The guitar works in accordance with a very simple principle.
Plucked strings cause wood to vibrate, a soundbox amplifies the sound, and the result is what we call the "sound of the guitar".
Building a guitar is also a fundamentally simple process, not unlike many other kinds of craft. Here, as in all forms of human activity, what really matters is how it is done: Michelangelo used materials and tools that are available to everyone, and the same may be said of the musical materials used by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. The things we have before our eyes daily - colours, sounds, matter - can assume a different identity in a particular person's hands, can communicate things previously unknown, suggest worlds that were previously
inconceivable, take on new life: a life that is not inherent in the element in question, but of which the element makes itself a humble and unobtrusive vehicle.
9th March 2008
After a long time without any updates, I'm back with some important news.
Apart from a few technical changes to the web site, perhaps not very visible and yet quite important (including the starting of “RSS feed”), I am proud to finally present, after a long testing time, a new guitar with an innovative and revolutionary project inside. It is my brainchild and it will start a new, fundamental chapter, al least within my work.
Continuing on the way started by Antonio de Torres and by the guitar making of the early 1900, looking for musicality of sound as well as for a light and simple instrument, I have transformed the internal structure of the soundboard, introducing a device very similar to the function of the “soul post” in the instruments in the violin family.
I have obtained a light instrument with an extremely free and flexible soundboard, and a soundbox pitch in Eb (half tone lower than the sixth string) which gives deep and dense basses along with extraordinarily powerful and clear trebles. All this in an instrument with a very powerful sound volume.
This new project radically changes the vibrating response of the soundboard and allows a fine final tuning of the guitar.
Here you can find the description of the guitar and if you click here you can see it as well.
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La Chitarra di Liuteria - Masterpieces of Guitar Making - by Stefano Grondona and Luca Waldner
This book is a rich photographic anthology of the history of the guitar from the late eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. In terms of both quantity and quality, the illustrative material it presents is without precedent. It covers more than fifty of the most representative instruments, instruments that were built by the greatest makers (from Torres to Rubio) and that belonged to the most important figures in the history of the guitar performance (from Tárrega and Llobet to Segovia).
The pictures are accompanied by comprehensive historical, critical and technical notes that combine the expertise of the two authors, a concert performer and a guitar maker (a third expert has contributed a chapter devoted specifically to strings). But the text goes far beyond the merely technical and instrumental, reconstructing an important chapter in the cultural history of Spain.
The compact disc enclosed with the volume has been specially recorded by Stefano Grondona. It provides access to the sound of these historical instruments, some of which have not been heard in public for many years.
The book consists of 228 pages in Italian and in English. It was printed in 2001 by l'officina del libro of Sondrio (Italy). You can find here the online catalogue of the publisher (web site in Italian only).
You can find it in the shop window of this web site, too.
Clicking on the cover of the book you can browse a few pages of the book in .pdf. You need a pdf reader for see them, if you need one you can download it (free) clicking on one of the logos below.
