I started to learn to be a luthier when I was 13 and now I make instruments for a living. Very cool thing and I'm thrilled and excited to talk to other luthiers, learn something or maybe give an advice!
Hit me with anything.
I recently wrote an article on a relationship with an instrument from my point of view. What do you guys think?
How much do you care about the quality of sound in your daily life? Every day I meet people from the music industry and I want to say just one thing – maybe you care, maybe you don't. But you definitely should. With quality comes clarity and understanding. Manufacturers of our common products know that communication is the most important thing in the world. Without it, there's no relationship and no business. They invent good speakers and put it in your smartphone so you can hear not only what others have to say but how they say it - a slight difference in tone makes a huge difference insubstance. You choose a laptop with good built-in speakers to clearly hear the dialogue from a favourite show. And I know people who love music so much they can spend hundreds – or maybe even thousands of dollars on a sound system that allows them to listen to high-quality music.
There's a saying that music is a language we all understand. It doesn't speak words, it speaks emotions. If you want your audience to connect with you, make sure that your instrument tells the same story that you want to tell.
I often answer calls from parents wanting to rent from me and they ask me about their options. In a perfect world I would tell them to come visit me at the end of the world somewhere (Tolkmicko, Poland is such a place – go google it), come down to the basement where I work and search with me for the Holy Grail that is a well-fitted and adjusted instrument. But we don't live in a perfect world and there's not a lot of people that can take two or three days to meet me at my home and workshop. As a result, I answer calls and e-mails driven by a hunch, only having often not-so-well-measured length of arms and neck to help me find the perfect size. So sizing comes first, and of course it's also a very important thing. But the sound... Well, in that case, the sound comes second.
I like to think that choosing an instrument is like buying a wand in a magical world of Harry Potter. It can be as old as you want, hand-made by luthier in Italy, and free from many annoying things interrupting musicians and still not be the one for you. The secret lies somewhere else - in the unique connection between an instrument ant the player. The gentleness of the right hand with the bow lightly touching the strings and their response time - that's when the magic happens. You can imagine that a thick wood would need a firm hand; the thinner the materials are, the more tenderness it would need to sound warm and good. Of course I'm simplifying the matter and there's more to the tone than thickness of the wood. And when I talk about delicacy I don't think only of women and by a firm hand I don't mean a male musician's hand. It doesn't matter.
The differences of every instrument are impossible to see, and sometimes hard to hear, by someone who's not a qualified luthier or trained musician. Without physically touching your next music machine there's simply no way of knowing if it will suit you. Especially when there are plenty of factors that impact the comfort of playing – the size of the neck, the distance between top nut and a bridge, the arch of the bridge, a sound post placement and so on... Some of them, like a sound post and a bridge, are easy to modify and some of them, like the density of wood are simply impossible to change. Starting to see my point? A good painter can make your portrait from a photo that you've send him, but he can also meet you, get to know you and capture your true self in the strokes of a brush. I'd like my every client to have their own portrait within this mysterious piece of wood.
I'm not saying, of course, that you should stop calling and writing e-mails. Please - write, call, send photos (I may be the only person in the world to fit a hand-made chinrest to a children's neck on a base of pictures only). But, my dear clients, students and their parents – once a year (or just once) come visit me. Let's have a conversation, let me observe your relationship with your current instrument and understand the needs of a next one. We can choose something together.The connection between an instrument and it's owner is amazing. Musicians often tell me stories about the strange vibes they get from touching the one for the first time. If you've felt it even once, you're the luckiest man on Earth. And if you didn't, maybe I can make it happen.