Category Archives: creativity - Page 5

guitar 002 complete

Posted by on May 24, 2010 No comments

This weekend marked the completion of guitar 002. It got its strings Sunday afternoon and a few minutes of playing before the reality of being a parent closed in on the fantasy of being a luthier. That said, I did get a good deal of assistance from novice’s apprentice in history. Some of the results of that help are still visible on the finished product.

The picture is from my phone and thus lacks some detail, but here it is!

all done!

It’s easier for me to pick out the things that went wrong than to talk about what went right. The truth is, this is my second build and I really don’t have a good handle on what I’m doing correctly. The stuff that’s wrong is glaring (to me) but the stuff that’s right is, well, elusive for the time being.

Lessons learned:

1. Take more time when routing the channels for the binding. Make sure it fits perfectly all the way around and makes a uniform surface on both sides. It can’t be fixed later.

2. Check the thickness of the headstock veneer before getting creative instead of after.

stripey!

3. Improvise. It’s fun, makes cool effects, and generates points of interest. Besides, this isn’t life or death. It’s a guitar. Live a little!

ooooh...

4. Buy as many stupid rulers and templates as there are. It’s the difference between 30 minutes and 2 minutes for many processes. When working with an assistant who might not appreciate the nature of certain objects and must be supervised at all times (“Daddy! What this? Uh oh! I drop it!”), the time savings is crucial.

5. Take pictures of every step. Not some of them or most of them. All of them.

dramatic clamp effect!

6. Set aside 4 to 8 weeks for finishing. Suck it up. That’s the only way it’s going to look good.

7. Enjoy being an amateur. It’s wonderful to enjoy doing something well. Have fun with it and relax.

8. For every fault or failure in execution, find a point of interest or something that was done perfectly.

9. Play it!

The next instrument is already in the mold. I have some more materials to acquire and a couple of tools have gone from “nice to have” to “dammit, if I’m going to do this more than once I need that thingy!” Most importantly, the temperature outside is reliably above 90 most days. That means that the ambient temperature of my garage is probably in the upper 90s to 100. That’s not really conducive to doing much of anything with tools or nice wood. So I may piece a few things together in the coming months or just shelf it all until September. It’s unlikely that I’ll let it go that long, but I have things to record and an EP that I promised myself would find its way to the world before the end of June.

It feels good to have so much to do.

five things

Posted by on May 19, 2010 No comments

I’m big on the Five Things List. There’s no way for me to know where I got the idea, but it was certainly from a blog and I know that I started doing it on 21 Dec 2009. In the little notebook in my bag, the pages are filling up with five things that I accomplished today. At first it was a neat little hack to keep an eye on the projects that were getting real face time. Job related items don’t make the list. Only things that are done on my clock count. As a result, there’s a tendency to pad things when only one project is in motion. But the technique is a great way to track values.

most useful tool

In most lists there is at least one reference to my son. Whether we baked some cookies or he “helped” mow the lawn or we read an extra book at story time, he generally makes the cut. There is also always some reference to a musical project. It could be a new recording or a new instrument. Maybe a tool finally arrived or I found a new way of doing something through trial and error. Those things make the list. And there are self care items. Trips to the doctor or errands that are finally done. Reading and listening progress. Things that I do.

But the things I mentioned above aren’t the real trick. The real trick, which I’m still trying to master, is imaging what I want the list to say and making it so. My mom does the same thing but kicks it up a notch. She makes lists of five things she wants to do tomorrow. I tried that too. It works for her because she’s OK with hitting three out of five. When I see that I can’t check off every item, I get bummed out. It doesn’t help that I write things like “Research the history of Luthierie in southern Spain” as list items. So I’m working toward making the list a certain shape. If I hit the general curve, it feels good and pushes me to do more. And I know that at the end of the day I need to write down Five Things, so I’d better have at least that many.

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.

more guitar building

Posted by on May 3, 2010 1 comment

This past weekend wasn’t fantastic as my beloved wife was down with a flu or some other nasty crud. She was pretty incapacitated and our son, who had recently conquered the same virus, was up and about and in need of activity while still recovering his energy. This is generally not how a success story begins around our house. On days when The Dude is recovering from illness he tends to think that he can do more than he is able at moment. This weekend was no exception, but he did help me in my quest to further the building of my latest guitar.

All of the binding work is now complete. I added a detail near the neck joint that I think looks pretty spiffy. When I’m done sanding it all down and get the neck mounted, I will post some detail shots. This is really my first attempt at an instrument that I’m making without a lot of help from a kit. The process has been really, really enjoyable and I have a list of things that I have learned and a pile of TODOs for my next build. I think that I’m starting to really get the basics. In fact, it could be said that I’m almost a real novice!

There are still a couple of purely decorative additions for the headstock, but I think that from here on out it’s mostly finishing and doing the frets. Not a particularly long list of things that need doing, but time consuming enough that they won’t be wrapped up for a couple of weeks (unless I sneak in a really productive weekend).

And tonight, I’m back in the studio. Tunes soon!