Blog - BaconWorks

Album Review – Throw Another Fife on the Fire

by bacon

I’ve been waiting for an album like this for a long time. In the music industry they say that the best records have great performances of great material, with great engineering. If you nail those three things, you’ve got a winner. Throw Another Fife on the Fire, an album by a group called Confluence, checks off all these boxes masterfully.

I received my copy today, rushed home from work, and queued it up in my studio, where I can hear every glorious detail sparkling through the monitors.

The album is centered around the alluring fifing of Billy White, Kara Loyal, Emily Barone, and Troy Paolantonio. Anyone who has ever heard a fife knows how harsh an instrument it can be in the hands of the less experienced. Fortunatley the fifing on this album is not being performed by the less experienced. Instead, they are professionals in the truest sense, and the tonal quality of every track is lush and beautiful. Sometimes it is bright and happy, other times it is haunting and dark, but alway smooth, clean, and effortlessly performed. And for recording geeks like me, it is impeccably engineered.

The first track, which includes the classic Hey! Johnnie Cope Are You Waukin’ Yet?, might lead you to believe that this will be a traditional fife and drum album, something you might expect from the United States Army Old Guard Fife & Drum Corps. But I believe it is a well placed trap, as the performers are all present or past members of the illustrious aforementioned organization.

One measure into the fife duet of track two, performed by the very talented Billy White and Kara Loyal, will quickly have you rethinking what you thought this album was going to be. The track, entitled A Team, and many others, were written by Billy White. The duet, which starts off lively and in a minor key, has three movements, including a lovely melancholy second movement. The structure of the melodies, harmonies and movements immediately sets it apart from the traditional structures of fife music.

Track three takes another left turn down a moss covered cobble stone street leading you to a cozy pub, maybe in County Clare, where a guitar provides a heartbeat intro for a slow jig called Home Alone. The guitar, performed by Josh Dukes, who is one of the few Americans to win an All-Ireland championship on the instrument, compliments the jig with a perfectly understated rhythm. Josh’s talents appear throughout the album, including a swift reel where the tonal quality of his guitar is reminiscent of the great guitarist, John Doyal.

The space that is carved out in the first three tracks allows the musicians to explore a vast array of musical styles from Celtic, to Bluegrass, to Classical, and even a mixed meter Jazz oriented tune, that I admittedly wrote twenty-five years ago. The performers deftly weave these styles together into a mesmerising tapestry that anyone would want to hang on their wall. Each track has its unique charm, and new musicians and new instruments are introduced throughout, all anchored by the fife. Have you heard a five string banjo or mandolin on a fife album before? You will on this album, and they’re performed by a seasoned master, Ryan Mullins. The color that his bluegrass-style playing brings to the album is undeniably gorgeous. His playing on The Eighteenth of December compliments the fife like a warm summer day.

Are there drums, you might be wondering? Yes, and they are brilliant. Dave Loyal and Mark Reilly have created beautiful tension, in a tune called Evil Olive, which loops back onto itself like a palindrome. Each track they are on is flawless, crisp, and well crafted.

In addition to Kara and Billy on the fifes, there is Emily Barone and Troy Paolantonio, who come to the fife through years of classical training the flute. Both are incredibly accomplished musicians with a long string of accolades, and both bring a sensibility to the fife that is essential for the complex material presented on this album. Their energy shines through on every duet, trio, and quartet they perform.

The album rounds out the way it began, with a nod to tradition. But this album also builds on the tradition of fifing and illustrates how a well placed guitar, banjo, or mandolin can bring something new to a musical form that is hundreds of years old. It is a grand addition to the catalog of fife and drum albums. It makes me happy, as good music should, and will get many rotations in my house.

You can find Throw Another Fife on the Fire on CD Baby.

Uncategorized

Live on WGBH!

by bacon

I had the great pleasure of joining Skip McKinley and Dan Foster on Brian O’Donovan’s show, A Celtic Sojourn, on WGBH. Brian is a legend in the Celtic music world who has done more for the music in the United States than just about anyone. He’s an affable show host, deeply knowledgeable, and a master promoter. It’s a real honor to perform on his show.

The show was at the WGBH studio in the Boston Public Library. Here’s me with Brian in the background.

Out in front of the studio is the Newsfeed Cafe, which is a bright and lively place to grab a cup of coffee or a bite to eat while listening to tunes.

Here we are, lashing away.

A nice shot with Brian.

Lastly, here is an tune from our practice session prior to the performance:

rowing

You Can Never Set Foot in the Same River…

by bacon

The first time I rowed on the Charles River our man in the seven seat jumped out of the boat and swam to shore with his oar. True story. We were competing in a college head race and had just rowed passed the starting line where the coaches stood watching, under a bridge, and around a corner when his oarlock broke off. He made the decision to jump out of the boat because a month earlier the slide on his seat broke during a race and afterwards our coach gave him hell. ‘If you’re in a boat and you can’t row, get the f*** out of the boat!!’, he yelled. So, he did. When our seven seat got to shore he crawled up the banks, waved to us with his oar in hand, and turned to run back towards the boathouse with all the coaches. Oh, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when he showed up all sopping wet with his oar while his crew raced on without him!

I was delighted with the day’s events and thought it was fantastic story to end my short rowing career. Nobody would remember who won the race, but everyone would surely remember the crazy guy that jumped out of the boat. I was also happy because I had just rowed in the Charles and it brought me back to the day that I first watched a race on the same river.

A few years prior I had moved to Brookline, MA to attend my freshman year in art school. My new girlfriend was visiting so that we could watch the Head of the Charles together. Just before starting the semester, she had given me her class ring as a symbol of her new love, which I proudly wore on my pinky as we walked along the banks of the river holding hands. It was a miserable, raw, drizzly October day, and I couldn’t imagine what it was like for the people on the river, even though I did have this faint sense of envy. How glorious it must be to hear the crowd cheering as you battle your way under a bridge fighting another boat! My sense of envy vanished quickly, however, when I looked down and noticed the ring on my cold raw pinky had slipped off and disappeared somewhere along the muddy embankment. We spend the rest of the afternoon hopelessly looking for it while I felt like a heel.

As good fortune would have it, a kind BU student found the ring several weeks later and shipped it back to the school that was printed on the band. The school, miraculously, was able to return it to its rightful owner by announcing the initials engraved on the inside of the ring over the school PA, and all was right with the world.

I shared the “crazy guy jumps out of boat” story and the “stupid boyfriend loses precious ring” story with my two boys last year when we attended the Head of the Charles for the first time as a family. As we watched the race I began to explain the intricacies of rowing, or at least what I could recall of them. I explained how it’s a sport with a strange combination of power, endurance, finesse, and mental fortitude. I also explained that rowing is a very self-selecting endeavor, which was something I discovered during our first practice when the coach had the eighty-five guys trying out for the team run five miles as a warm up. As I rattled on about the glory days, they heard excitement in my voice and asked if I would someday want to row in the Head of the Charles. Nonsense, I thought, life is just too damn busy, and those days are gone.

Apparently I was wrong, and, oh, if I had a nickel for every time. As luck would have it, those days weren’t gone after all. During this past Summer a motivated, inclusive and joyful organizer at my company started a rowing club, which met one night a week. Upon hearing about the club, I asked my family, over dinner, if they would mind me joining. Before I knew it, I was in a boat for the first time in…gulp… twenty-five years!

After the first practice I realized that on the “totem pole of fitness” my level was in the dirt. I, therefore, started working out more on the erg so that I wouldn’t suck so much wind during our weekly row. As the Summer sessions progressed there was quiet talk of entering a boat into the Head of the Charles with some of the more seasoned club rowers, and not long after I found myself starting to prepare for the largest regatta on earth.

The Summer days got shorter and our practices started to lean into the darkness of night, or begin at dawn as the fog rose off the river; pauses at the half slide, cut the cake drills (which, sadly, do not involve cake), stroke rate drills, and rowing past boat houses that I hadn’t seen from a river since my twenties. While my hands went through cyclical patterns of blistering and hardening from the constant feathering of the oar, I regularly bothered the experienced, powerful, and youthful competitors in the boat with requests on how to organize my endurance training, and I shared anxieties of fitness with some of the “wiser” competitors in the boat.

As race day approached and my preparation was coming to a close, I was thinking how each chapter of my Charles River experiences have been different, and I pondered how it is true that ‘you can never set foot in the same river twice.’ I’m no longer eighteen, or twenty-three, but I am determined to do whatever I can to stay in the boat and keep rowing.

During the morning of the race, as I was trying to find ways to calm my nerves, my wife, once again, gave me her class ring as a symbol of love and support. This time I was determined to not lose it! And as I made my way to the boathouse I was overjoyed with the idea that I’ve already won, regardless of what happens on the river.

Selfie at the Start

Fighting the Wind

Bad Ass Bow Three

Passing the Competition

Thanks to all my teammates for making the Head of the Charles possible and kicking ass!

travel

God’s Mona Lisa

by bacon

I was standing in front of the Mona Lisa, nuts to butts as they say, sweat pouring off me and onto all my adjacent neighbors from around the world. Four security guards were frantically working to keep the undulating crowd from heaving too close to Leonardo’s masterpiece, which is layered behind impenetrable glass. One of the guards was a young woman in her twenties with her hair tied back and wearing large round glasses that seemed trendy in Paris, but unlike anything I’ve seen in the States since the eighties. This young woman took the lead in keeping the hoard at bay. Her job required her to be constantly strict and vigilant. She looked exhausted, and as I jostled and pushed in the crowd, twenty feet from the worlds most famous painting, I briefly contemplated how miserable she must be.

My attention quickly shifted back to how miserable I was sucking in everyone else’s exhaust. And I feared that any disturbance in the crowd could lead to a deadly stampede. I reached back to grab the hands of one of my children to ensure they were o.k. There seemed to be no way out. To make matters worse, nobody was actually looking at the painting directly. Instead, everyone was looking at the subtle smile in the painting through a cell phone as they snapped photos. The worst offenders tried to contort their bodies in the packed crowd to take selfies.

As an aside, the iPhone craze within the Paris museums was enough to drive me to create this meme:

Anyhow, as I stood there in the middle of this madness, I began to wonder why. Why would somebody take a crappy photo of a painting that you can find easily online or in a book? Why was I standing here in this mob? Standing there, disgusted with myself for contributing to this young woman’s misery and my own, I started to think about the importance of travel. Is it meaningful, in any way, to have seen the Mona Lisa in person? Probably not. I learned more about social behavior watching the people check off their bucket list items with lame selfies. Had I been able to stand close to the painting, quietly studying the chiaroscuro, I’m sure the experience would have been infinitely better, but that wasn’t the case.

Standing in a queue to climb Notre Dame, and being smushed through the Palace of Versailles were similarly exhausting experiences. I’m not suggesting it was all for not, there were many wonderful moments in the Louvre, and many of the other must-see attractions in Paris. But the experience forced me to consider what I really wanted out of the remainder of my trip. First, I wanted to go somewhere that wasn’t so crowded that I feared for my life. I wanted to go somewhere that wasn’t on anyone’s bucket list. Second, I wanted to get to know some locals, and learn a bit about their world.

Rocca Sigillina sits nestled on a small ridge below the imposing Apuan Alps, in the province of Massa Carrara, in the province of Tuscany, Italy. There is nothing in the guidebooks that tells anyone to go to Rocca Sigillina. You have to take a chance and go there on your own accord. To get there you drive a car, preferably a tiny one as the road up the mountain winds through a half dozen hairpin turns. In spots the road is only wide enough for one vehicle. If another car approaches, you play a game of chicken to decide who gets to pass first. As your car growls up the steep incline you pass religious artifacts built along the roadside, which, for me, were subtle reminders to ask God to keep us safely on the intended part of the road.

The road ends at the church.

On the church is a clock steeple, which we discovered is alarmingly loud. You park on the road near the church. All the homes fan out on the ridge below the church, and you get to them by walking down narrow cobblestone alleyways that were built eight hundred years before the invention of the motor vehicle.

Rocca Sigillina was built in the 1100’s as a fortress, and thus, everything is made of stone, save for the wooden doors, the metal gates, and the red clay roofs. By today’s standards it is a very difficult place to live. Upon first walking through its streets it felt abandoned. I felt entirely alone in this magical, but imposing space. As I quietly moved through the town, however, I started to see and hear sounds of life. The first sign was a skittish band of alley cats that clearly saw me as an outsider and hissed when I got too close.

Signs of human life also started to emerge. Around one corner stood a stick and home-made broom carefully placed against a wall, along with a pair of old leather shoes.

Not long after I ran into a pair of elderly gentleman, one being the owner of the aforementioned shoes, and a dog. ‘Come ti chiami’ I cautiously uttered, hoping that I correctly asked his name, but knowing that my Italian pronunciation was surely sloppy. ‘Angelino’, he said. ‘Mi chiamo Greg’. The other man’s name was Bruno. Neither spoke any English. Had it not been for a younger man, named Marco, that came around the corner, our conversation would have been cut short given that I only had a few generic phrases under my belt. Marco had just enough broken English to give us a cursory understanding of what we were looking at, and to tell us that very few people live here year round anymore. All were very polite, and they allowed me to take their photo before we parted.

We stayed in Rocca Sigillina for two nights. Each evening and each morning I wandered the dormant streets, occasionally meeting someone new, but mostly taking in the sights, sounds, and smells.

We stayed in the first floor of a two story home that had been completely modernized, including a beautiful pool looking over the valley below, while still retaining its old world charm of vaulted stone rooms.

Our host, Giovanna, later informed us that the previous residents in our accommodations were ‘mucca’, which after some animated translation efforts we learned were cows. Incidentally, the pronunciation of mucca is amusingly not that far off from ‘moo cow’!

During our first evening living in the barn, as it were, Giovanna’s family had a load of wood delivered for the winter. As we lounged around the pool, gazing out over the mountains, I realized that Giovanna, the home’s owner Barbara, and two older women were moving and stacking the newly delivered cords of wood. As everything in Rocca Sigillina is built into the steep landscape, moving the wood involved setting up a series of foot-wide PVC pipes to transport the wood from the church where it was unloaded, down over a stonewall, then over a clay roof, and into the yard below. The wood then needed to be carried and stacked into a shed. The pool would have to wait. It was clear to me that the only thing to do was to gather my two boys and help.

As we transported wood together, unclogged log jams in the PVC piping together, and collected a few cuts and bruises from the two hours of hard work together, the language barrier dissipated. Giovanna‘s three young boys, Brando, Fillipo, and Leonardo, joined the party and handed me smaller logs exclaiming, ‘piccolino!’ Marco, again, came around the corner and helped. ‘Beira’ was put out as refreshments, and they referred to me as ‘Grrega’ with the r’s slightly rolled, and we were thanked graciously for our help after all the wood was stacked.

When the work was complete, we retreated to our vaulted kitchen for some supper. Within minutes, there was a knock on our door. It was the littlest boy, Brando, who had come to offer a few band-aids for the scrapes and cuts we acquired during the wood hauling.

The next morning, as I again walked they alleyways, I met new characters. Ernesto was the first. He pointed to me as he approached while walking his dog and exclaimed, ‘Grrega…Boston’. I’ve learned, from the small fishing village in Maine where my family is from, that gossip travels fast in tight knit communities. Apparently that is true in Italy as well as it seemed he had heard of me. The next character I met further down they path was Giancarlo. I also learned that every man or boy I met in Rocca Sigillina has a name that ends with the letter ‘o’. Giancarlo, it seems, may be responsible for the alley cats, and they were all much nicer to me when they witnessed the two of us together. Upon first meeting me, Giancarlo extended his hand to shake mine and inquisitively asked, ‘American?’ He then proceeded to show me around a bit, opening doors to parts of the fortress, and pointing out subtle carvings in the stones that I had walked by multiple times without noticing.

I could only vaguely guess the meaning of one out of twenty words he said, but he proudly continued his tour for me, and I was happy to follow. He shook my hand again as we parted and continued up a cobblestone alley with the Apuan peaks looming in the backdrop. I was reinforced with the notion that lending a hand the previous day had resulted in good will from the inhabitants of Rocca Sigillina.

During our short stay my understanding of Rocca Sigillina, even with constraints of language and few occupants, started to come into focus like a jigsaw puzzle being solved one piece at a time. Many of the abandoned buildings were essentially animal barns that were no longer needed given that there is now a grocery store within a twenty minute drive. The more I looked and listened, the more I saw life as opposed to the absence of it. Everything started to feel quietly alive.

On one walk I saw an old upholstered chair oddly hidden around a seemingly benign corner.

Upon further investigation, the chair was covered from the rain, but just feet away from a view you can’t pay for. This chair, made for comfort, was likely placed there intentionally by those that knew of the beauty that lay beyond. The contrast was striking.

I stood there, proud of my sleuthing and subsequent discovery, basking in front of God’s Mona Lisa. The landscape dropped away from the Tuscan orange rooftops into a valley below. Off to the left, on a ridge similar to where I stood, was another village, or ‘borgo’ as they say, with the glimmer of sun hitting the distant rooftops, a church, and a clock tower that always rang about two minutes after the one in Rocca Sigillina. To my right was an untouched ridge carpeted in green with just a hint of rust. Beyond the village in the valley rose a wall of mountains layered like spectators on grandstands, receding back towards the soft morning horizon. It was a perfect work of art and I was breathless with excitement. I had to take a picture.

Damn. At least I didn’t need to fend off a crowd while doing so.

music

New Book – Sea Over Bow

by bacon

John Ciaglia and I have been diligently writing new music since the release of The Last Grand Chorus in 2016, and are now excited to present the results of our latest collaboration in a book called Sea Over Bow, which will be available on July 20, 2018! Greg’s melodies are influenced from a variety of traditions including music for the fife; Celtic jigs, reels, hornpipes; sea chanties; and even French bransles. Meanwhile the harmonic arrangements have been masterfully crafted by Ciaglia. Ciaglia’s writing was described in our last book by Jim Clark:

No one, to my knowledge, has written more multi-part arrangements for the fife, and no one has done so with a firmer grasp of and sincere dedication to the principles of eighteenth century harmony (leavened with occasional forays into a kind of neo-Bartokian modal vocabulary).

~ James Martin Clark, Ph.D.

The book includes 125 pages of music, each tune arranged in four voices. If you are interested in purchasing a copy, please contact me and I will reserve a copy for you. The price is $30.

You can hear examples of the music on soundcloud:

music

The Last Grand Chorus

by bacon

The Last Grand Chorus is a new book of music that was published in July 2016 by Greg Bacon and John Ciaglia. Greg is the author of all the melodies, while John is the master behind all of the harmony arrangements. There are over seventy-five original melodies that are drawn from the traditions of early American martial music, inspired by Celtic jigs, reels, hornpipes, and salted with sounds that hint at the great sea chanties from the past. Each melody is beautifully accompanied with harmonies that are crafted in a style reminiscent of the Baroque era. Each of the 130 pages of music is arranged in four voices.

Listen to a few of the charts that will be included in the book!

Also, Here is an example from the book:

If you are interested in purchasing a copy, please contact me and I will reserve a copy for you. The price is $30.

Thanks!
Greg

music

Greg Bacon and John Ciaglia Collaborating on Music Book…

by bacon

Back in nineteen-eighty-seven I went to the Westbrook Fife & Drum Muster where I bought my first fife and drum recording. It was a white cassette of the first Ancient Mariner album, which had been released seven years prior. It was one of the few Westbrook Musters where I couldn’t wait for the weekend to end. I desperately wanted to hear what was on that tape, and to do so required making the trek back home where my boom box sat waiting for me in my Massachusetts living room.

The tunes started to roll, White Cockade, Adams and York, and Sailors Hornpipe. I was immediately drawn in. I was then seduced by the singing of Ruben Ranzo and the seamless transition to Clapboard Hill. All of it great and exuberant, but also fully within the boundaries of what I had expected. I had, after all, been watching those barefooted bastions of sea music from the time I was a little boy and attending Sudbury Musters in the mid seventies. Just as side one was coming to a close, however, the boundaries of fifing as I understood them were breached.

Suddenly, from my crappy little speakers, came classical music fused with a complex matrix of fifes spinning around tunes that felt traditional, but not structured like other tunes I had learned. There were too many fifes for me to track and I went into a dizzy trance as the music moved from one tune to the next; a beautiful melodic waltz; a single fife sliding into a slip jig with the others soon in tow; tempo changes; jigs; reels; breaks; ornaments; teases; and something wild on the end that didn’t make any logical sense but seemed like the only way to end. I clawed for the liner notes, praying to God it wasn’t going to have some lame title like Sonata in D. It was… The Sea of Ale and the Dock Street Mermaid. Miraculous!

Hearing The Sea of Ale completely changed my relationship to music. After that I joined the Ancient Mariners. I started writing melodies. I signed up for a music theory class in my high school, even though I had never played in any school band, and the music teacher had no idea who I was. I would also sit for hours in front of a double cassette deck in my home, recording a melody onto one tape, then playing along to that recording while re-record both the playback and my playing onto the other tape. It was a poor mans way of overdubbing and multi-track recording. It sounded like shit. But I learned the basics of writing harmony and developed a lot critical listening skills.

I also discovered, through much of my own trial and error, that those beautiful harmonies on the Sea of Ale must have been created by someone with immense knowledge of classical music theory, and by someone that must have spent years honing the art of penning these beautiful contrapuntal settings. Writing harmony is freaking hard. You may be able to accidentally work your way into a single line harmony of passable merit, but writing something with four voices is akin to a tight rope walk over a canyon while juggling fire and whistling Dixie. The results would be disastrous for mere mortals.

I later learned the juggler and harmonic arranger of Sea of Ale is John Ciaglia. Through the years I got to know ‘Ciaglia’, as his friends call him. I marched in the Mariners with him, played in an occasional quartet, drank wine in the Kasbah, discussed music, and developed a true appreciation for his evolving art. Also, through all these years, I’ve continued to write new melodies.

Then, one day in early 2015, I got an email from Ciaglia out of the thin blue air. He had found a few tunes I had published years ago and wrote arrangements for them. Coincidentally I had just finished writing a new tune, so I sent that along and asked if he’d be interested in writing some parts for it as well. A few days later I received another email with a gorgeous arrangement of my plain little tune. From there a collaboration has ensued that has resulted in a hundred pages of quartets. A hundred pages!!! Me writing the melody, he writing the harmony.

For me it’s been a magical journey that started with first hearing the Sea of Ale, and now consumes me in a sea of writing. In the summer of 2016 we plan to publish these works. Until then, the writing continues and I offer to you this example that I received in my email today; a four voice arrangement of a melody that I wrote a few weeks ago called Cleopatra’s Needles.

I hope you can hear the enjoyment in what we are doing, and in turn find enjoyment in listening.

Uncategorized

Howard’s Lesson – Let the Good Times Ring

by bacon

With all the focus on ALS and the Ice Bucket Challenge in the last couple of weeks, I thought it would be appropriate to share an article I wrote back in 2007 on the topic. To set some context, my music group, The Ancient Mariners, spent the week in Switzerland with our brother organization, The Swiss Mariners, playing music, performing, and all around general merriment. After that trip I wrote a series of reflective articles about our experiences. This article focused on and payed tribute to my good friend, fellow Mariner, and ALS victim, Howard Hornstein.
———————————————————————————-

Music is many things to many people. For some it is relaxing, others energizing. For some it is therapy, and some healing.

I know of one man where music was his lifeline. It was the strand that connected him to the living. Though it may sound like hyperbole, it is not. Music was the needle that wove together a tapestry of friendship and love that buoyed him and actually kept him alive. This man, this Mariner, was diagnosed with ALS and given only a short period to live.

Howard

ALS is a horrible disease where if you don’t die quickly, you gradually lose the ability to move. You notice that your arms are shaky when you pour a glass of milk. You get tired walking to the mailbox. Putting on your own cloths becomes difficult . Tasks like brushing your own teeth become impossible. Eventually you find yourself entirely paralyzed, unable to talk and locked inside your own body. The sick irony is that you are entirely aware of your demise. ALS does not affect your brain, it affects your neuromuscular system, leaving you to contemplate all the things you would like to do but can’t.

My friend, Howard, upon being diagnosed with ALS and well aware of his fate, realized he had a decision to make. Before he would lose his ability to take matters in his own hands he had to decide if he wanted to live through the torture. So, one evening, when no one was home, he went out to the barn. Locked all the doors. He got into the car. He put the key into the ignition. He sat there. Thinking. What will I have to live for? How will I find any happiness? How much of a burden will I be to the people I love?

As he sat there contemplating his options his mind wandered back to an old friend. He heard this friend say to him, ‘You have two choices. You can choose to live, or you can choose to die. If I had half your ability and determination, I’d choose to live. This could be the greatest adventure of your life!’ Howard then took the keys and removed them from the ignition. He got out of the car. Unlocked the doors, went back into his home and lived happily ever after.

There were no medical miracles. His body ultimately failed him and he lived entirely paralyzed for years, physically paralyzed that is. But, the part about living happily I believe to be true. He found happiness in his friends. He found happiness in his children, and he found happiness in his music.

Howard was a fifer, a chanteyman and was learning to play the concertina. When he could no longer play the fife, he sang. When he could no longer sing he wrote. He wrote harmony parts for the Ancient Mariner Chanteymen. He wrote songs. He wrote poetry. He wrote a book. He did not write using his hands, they had long since failed him. He wrote by using a computer that read his eye movements, the only muscle control he had.

In doing so, all of us who new him, learned so much about living life with all you’ve got, and making the choice to be happy.

You may ask, ‘what does any of this have to do with Switzerland?’ It has to do with the lessons we learned from Howard, who was, years ago, freed from his shackles. It has to do with how we share those lessons with new Mariners everywhere. It has to do with the music he left for us in hopes that we would always sing it together. When we play and sing, we are sharing our love for music, brotherhood and the celebration of life with all those who care to listen or dare to join us. In Switzerland, audiences came to listen, which reaffirms for us all the lessons we’ve been taught by men like Howard. We all have to make choices. Our choice, as Mariners, is to do our best to celebrate while we can.

Howard’s lesson was put into words in a song he wrote called Let the Good Times Ring:

So before our time is nigh
Teach our children how to sing
So they may raise their glasses high
And let the good times ring
~Dr. Howard Hornstein

———————————————————————————-

When I look back over this article today, I think there is a simple lesson for everyone, which is to work damn hard to celebrate what you have and find a way to bring light to the world. Howard was living proof of the human ability to do just this, even in the face of a terrible disease. The Ice Bucket Challenge has brought some light to a very dark room. I wish Howard were here to see it.

Take a listen to some of the words and music that Howard left for us, recorded back in 2007 in Switzerland by Kevin Brown and Sam Moor.

guitar

Guitar Building: Templates and Molds Part 2

by bacon

In my previous post I completed the first piece of the MDF mold. I now need to make eleven more exactly like it, which will then be stacked an glued together. Here is the picture of the master MDF piece that I will base the others on.

I used this piece as the master and traced all others from it.

I repeated this step for the remaining ten pieces, and then cut them within an eighth of an inch of the line on my band saw. Here is the stack of rough cut pieces.

I was concerned about how I would make all these exactly the same and how they would be precisely stacked and glued. My plan was to use a flush trim router bit and to pattern match against the first MDF piece I made. Here is a picture where I’ve drawn two boards stacked on the left. The bottom board is the master, the top is rough cut and needs to be trimmed flush to the master. On the right is a picture of the router bit. It has a bearing on the bottom that rides against the master board and does not cut. Then above the bearing is the cutting part of the bit. It will trim the rough board to be exactly flush with the master.

Here’s what the router bit looks like in real life…

I also decided that I would drill two 3/8 inch holes in both the master and the rough board and us a 3/8 dowel as a way to help keep them well aligned.

Here’s a photo after the drilling…

With the boards drilled and doweled, I clamped them to the bench to begin routing.

Now, I have to pause here to say that I’ve never used a router. I’ve took wood shop both in high school and in college, but never used a router. After much deliberation I decided to buy a Bosch fixed base router, with a plunge attachment. I spent an entire evening reading about router safety, with full intentions of turning it on for the first time. After reading a number of horror stories, I decided to have a beer instead. The fear stemmed partially from a minor accident I had in the shop a few weeks ago on my drill press. I learned a valuable lesson about clamping my pieces and was fortunate to have only a bruised hand and some minor cuts to show for the mishap. Turning the router on would have to wait for another evening.

A few weeks later I was ready. I spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with the machine, plugged ‘er in, and pressed the on button. Here was my first attempt at using the router (the router is off in this picture).

I’m happy to report that it worked as planned. I will say that the dust from the router was crazy and I decided that the rest of the routering would have to happen outside.

Here are the two boards side by side. They look great!

I’ve repeated this process for each board and have used the holes to stack the boards perfectly upon each other. Just a few more to complete.

Here are all the boards routed and stacked.

Next steps involve gluing the pieces together and creating end blocks to hold the two halves together. But that is for another day.

Uncategorized

Guitar Building: Templates and Molds

by bacon

One of the first steps in building a guitar is to build a mold, which the guitar will be built in. This is an important step in guitar building, and what I’ve read is:

If you can’t build the mold, you can’t build the guitar

The mold helps set the bent sides, and provides a stable place to build the guitar. Here is an example of what I’m looking to build. In this example you can see that they have the sides of their guitar braced into the mold.

There are many ways to build this mold. I’ve settled on trying to build one out of layers of MDF, mostly because I can imagine building this with the tools I have. Before building a mold, however, one builds a master template, usually from some sort of plexiglass-like material. The template is the master shape of the guitar. But, unfortunately, before you can build a template, you need to decide what guitar you’re building. So, 1 – decide on guitar shape, 2 – make plexiglass template, 3 – build mold. So far this project feels like three steps backwards, one step forward.

After much angst, I’ve settled on a design based on Martin’s classic 000-28VS, and I was able to get detailed plans for the 000-28VS from ultimate-guitar-plans.com.

Once I had the plans, which are life size, I used an exacto knife to cut out the shape of the guitar from the paper plans. I picked up a piece of Lexan, which is sort of like plexiglass, but was a bit more flexible and thinner, at Home Depot. I bought a piece that was bigger than I needed, assuming I might have some false starts. The first step was cutting a piece off the sheet that I could work with. I was very excited, because this was the first real step towards the building of the guitar. Quickly, however, I ran into the challenge of making a clean cut through the Lexan. First I tried using a Japanese Hand Saw. This caused hairline cracks as I sawed. Damn. I switched to a jig saw. This mutilated the Lexan. Suck. I looked around the shop for other options, but none seemed like they would work. I thought of trying to use a rotozip, which may have worked, but I did not have a good bit. So, I decided to go back to the Japanese Hand saw and work slowly and gave myself room for error. Not great, but I was able to make an ugly, but acceptable cut. So much for building confidence.

Once I had the paper template and the Lexan cut, I affixed the paper template to the Lexan with spray adhesive, which also made the hair on my arms feel staticy/sticky. I’m never fond of having to use sprayable chemicals, but it did work great. Incidentally, the Lexan has a thin film of protective plastic on each side when you buy it. I left this on and stuck the paper template to this film.

I then went over to the band saw to cut 1/4 inch to the edge of the paper. I have to say, after the trouble I had rough cutting the Lexan, I was fairly nervous about running the Lexan through the band saw. I tested with a small piece. To my surprise, it cut cleanly and without fracturing or splintering. Still, I was nervous. Once the entire shape was cut out, I needed to sand the final 1/4 inch down to the edge of the paper template. For this I used a drum sander attachment in my drill press. I bought the drum sander in a four pack from Harbor Freight tools for about $25. I actually tried to make one first, thinking I’d save about $24, but that attempt failed and I didn’t want to waste more time.

Here is the cut and sanded template.

I then tested the template to see how accurate it looked. What I found was that it looked great, but when I flipped it over and retraced, there was error, which I expected. So, I’ve decided that I will only trace from one side, flip, trace the other side. This guarantees a perfectly symmetrical shape.

The lines on the template are where the bracing goes for the guitar top. Next step is to drill holes that mark the end of the braces. This will help when I need to layout the bracing. I also drilled a hole to mark the center of the sound hole.

Lastly, I used an exacto knife and scratched lines for the bracing and sound hole. I also labeled the template with ‘000-28VS’, though you can’t really see much of those details in this photo. Lastly, I lightly sanded the edges to remove sharp or rough spots.

I was able to get all of this work done in one evening, and I am really happy with how it turned out. I share my joy with the kids and wife. Tepid response. I sort of expected that. This master template is now used to make the guitar mold.

About a week later the winter weather broke and Saturday was a nice warm day. I used this as an opportunity to begin cutting up the 4×8 MDF I bought for the guitar mold. I cut pieces into 10 1/2 x 24 1/2 pieces with a skill saw.

Here are the twelve pieces that I cut. I’d have to say that cutting this stuff was really dusty. I’m glad I did this outside, and I’m not looking forward to the sanding and routering of this material in the shop later.

Ok, back in the shop, I trace half of the guitar shape onto a piece of MDF using my awesomely perfect Lexan template. I used a pen because I was afraid pencil would be harder to see when I was sanding.

Here it is. Looks good.

Next I cut to within 1/4 inch of the line on the band saw.

Here is the rough cut.

Ok, now I wanted to go back to the drum sander and sand down to the line. But first I needed to make a table for my drill press so that the drum sander could be ‘below grade’ so that I could sand the entire edge evenly. For this I used a scrap piece of plywood, and cut a hole with my jig saw that was slightly bigger in diameter than my drum sander.

With the plywood attached to my drill press table, and the drum sander set up so that it was slightly recessed into the table, I spent about a half hour sanding precisely to the line.

Once the sanding was complete, I tested it with the Lexan template. It fit perfect. Me happy. I then cut off some excess MDF to make it lighter. I suspect this will also make it easier to clamp guitar sides later.

Next I need to make eleven more that look exactly like this one, six for the left side, six for the right. For that I will be using this piece as the template and using a router, a tool I’ve never used, to shape the others. They will all be glued together, and when I’m done the mold will be about 4 1/2 thick. Stay tuned.