starting and finishing

Posted by on May 17, 2010 No comments

On the advice of my diminutive future Power of Attorney holder, I took a personal day on Friday to hang out with my family and work on my guitar a little more. In the process of looking for something (ebony end pins! I KNEW they were in there!) in my closet, I discovered that I have enough wood in good condition to start another instrument. I have a top and back that are joined and roughed out. I have a pair of bent sides (from my first bending attempt) that aren’t badly burned or horribly misshapen. There was even a neck that I had roughed out. That sounds distinctly like a pile of expensive kindling waiting to make music!

shiny!!!

The current project, 002, is still in the finishing stage. I made a few errors with the French Polish that some alcohol (denatured, not Bourbon) solved and I should be ready to buff the finish later this week and get to the business of mounting the bridge and neck. A little time with the belt sander will have a nut ready to go and I can string it up!

The next project, 003, got some work too. I cut out the joint for the neck and routed out the block. I’m a little short on kerfed material, so a little time with the saw will be in order before I can get the stuff glued. I have a few things to order (bindings, purflings, tuners, and bone pieces) but I think I have wood for a rosette lying around waiting for me to get with the program. Plenty to do! The build will be much slower as the temperature of my garage is inhuman most days as we head into the summer.

On top of the projects I mentioned in the last post, this is quite an addition. Exciting stuff!

plans and accountability

Posted by on May 13, 2010 No comments

My brain is on fire with ideas, but the will to execute is running low. This happens seasonally for me. I don’t know if it’s the academic calendar that was drilled into my head for who knows how many years or if it’s the added pressure of the summer in Texas that is to blame (probably a combination) but come May, I am done. And by done I mean, “Get me a beer, I’m gonna go sit on the deck and stare at the lawn” done. Not “Let’s go on vacation” done. No. This is vegetative in nature.

To break out of this last year, I read Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art and it promptly kicked my butt out of the chair and into my studio. Of course I gave my copy to my brother and had to go get another. I’d buy that book 10 times and it still wouldn’t repay Pressfield for the good it did me. I’m going to see if that works. But in the mean time, I will put out a list to the world of the three things that I have to complete before the end of the summer.

mmm...shellac...

First, I need to plan and source my next guitar. It will be another OM with 14 frets to the body. This time, I will do some cool inlay on the headstock and try to push my construction to be closer to perfect.

Second, an EP of the tunes that I have been amassing for the past 6 months. There is plenty in there and another instrumental album is only a week or two of sessions away.

Third, a cloxco EP with Jason and Astra. We worked up a lot of material and we have some stuff that just needs to be ironed out. It all starts in my studio with me laying down some tracks and getting them sent out. No magic. Just a little time in the woodshed.

So there they are. Those are the things and I need to get cracking!

focus and flow

Posted by on May 11, 2010 No comments

The new guitar is getting a French polish. Shellac and a wad of cotton wrapped up in a t-shirt scrap traveling over the surface of the wood in tiny figure eights. With a little boy running around it can be difficult to focus, but this task seems to demand all of the attention it deserves. The result is so uniform and shiny. And deep. It’s like the wood blooms right there as the shellac coats it. The colors change and the detail is more pronounced. It’s hard to ignore the beauty in what has been dubbed a labor intensive process.

Like sanding, where a little material is removed with each pass, the polishing action adds a little at a time. It’s precision work. It would be easy to space out and miss something or ignore a finer detail, but the meditative nature of such a task provides focus. For me, it’s easy to achieve flow in these moments. When the coat is complete and the shellac needs time to cure or when more needs to be made, getting up from my chair feels good. I’m rested. My mind is clear. I feel refreshed.

By the weekend I should be ready to glue on the neck and mount the bridge. I can shape and prepare the nut. The instrument may even be strung and playable by the beginning of next week. Then it’s back into the studio for some recording and back to the drawing board to lay out the next guitar. I wish I could imagine a better pass time, but I can’t.

something I wrote down

Posted by on May 10, 2010 No comments

I scribbled something in my notebook a week or so ago about why we create things. It was this:

Do you know why we build things? Because at some point the BS of consuming and acquiring the work of others become so intolerable as to necessitate the creation of something truly unique and completely of and for the self.

What does that mean?

Shut up and make something.

I wrote a lot of stuff to support the above, but I think that stands on its own.

listening and me

Posted by on May 5, 2010 2 comments

One of the things I do on my lunch hour is write in my journal. There are piles of essays in there on every topic that trips my trigger. Lately, I’m thinking seriously about my relationship with music and the guitar. It’s hard to do that and keep a straight face sometimes. We all want to believe that our relationship with music is unique. That it’s more complex than can be communicated in words. But I honestly believe that it’s like that for everyone. Music is a very different experience in that almost everyone listens to it and everyone who does has a reaction. I have met very few people who are indifferent about music. Ask someone about a genre and you are likely to hear either “love” or “hate” in the response. Seldom do we hear “yeah, I mean, I’m OK with country music.”

As I dig in to how my listening has changed over the last decade or so, it’s strange to see how picky I have become. It’s almost like my time is worth more now that we’re in a world where music is inexpensive and plentiful. And with the increase in the amount of music we have and the nearly invisible barrier to entry for artists, I don’t have the same personal gatekeepers that I once did. The result is that I strike out in fits and grab what clicks and leave the rest. It’s sad to say that I rarely let my iPod go on shuffle for more than two songs before I get twitchy and kick it over to the next song. And lately playlists are a bust as well.

Maybe I’m getting moody in my old age. Nah.

I think it plays into my creative process. I’m not interested in input right now. I want to play and record. I’d hate to think that my subconscious is silly enough to think it’s done listening, but maybe I need a break. Maybe it’s time to push full steam ahead and produce. Rolling into my least productive time of the year, that’s a frightening thought. But we have to ship, right? No point in saying you’re an artist if you never make anything.