Dirk van Weelden

Guitar man

The man told me about his guitar. A special instrument, built in the twenties of the twentieth century by a Bavarian artisan. An early specimen of a line that was coveted by the greatest guitarists, like Segovia and Bream. He was a guitarist himself, but he didn’t appear simply proud and happy with his instrument. For months already he was getting to know the guitar, trying to understand it.

What’s there to understand about a fantastically good guitar? The man raised his eyebrows and tried to describe what happens when you shout into the sound hole of the guitar. All these overtones, they didn’t seem to stop! His curiosity went out to the question how the instrument does what it does. What could be deduced from that. An example: the discovery that this guitar hardly shows what it is capable of in cramped quarters and displays a stunning power and clarity in large halls.

He experimented with different types of music and playing techniques; paid a visit to a studio in a former chapel where the walls had been made ‘sound-dead’ to explore the guitar even better through microphones and equalizers. The sound-engineer listened to the guitar with quite a different attitude than the guitarist, he told me. Which musical genre sounded the most attractive to what kind of audience? Did the guitar have a unique, characteristic sound, that had a commercial appeal?

It seemed to me as if this man spent large parts of his working days with his eyes closed, holding his breath, just to be sure not to miss a single vibration, overtone or nuance of a tone color.