Listening to Someone Playing Your Larrivee

[Bubblemaker]

I had the pleasure of hearing a very accomplished guitarist play my LV05 last night!

What a treat!


Bubblemaker!

[musicrowscott]

Given the opportunity I have with the radio program I host and the fact that my D-10 is always out and tuned up during the shows, my Larrivee has been picked on and strummed by all sorts of great artists...Suzy Bogguss, Steve Wariner, Kathy Mattea and many others have played it. A recent highlight was Ricky Skaggs grabbing it and blistering the neck for a while...I think sometimes my Guitar is dissapointed when it gets back in my hands, LOL!

Cheers,

S

[ST]

Sometimes I learn something by listening to what someone plays when s/he plays my guitar.

Sometimes I learn something by watching what someone does when s/he plays my guitar.

Sometimes I learn something by listening what someone says when s/he plays my guitar.

Sometimes listening to someone giggle when s/he  plays my guitar is just downright annoying.

This discussion reminded me of a recent thread started by Tad about The Right Guitar for the Right Person and it raised for me the distinct possibility that

hearing someone else play my Larrivée might not tell me much about the way it sounds out-front to others when I play it.

Here's a thought.

Originally published by Taylor Guitars:

Beyond guitar materials and playing tools, what the player is physically doing to the strings is a huge source of a guitar's sound. Brian likes to refer to one's personal technique as "bone tone." It's the way we hold a guitar, attack and fret the strings — the overall physics we bring to the guitar. A player's bone tone might be described in terms of brightness and darkness. It helps to consider how one's bone tone might match up with the relative brightness or darkness of the shape and woods one chooses.

"Bright players have lots of attack," Brian explains. "As a result, you don't hear the midrange bloom as much. A lot of times they'll complain about a quick decay, that their tone doesn't have fullness. What can that person do? They can play darker tonewoods. They can try playing more with the pads of their fingers versus nails. I also tell people to beware of the death grip with the fretting hand. Some people squeeze so hard that they pull notes sharp. A bright player who presses really hard into the fretboard is making a bright connection there in addition to his or her attack."

Fingerstyle players with darker hands, Brian says, can use a little more nail strike in their attack.
Dark players also can play brighter tonewoods more successfully. "A bright player on a bright guitar like koa or maple might sound thin or wimpy, but a dark player will sound fuller," he says. "So,
by selecting tonewoods, you can take a guy who has really bright, plinky hands, give him a warm-sounding guitar, and he'll tend to sound really good."

Brian has also observed that with more experienced players, controlling bone tone is less about the dexterity of one's fretting hand and more about what one can do with one's picking/strumming hand.

"The hallmark of a seasoned player is someone who can control their dynamic levels from hard to soft, and create different degrees of brightness or darkness by the way they strike strings," he says. "I can always tell mature players by what they do with their picking hands."

Source: Taylor Guitars - Tone