Duck Baker-Modern Fingerstyle for the Ages
I’m pretty much obsessed with guitar technique, especially fingerstyle, so I was excited to get a chance to hear the legendary Duck Baker perform and catch one of his teaching workshops.
Duck Baker jumped on the instrumental guitar circuit in the early 1970s, at a time when the glow was still warm on the 1960s heyday of the fingerstyle renaissance. That was the era when the still living fingerstyle masters of the early 20th century crossed paths with a new generation of players. These–mostly white–players were fascinated to have discovered this tradition that had nearly died out and were determined to launch it firmly into the future. Baker arrived on the scene as a young man and quickly sponged up as much as he could from the older revivalists like Dave Van Ronk in the US and Davey Graham in the UK, meeting and playing gigs with them. Ultimately, Baker helped move the style forward by enlivening traditional tunes through creative, virtuosic arrangements, and by pushing it beyond traditional and folk repertoires into Jazz.
Baker has put out many albums
And when we’re talking Duck Baker, were talking advanced–advanced music and technique, but also advanced listeners and students. Baker is trafficking not only in music for
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The Intonation of the Gods–The “Schoenberg Set-up” Part Two
In the last post I talked about on problem with getting good intonation for fingerstyle on acoustic guitar. Lacking this, a fingerstyle player will never be able to get the full enjoyment and personal expression that comes from playing.
Enter the Schoenberg set-up. Eric Schoenberg began playing ragtime fingerpicking guitar in the late 1950s. This interest became a lifelong one (dare I say it? An obsession.) Schoenberg heard fingerstyle music and the sound of the guitar in a very particular way and this led him to work with a number of world-class luthiers to develop his own limited-edition line of guitars. Along the way he worked out how to set up a guitar to optimize it for fingerstyle. Eric’s set-up begins with a perfectly straight neck; this is the only reason his tech will touch the truss-rod (that mysterious thingy behind that little plate, or on Martins, inside the sound-hole.) Next, they look at the saddle, at the height at treble and bass strings, and at where the saddle splits the string. Minute adjustments here for each string are crucial to good intonation; filing the saddle so that each string hits a fraction of an inch forward or back makes all the difference. The nut is also examined very closely, lowering or raising the individual notches for each string to exact heights for the specific gauge of string.
Amazingly, all this science is applied for fifty bucks. The technician, James Hipps, is the kind of guy who inspires the confidence surgeons need to get parents to hand their children over to him. I wanted to be careful not to ask too many dumb question so he wouldn’t get annoyed with me, but apparently, at Schoenberg’s they suffer fools gladly. Thanks to James, I finally understand
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Intonation on Fingerstyle Guitar–The “Schoenberg Set-up” Part One
I’ve tried for years to understand what my real needs are in terms of getting the action right on my guitars. Most importantly, I’ve wanted to set the intonation properly on my instruments. It’s been an often frustrating journey, and I’ve spent years in a somewhat harsh wasteland of less than optimally set up guitars. Luckily for me Fingerpicking Whiz ‘Little’ Stevie Coyle advised me to get over to a little shop in Tiburon, CA for to avail myself of the “Schoenberg Set-up”.
For more on Eric Schoenberg, read my recent post about his shop and his unparalleled custom-made guitars. What I didn’t mention in that post, is that the Schoenberg guitar shop is also a repair shop and that they specialize in setting up guitars for fingerstyle playing.
But first, what is ‘a guitar set up?’ What is meant by ‘action‘ and what is ‘intonation‘?
One of the hardest things to determine when shopping for a guitar is how the piece you are playing in a store would feel if it were ’set up’ properly, instead of being shown to you in whatever state it happens to be–either how it was received from the factory or how the last owner happened to leave it. Unlike many shops, at Schoenberg’s the guitars all appear to be properly set-up or at least to have had gotten some TLC before being hung on the wall. The result is that, as you sample different instruments in the store, they all have a continuity of feel and you are not distracted trying to compensate for different action on each piece. In most large guitar stores, and many smaller ones, if you are trying out a new guitar, it will be shown to you without being ’set up’. It will have a blank saddle and nut that are dialed only to a baseline setting; the ‘action’–the height of the strings from the neck will be very high, up to 7/32″. While this may require little adjustment for a professional bluegrass flat-picker, most of us mere mortals, or those who play fingerstyle or more sensitive music, will need lower action.
The mystery of the right action on the fretboard plagued me for years. Action is one of those things many guitarists seek
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Fingerstyle Guitar Nirvana–Schoenberg Guitars
Schoenberg Guitar Store is the inner sanctum of Fingerstyle Guitar Nirvana. Nestled on a curvy, shady street in off-the-beaten-path Tiburon, CA, the shop is like a little magical glen, festooned with nothing but the nicest guitars you’ve ever seen–all of them dedicated to fingerstyle.
This is not that familiar Mall-land Valahala where you strain to hear the sound of an acoustic guitar over the squeal of a poorly tuned electric in incompetent hands on the next aisle. Here you strum a guitar and its sound reverberates through the dozens of cherry collector’s items lining every inch of the walls. New guitars and a bunch of nice old ones in mint or refurbished condition–including examples of all the best of the larger boutiques, and an interesting selection of smaller builder’s work. Even the carefully selected lower end guitars here are above the norm for quality. Martin Guitars are a mainstay, and I marveled over a $1300 OM cutaway that was just amazing at that price, and then played a stunning high end Martin 000-18 12-fret made of birds-eye maple. If you know anything about Martins, you know that they don’t make many maple-wood guitars. Maples are more of a Gibson thing, and I love Gibsons and maple guitars, so that beauty had me all tied up in knots. A maple Martin, what a concept; I’d never contemplated it. The stuff of obsession.
Meanwhile at Schoenberg’s, only old Gibsons, no new ones. And at closer look, there’s a definite slant to the inventory. You get distracted by a scattering of really nice mandolins, a completely off the wall piece with side sound-holes or fanned frets, or a perfect, adorable 1920s mahogany parlor guitar you would buy on the spot if you were a millionaire, and realize–as to the bulk of the selection, yes there’s a preference here. OM model guitars abound. New Martins, fresh from Nazareth, PA and vintage instruments that are tuned and set-up perfectly.
So, it turns out this is a place with a philosophy, or two. Most important,
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Rare 78s Found of Blind Blake’s Lost Sessions
Most musician’s fans wait for their favorite artist’s new material and eagerly run to the store to get it as soon as it comes out. 1930s recording artist Blind Blake had such fans, but unlike many musicians, 70 years after he disappeared without a trace, he still has fans around the world.
So it was with surprise and joy I learned that a rare 78 rpm record had been found–the only known copy of some of Blind Blake’s final recordings. These were two of the legendary ‘lost’ sessions, songs that had not been heard since the 1930s. The recording company’s list of releases contained more than one disc that had never been found by blues aficionados, who had scoured the south for old 78s–thinking they’d found everything decades ago. Old Hat Records has an article on their site explaining how they came to possess a trunk full of well preserved vinyl (or more likely cheap shellac that was used on ‘race’ records–the records issued at the time for the African-American market). The trunk contained almost 100 records, including some fine rare specimens by well-known artists like Skip James and Memphis Minnie, as well as obscure players. Much of the material is from the final days of the pre-war blues’ golden era. The rarest find was Paramount 13123 by Blind Blake.
The two songs, A and B sides of a recording issued in 1932, were among the last Blake recorded. “Night and Day” and “Sun to Sun“, hosted at the prewarblues.com blog, are
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