As musicians, we create. However we often need tools to do so, like an instrument. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to create all of the tools needed to create your musical art?
That’s what Gil Draper has been doing over the last 5 years. He truly gets to know his instruments from the inside out because well, he builds them! I am certain that after building the instrument yourself, you do end up playing it slightly differently, or at least can hear it differently.
As a pianist, I know that my chances are quite slim of ever building a piano of my own. One thing that has always stumped me is why pianists typically know very little about their actual physical instrument. Guitarists will obsess about different kinds of wood and pickups and shapes, but many pianists are only able to point out the difference between an unpright and a grand piano.
Its time as pianists to start to get to know our instrument. How does the wood used in building the soundboard change the tone or sustain? How does length effect the piano? What kind of felt produces the best tone?
We all can’t set up a shop building our own instruments. We can all sit down for a short while with an instrument expert and get to know our instrument just a bit better- it will make a difference in your playing.
Gil Draper plays a bouzouki in his home shop on Wednesday, July 8, 2015. Draper, a Knoxville musician who plays in the local Irish music band, Four Leaf Peat, builds bouzoukis (a mandolin-type string instrument) as well as guitars.
Gil Draper works on retopping a 10-string Irish bouzouki in his home shop on Wednesday. Draper, a Knoxville musician who plays in the local Irish music band Four Leaf Peat, builds bouzoukis (a mandolin-type string instrument) as well as guitars.
Gil Draper works on retopping a 10-string Irish bouzouki in his home shop on Wednesday.
Wood shavings and a neon-green pick sit under the neck of an 8-string Irish bouzouki being repaired in Gil Draper’s home shop on Wednesday. Draper, a Knoxville musician who plays in the local Irish music band, Four Leaf Peat, builds bouzoukis (a mandolin-type string instrument) as well as guitars.
Picture by Adam Lau
Wood of various species is saved for instrument projects in Gil Draper’s home shop on Wednesday. Draper, a Knoxville musician who plays in the local Irish music band Four Leaf Peat, builds bouzoukis (a mandolin-type string instrument) as well as guitars.
A recent morning found Gil Draper in his workshop putting a new top on a bouzouki he constructed three years ago during his early days as an instrument builder.
Draper plays bouzouki and guitar in Four Leaf Peat, one of Knoxville’s leading traditional Irish music bands. As a musician and a luthier, he has a keen ear for the subtleties of tone and texture that separate good acoustic instruments from great ones.
The bouzouki, a plucked instrument of Greek origin, found its way into Irish music in the mid-1960s. Regarding the bouzouki in his workshop that day, Draper believed a new spruce top and new bracing would vastly improve the sound.
“I’ve learned a lot since I made this one,” he said. “I made the top a little too thin. My experience with bouzoukis is that you build them as heavy as you can to withstand the string tension. You want that jangly tone, with lots of sustain.”
Picture by Adam Lau
Draper, 36, grew up in Cookeville, Tenn., and moved to Knoxville 13 years ago. Originally a bluegrass player, he fell in love with Irish music after hearing it performed in jam sessions at Patrick Sullivan’s Saloon in Knoxville’s Old City.
For Draper, playing guitar and bouzouki and building these instruments go hand-in-hand. His great-grandfather started a lumber company in Cookeville that operated as Draper Lumber Company until the 1980s, and as a boy, Draper’s favourite activity at summer camp was woodworking.
Picture by Adam Lau
This summer, after working 12 years as a geologist, he started building and repairing stringed instruments full-time. His well-organized workshop is equipped with a full-sized band saw for cutting the instruments’ necks, tops and backs, and with a drum sander for thinning the tops to the desired thickness.
“You want an instrument that’s not too heavy and not too light,” Draper said. “It’s the Goldilocks effect — too heavy and you don’t get as much volume; too light, and you get a muddy sound if you drive the instrument too hard.
“Ninety percent of the tone is the top. The back and sides are the flavoring.”
For the past five years, Draper has been accumulating an array of tone woods. He often builds out of quartersawed Honduran mahogany, Indian rosewood and spruce — the time-honored ingredients of guitar construction — but he also endorses the use of local species like white oak, black walnut and cherry.
“I’d love to build an entire guitar out of native woods,” Draper said. “I played an oak dreadnought guitar one time, and it sounded great.”
During the visit to his workshop, Draper played an eight-string bouzouki he’d built recently. The top was Lutz spruce — a natural hybrid of Sitka and Engelmann spruce that grows in the Pacific Northwest — and the back and sides were built of Indian rosewood.
Tuned to a D tuning, the lower registers of the bouzouki droned like a bagpipe as Draper plucked an Irish reel, “Lady Anne Montgomery,” on the upper strings.
Picture by Adam Lau
So far, Draper has not been able to keep one of his handmade guitars for himself. He calls that the “luthier’s curse,” and he is about to break it by building two Martin-style guitars — an orchestra model for a customer and a dreadnought for himself.
“In the beginning I struggled to build instruments,” Draper said. “Now, I’m building quicker and more accurately. The motions are more choreographed. It has become more of a dance.” Via knoxnews.com
Street Musicians with unbelievable handmade Guitars – YouTube
Check out these kids that built their own instruments to busk with! A broom and a hockey stick?
Street Musicians with unbelievable handmade Guitars (ferielesett)
target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Via youtube.com
How To Make A Fretted Cigar Box Guitar – YouTube
A cigar box guitar tutorial was the first project video of this kind I ever filmed. I’ve always wanted to build a fretted version from the ground up, and for this video I finally got around to it. The goal I set for the design was to use only tools and materials that can be purchased at a local hardware store, other than a cigar box and guitar strings.
