This is a piece from one guitar two, recorded during my recent retreat in the cave at the Prajna Mountain Refuge. The album was published to Backstage this week and will make its way to Bandcamp in a few months.
The piece has the working title Wednesday because that’s the day it was recorded. What would it sound like if the cave was really really huge? I used a plugin called Valhalla (perfect name, isn’t it?) to simulate a gigantic cave. The beauty of a simulated cave is that it can be turned on and turned off. What you hear is just my guitar… no other instrument was added. Some people imagine they hear synthesizers but it’s just the guitar and reverb. So now I want to give this treatment to all of the slow pieces from one guitar two, which means there will be a second volume called one guitar two – Big Cave Versions.
Pro-Arté Composite strings offer the traditional elegance of our Pro-Arte’ line, with the added benefit of an elevated bass response. The exclusive composite core bass strings in the set produce a bold, projecting low-end, providing a more influential tone than nylon basses. Paired with black nylon trebles, this set of Pro-Arte’ Composite strings offers a sound which is both alluring and commanding. This Flamenco Tension set delivers a flexible feel, while still maintaining the quick response that is essential for flamenco players.
I started using D’Addario strings around 1990. I didn’t have a Flamenco guitar when I recorded NF. I only had an inexpensive (around $350) classical guitar and used D’Agostino strings for the basses and Savarez strings for the trebles. Or maybe it was the other way around? Under the microscope of the recording studio, I didn’t find the strings to be very dependable and sometimes I had to change strings several times until I found some that were in tune and the overtones sounded correctly. When we started touring in the Summer of 1990 I had to find something more reliable. I tried D’Addario classical strings and liked them. Each set appeared to be identical. There were simply no bad sets. (I think I rejected only one set in thirty years… that’s unbelievably consistent!)
Sometime in 1990 I was added to the list of D’Addario artists and began to receive free strings. D’Addario responded to problems, like when two D-strings broke during the filming of a TV interview in Canada. Within a few months D’Addario changed the design of the D-string, by adding an additional filament on the inside, and it never broke again.
D’Addario developed the Pro Arté composite strings and I used different versions of those. In 2010 I was using the basses from the EJ45C Composites Normal Tension set and T2 Titanium Normal Singles for the trebles. A year later I discovered the black nylon Flamenco set and have been playing them ever since! When I discovered the EJ25B set and put them on the guitar for the first time I knew they were nearly perfect and a huge step forward. The G string fit much better, both in diameter and in sound, and was more in tune. Nearly 12 years later and I can’t imagine anything better. From time to time different string manufacturers have offered me their strings to try but I have never found anything I liked better. I have been a D’Addario artist for so long that I am grandfathered in… my name is not found among the many names of guitarists on their website. That suits me fine, because I am still getting free strings, which is what matters to me.
I sent Stephen Duros a few sets of EJ25B to try and here is what he wrote:
I’ve always been a fan of D’Addario nylon strings and when Ottmar suggested that I try the EJ25B Flamenco strings, I did. They are exactly what I am looking for in a set of strings. The tension is perfect, the tone is great, bold and punchy. This set of strings has all the qualities I want and my guitar has never sounded better.
So this is my ode to strings. These strings work. I don’t have to wonder whether the B and G strings will be in tune for Waiting in Vain… I can expect a set to last about two weeks and for most of that time it will be rock solid. After two weeks I will hear that some overtones have shifted and it’s time for a new set.
PS: I remember when a member of our crew once offered to re-string my guitar. When he saw my disbelieving look, he said that he played guitar himself and knew he could do it right. I remember replying that while I had no doubt that he would do a good job, I considered changing the strings to be an essential part of playing guitar and that there was no way that I would not do it myself. I guess I wasn’t meant to be a rock star! :-)
PPS: I also appreciate that D’Addario has a recycling program. I participated in all kinds of string programs that collected used strings to send them to areas where people can’t afford to buy strings. These programs didn’t usually last long, shipping costs probably being too prohibitive. The D’Addario recycling program has been going strong for a bunch of years and I always collect old strings in a bag.
I have been organizing and packing and throwing away stuff for several weeks now. A 20 yard dumpster was filled with some of the detritus of thirty years – I moved into this house on my birthday in 1992 – and what I wanted to keep was moved into storage. I was exhausted from the work and hadn’t played guitar at all in a couple of weeks. This afternoon a lovely thunderstorm approached the house and I decided to play guitar accompanied by rain and thunder. The house is empty and the reverb in this room is now enormous. I leaned my iPhone against the guitar case and it recorded my guitar and the rain and some thunder.
My friends say it sounds sad. I say that it should sound sad because it was wonderful to live here and to make music here. I am not moving because I don’t like this house and the studio. I am moving because if I don’t move now I will never move. That would be okay, too, but I want another adventure and now is the time.
I recorded around twenty albums in the studio that’s less than fifty yards from this room. The first album that came out of here was ¡Viva!. We mixed the album here after recording it on the road in 1994. The 1996 release Opium was the first album to be recorded and completed here. In those days we still mastered every album at The Mastering Lab in Los Angeles. A few years later we took the late and great Doug Sax’s (who mastered albums for Pink Floyd!) advice who asked me why I was still coming to him for mastering when the material already sounded perfect. So we started to master albums at my studio as well. Innamorare and christmas + santa fe were released in 2000, Little Wing in 2001. If I remember correctly Little Wing was the first album mastered here. In the Arms of Love was the first album released on my label SSRI, in 2002. La Semana, released in 2004, was the first album I engineered by myself. Then came Winter Rose, in 2005, One Guitar in 2006, the binaural album Up Close in 2008, followed by The Scent of Light in the same year. That album was followed by POP in 2010, Dune in 2012, three-oh-five and Bare Wood in 2014, Waiting n Swan in 2015, slow in 2016, The Complete Santa Fe Sessions in 2018, Fete in 2019, and finally the Lockdown and Full versions of vision 2020 last year.
Now I want to do something different. I’ll tell you more about my plans soon…
In the fall of 1986 I visited my parents. During that short stay I bought a student model classical guitar in a shop in Köln. I think it cost me around $300-500. During the first recording sessions for what became NF, in January and February of 1989, this was the guitar I used. The first phase of recording for NF included these pieces: Barcelona Nights, Heart Still/Beating, Waiting 4 Stars to Fall, Road 2 Her/Home, and several more. I have never actually sat down to listen to the difference between, say, the guitar sound of 2 the Night and Barcelona Nights, which were played on two different guitars.
In late Spring of 1989 I bought a guitar from Lorenzo Pimentel, in Albuquerque, that was used during the second phase of recording sessions for NF, in May and June of 1989, as well as to record Poets + Angels and Borrasca.
Sometime in 1991 I bought a guitar from Eric Sahlin that was first used on Solo Para Ti. That guitar, a Blanca Flamenco model, shown on the cover of Solo Para Ti, was with me for a long time and can be heard on every album released between 1992 and 2002.
In 2003 I started using a guitar made by Lester DeVoe and I have played his guitars ever since. I played a Negra model 2003-2014 and since then I have been in love with a Blanca model that was built in 2005 and that I still play today and which can be heard on Fete and vision 2020.
Blanca Flamenco guitars generally have cedar tops and cypress sides and back. Negra Flamenco guitars utilize rosewood sides and back instead of the cypress.
1986-1989: Nameless Spanish Classical Guitar
1989-1992: Loranzo Pimentel Negra Flamenco Guitar
1992-2002: Eric Sahlin Blanca Flamenco Guitar
2002-2014: Lester DeVoe Negra Flamenco Guitar
2015-Present: Lester DeVoe Blanca Flamenco Guitar
While those were the main guitars I also used a Midi-Flamenco Guitar by Keith Vizcarra, first played on the song “Lush”, on The Hours Between Night + Day, and a Negra Flamenco by Keith Vizcarra, used on Leaning Into the Night and several other albums.
What can be learned here is that the value of a guitar does not determine a successful album. NF clearly sold more copies than any album I have recorded and yet it was recorded on a very inexpensive guitar in a tiny studio with a 1/2″ 16 track analog recorder – when industry standard at the time were 1″ 24 track machines. Sometimes the idea is more important than the material used to convey the idea.
I have often used surfing analogies, despite never having surfed in my life. For example:
In order to catch a wave you have to be in the ocean with your surfboard. In other words, you have to create in order to, perhaps, catch a cultural wave of recognition.
Even if you are out there, waiting for a wave, it doesn’t mean that a suitable wave comes along. You can produce work after work, but it may not gain traction with an audience.
Sometimes you are in the ocean AND a suitable wave comes along AND you manage to surf it as far as it can carry you… and then you have to make a second and third album! As my friend Al Masocco, my product manager at Epic Records in the Nineties, liked to point out you have a lifetime to create your first album and about a year or two to create the second one.
(I am posting this again today because I was reminded of Lava during a phone interview with Frank MacKay of JVC Broadcasting. You can find a little background about Lava here.)
Here is another Lava track. This one has the unromantic title Reel 2 Song 1. Such a pretty piece deserves a nicer title, a more evocative title…
