Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0904221548350.1677@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Romeo Di Giorgio guitar solos
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:49:08 -0400 (EDT)
Romeo Di Giorgio guitar solos I'm writing an article for Signal to Noise magazine on the 1949 Romeo Di Giorgio guitar I own and have used for decades now; it's always been my main instrument. As a way of preparing, I recorded the following four solo (songs) with it; I was in an odd state and able to actually able to play complexly without too much difficulty. This is unusual - it allowed me to inhabit the music in a different way than unusual. I've also included notes on the instrument - images will follow, at least for the magazine. Thanks for listening - Alan http://www.alansondheim.org/dgguitar1.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/dgguitar2.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/dgguitar3.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/dgguitar4.mp3 1949 Di Giorgio classical guitar. I bought this instrument in Cambridge, Mass, around 1967, and I've had it ever since. I started playing music after a disastrous relationship; this was 1962, and I was influenced by Lightning Hopkins. I learned chords in alphabetic order, A,B,C,D,E,F,G, and the sharps/flats in due order. I went through a number of guitars, settling on a Gibson electric and the Di Giorgio. In the Cambridge scene, Al Wilson considered me a 'city blues player' because I played fast, but I was more John Fahey than Charlie Patton. Other instruments came and went, but the Di Giorgio has stayed with me. When I bought it, the clerk at the music store cried; he'd been using it himself in concerts. It cost $75. It came with 17 cracks and still has 17 cracks. It's gone through two floods, one in a closet in Providence, Rhode Island, and one in a warehouse in Los Angeles, after having traveled back from Tasmania. The guitar is remarkable: inside the soundhole, there's a hyperboloid surface extending to within an inch of the back. This is from eighteenth- century guitar experiments, but I haven't seen any other contemporary guitar with the device. This device is also found in the current Di Giorgio Tarrega model (which however has an oval soundhole). < description of the bridge, purfling, label, neck, frets, heel < description of the sonority < idea of an older instrument, tending < inequivalence of the instrument as opposed to digital or mass-produced instruments < thinness of the wood Serie Artistica - 1950 around $4500 minimal < no bracing under the bridge < neck movement, tuned low < Romeo Di Giorgio, Brazilian Rosewood, Swedish Pine