{"id":2382,"date":"2013-11-15T10:29:13","date_gmt":"2013-11-15T10:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geraldgarcia.com\/wordpress\/?p=2382"},"modified":"2013-11-08T18:00:55","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T18:00:55","slug":"2382","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/?p=2382","title":{"rendered":"Musicwood &#8211; instrument making and sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/musicwoodthefilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/MusicwoodCoalitionTree-683x480.jpg\" width=\"683\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>For hundreds of years guitars have been made the same way, but now this could all change. A new music documentary, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/musicwoodthefilm.com\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>MUSICWOOD<\/strong><\/a>\u201d follows the journey of a band of the most <strong>famous (acoustic) guitar-makers<\/strong> in the world as they attempt to <strong>save a primeval forest and the acoustic guitar.<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/12002721\" height=\"281\" width=\"500\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/12002721\">Musicwood Documentary &#8211; 2 min trailer<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/musicwood\">Helpman Productions<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guitarworld.com\/acoustic-nation-film-musicwood-tells-story-unique-scarce-woods-used-make-guitars-0\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Link at Acoustic Nation<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Of course, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulfischerguitars.com\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Paul Fischer<\/strong><\/a> already foresaw the problem of diminishing stocks of precious instrument hardwoods and in 1983 he was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship to extend his research into the forest of Brazil.<br \/>\nHe produced many instruments with alternative, non-threatened hardwood species and did a memorable &#8220;blind test&#8221; with John Mills playing traditional Brazilian rosewood and mixed other species (e.g. Kingwood, Jaguar wood) behind a curtain, with the audience invited to judge whether or not they could tell the difference.<br \/>\nNowadays, it is quite common to find instruments made of alternative hardwoods (the most common and long standing being the so-called &#8220;Indian&#8221; rosewood). but Paul was a pioneer who did research with the help of native Brazilians such as Sergio Abreu.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This is what Paul has to say about his trip:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;At the beginning of the 1980s I was awarded a Winston Churchill Research fellowship. This was mainly to do research in Brazil on the supply of Brazilian rosewood, its future availability, and alternatives to rosewood from that region. I was to spend time in Sao Paulo in research institutions forestry management and maintenance and study of different species \u2014 doing the groundwork for a trip into Bahia, Par\u00e1, EspIrito Santo, and Pernambuco. So I flew from the study in Sao Paulo to Belem where I attended an international conference on the sustainability of the rainforest and the best use and management of rainforest materials and species.<\/p>\n<p>While I was in Belem, I went into the rainforest of that region to get a better understanding of how they were being managed and visited timber merchants and lumber mills to broaden the picture of the general state of the timber industry, conversion, and export. I then flew down to the state of Bahia to meet up with an Hungarian timber merchant who specialized in lumber for instrument making and I spent two weeks with him meeting and gathering information about the availability of Brazilian rosewood, what future supplies may or may not be, and gathering samples of alternative woods.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Things were bleak. Many of the timber mills had thousands of logs lying around but the mill was no longer working. They laughed when I asked about Brazilian Rosewood. They didn\u2019t understand I was doing research. They thought I was trying to buy it. From a timber merchant\u2019s point of view, it was uneconomic to try to gather a few logs of Brazilian rosewood. Commercially, it wasn\u2019t worth the merchant\u2019s looking for From Central Bahia, I travelled by bus down through Pernambuco, to S\u00e3o Paulo, stopping in various regions. The future supply appeared desperate.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p tabindex=\"0\" role=\"tab\"><b>I chose seven other woods that I made into experimental instruments\u00a0<\/b>identical in every respect to my normal work. Using one Brazilian rosewood guitar as the reference point, I held a presentation in London where these instruments were played and the audience was asked to judge the results in a blind test. No one could pick out the Brazilian instrument from the others. However, the general response of the audience was skepticism, partly because they assumed wrongly that I was trying to catch them out and expose their ignorance. That was not the purpose at all. It was a serious endeavor to deal with a looming problem, and at the same time gain valuable experience for myself as a guitar maker.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.paulfischerguitars.com\/Images\/Press\/Jungle.png\" width=\"349\" height=\"471\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For hundreds of years guitars have been made the same way, but now this could all change. A new music documentary, \u201cMUSICWOOD\u201d follows the journey of a band of the most famous (acoustic) guitar-makers in the world as they attempt &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/?p=2382\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[107,503,625],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2382"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2390,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions\/2390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/247767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/geraldgarcia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}