practice routine, a new stretch, and plays a really cool fretless guitar.
Here’s a very cool and singular guitar – a Hermann Hauser III guitar from 1990 that he made for Celedonio Romero using a top that was put together by his grandfather, Hermann Hauser I, in 1946. Since Hauser I would have used only aged wood for his tops, it stands to reason that the spruce top is around 100 years old, even though the guitar is only 21 years old. David Collett, who probably knows Hauser guitars better than just about anyone alive, thinks it sound pretty much exactly like a Hauser I. Listen to guitarist Yury Nugmanov playing it:
Another great post from Scott over at Guitarchitecture.org, which I appreciate as someone who’s hit more than his fair share of walls. I used to always think ‘these guys don’t know anything about playing flamenco guitar’, but as I grow up I’m realizing that the advice from the outside is often the most useful to me.
While we had Yury in Santa Monica we thought we should have him record some of our student models, so here he is playing the GSI Studio Series spruce and cedar and the Cordoba C10 cedar.
Our good friend Yury Nugmanov was here all week shooting a documentary about the guitar for Russian TV. The two main things they had to shoot for the film were his visit with Pepe Romero down in San Diego, and his visit to GSI, where he got his beloved Miguel Rodriguez a few years back.
Probably the reason Yury is so good is that he literally can’t put down the guitar. More than pretty much any guitarist I know, he just never stops playing, so we knew he’d be good for some videos as he played a bunch of our guitars. There are more to come, but here are the first three:
I’m pretty excited that we’re going to be carrying Acoustic Image amps, so I thought I’d write a little review that is maybe closer to an ode to the amp that made me a happier guitarist.
In the first and second parts of this series I described two ways that we at the Austin Classical Guitar Society, have experimented with expanding our normal programming. Our “normal” programming is pretty broad: from several major series, to hundreds of annual outreach events, and a vast education program including middle schools, high schools, and opportunities for adult learners as well.
Here’s the third installment of Vinny’s ‘Spotlight’ series, in which he tells us about getting blood to our fingers and shows us a great stretch to get that happening when we’re away from our guitars.
Here’s an interview I did last year with Teodoro Perez, with his son Sergio as interpreter, answering my question about what makes the perfect guitar.
