The first thing I see, that I look at in a guitar to see the quality of
the construction if I am going to buy it, is the angle of the fretboard and that it is straight because that is what
determines that the guitar is a comfortable guitar and can use like a guitar
What is a guitar? a musical instrument. What is it for? so that we can make music
if the guitar is uncomfortable if the guitar is hard if the guitar has too much fretboard/angle not
inclined but rather it is made with too much fretboard/angle as many guitar makers do making it with
too much angle because it is easier to make with angle and have room for that the guitar
does not get buzzing that it is able to prevent it from buzzing by putting it straight so of course when they do that it
is very good but they are taking away a problem that they transfer to the person who
sold them the guitar and then this person Now has to suffer that that guitar is
uncomfortable because the neck has too much arch. Why is it uncomfortable? Well, because hey, if it’s very raised from
here, the farther you get from the string, the more distance there is. So it’s much more difficult to play
and it’s useless in my opinion. I don’t care how it sounds. It’s useless as a musical instrument. It’s useless to play it.
The second thing that I pay attention to is in the sanding of the wood. how it was done eh… there are guitar makers
who put the bridge before there are others who put it after and it says a lot about the finesse
of the guitar maker how he looks for the vibration zones when checking that you check the
curve in these points how it is made and here if the top is arched in its entirety if it is arched
only in the bridge part if it is arched in the upper part as well. This is one thing
that he introduced… I’m sure he didn’t introduce it because someone else did it before, but
one of the ones that exposed it the most and that we have more examples of is José Ramirez’s I guitar,
which made him a super arch. There are guitars that have a super arch. That’s why I say that they are the ones that
expose it the most and exactly the same basically on the back. You have to see if… how it is made, how
that curve is given because that is not a thing, it is a thing that is hidden but that is seen when making the guitar.
And then of course eh the sound and how the guitar feels when you play it in the
right hand, in the left hand if the fretboard angle is good it will feel good and in the
right hand if the fretboard angle is good that contributes to the guitar Do not have a high tension and
if the bridge is in relation to the height it has, then it should be comfortable.
The sound then enters in the game. That between the strings there is no difference in sound, in quality, in volume..
between one another. Which is a common thing that suddenly you are playing on the second string
you go from here to here and here and the guitar loose balance and on the first here… eh… those are
the things that I mainly look at. Then there is the volume and that depends
on each person’s needs and what they can get out of each guitar.
Well, I have had several periods like everyone else… several periods in which you start playing
a normal guitar and then suddenly, well, you get better and better, your parents buy you another one,
then you can start buying another one and in the end you buy too many, right?… hehe… and well, I have had
guitars that… I have played guitars mainly by Rafael Moreno for many years. There are many videos
of me from the Aranjuez Concert with her and records. And then Antonio Marín eh… and Pepe Romero, they are the
guitars, Pepe Romero Junior Jr. They are the guitars that I have played the most and for a few years now
only in concert and that is what I have played and with which I have recorded with
Pepe Romero Jr’s guitars because I consider that they have an incredible level, I am not going to To say it is the
best is such because all this always tends to make some say no but such… well… in my
opinion my favorite guitars today are guitars by Rafael Moreno, Antonio Marín and
Pepe Romero Jr, which is what What I play and what I always have, let’s say on a daily basis,
I have other very high-quality guitars from Manuel Cáceres, which are very good guitars that I have,
from Blochinger, and but well, one thing is guitars that you like and another thing is what you like to play eh… daily
Well, a guitar is not the same… when you are going to buy a historical guitar that
a guitar that you are going to use as a work tool as an instrument, well, to study,
to give concerts… if what you are going to look for is a guitar with which you have to spend many hours
and that has to be your work tool, The first thing I look for before anything else is that
the angle of the fretboard is completely straight and that the guitar is comfortable. That the neck, because of
the characteristics of my hand, I need a big neck thickness and… but above all that the fretboard is straight
Because if the guitar is curved or is made as I know how some of the
guitar makers do it themselves with too much fretboard/angle for me and I don’t care how the guitar sounds. Because if
a guitar is a work tool, you have to be able to last a few hours
playing with it without it affecting your hand and without causing pain, inflammation, etc.
Then the sound comes and what you have to see in a guitar above all is, of course, quality,
we are going down steps right? if the guitar already works, from the point of view that it helps you and
that you can study with it, well, let’s see if we like the quality that the sound gives, yes, that
quality. What gives the sound is that the guitar has a homogeneity throughout all the registers that does not
change from one string to another and there is a weaker string, which is very common, a weaker string or an
area of a string that is weaker than another, so that quality be the same practically throughout
the entire fretboard. eh quality in terms of sound, I mean because the other quality is the feeling
of the hand, that is what we have mentioned before and then we have to see the power of the
guitar and and characteristics, well, such as the harmonics and things that are already very personal,
a guitar that I may need to give a concert with an orchestra without amplification is not the same
as a person who studies at home. No, I don’t, I don’t need the same power that he needs, nor does
he get the best out of it. same sound from the guitar that I get from it, so there is a lot of input
into what each person is capable of perceiving. Because it depends on how you play whether you are able to perceive it or not
This is not… everyone is not able to, no matter how much money you have, whether you are a collector or something like that, you are not
going to perceive more than one who knows how to get all the sound it has out of the guitar, so
it is as if you have a normal car and you drive it and then you give it to Fernando Alonso because
Fernando Alonso drives the car to the extreme just before killing yourself with it, right? It takes everything
you have out of the car. You didn’t know that that car has so much inside, no matter how much it is yours that
you have had it for 20 years. Well, with a guitar it is exactly the same in a much more subtle way and
much more different in terms of perception and so on, then there is another thing that We have to see,
of course, that it is the quality of the wood. This in a new guitar, in a
current guitar that you are going to buy, is much more important than in a collector’s guitar, than in a historical guitar.
Nowadays, very different woods are used, but also from very good quality it is also true that
there are very few guitar makers who keep wood that has a natural drying because
the wood is very expensive and because the one that has that natural drying means that they have had it stored for many
years so they have to go at the same time as they go Those who are making the guitars they sell have
to invest much more, much more wood than they have so that they never
run out of this in guitar makers who have had a successful track record for many years, because they do it
and it is much easier for guitar makers. Young people because it is very difficult and they have to help themselves a little
when they need a good wood because of the… these more established guitar makers who
can help them and serve them as one of those woods, right? In the historical guitar it is different
in a historical guitar Domingo Esteso, Santos… guitars that are close to 100 years old or
that are more than 100 years old or 150 years old, those types of instruments We have to look at them from another
point of view. and normally the guitars of Santos, Barbero, Domingo Esteso… hold up not
well but better than 99% or 90% of the guitars made today.
In my opinion, what they did and the stability have not been surpassed. Of the instrument that they made today,
guitar makers now have another idea and something else and they believe that because they were born now, it has already been surpassed what had been done before
and it is the complete opposite, historical guitar makers were able to use with very little, with very few tools
and very little wood, in a post-war era of misery when guitars cost only little money…
… they were able to create instruments of a level that today, well,
practically very few people do it like them now and those who do it do it because they respect it and understand what
historical guitar makers have done and they are capable of putting it on a new instrument. So when you have
a historical guitar what you have to see is that it has a minimum… preserve a minimum of
stability that the Top has not been heavily sanded. Here, for example, there is a guitar by Antonio Marín
from the year 73 that is in perfect condition, just as if the
master had made it yesterday. That is not the result of luck, that is the result of the knowledge that he had in the year 73.
So this guitar, for example, has not been sanded, it is clearly seen that none
of the parts have been sanded, the fretboard is original, it is completely straight The woods have preserved their
curves, which are what give the guitar its resistance when there are large changes in
humidity and make it not destroyed by a sudden change in humidity. And then once
it has a maintained minimum of all those qualities When it was made new, well, you
can think about purchasing that guitar because if it is not a guitar that you have to restore,
you have to invest a lot of money, you have to look for the person, there are very
few specialists, my friend Yuris Zeltins said, h is the most famous restorer in
the world, said his job is to restore without it being seen that he has touched the guitar, that is, the
zenith of the restorer’s work is to bring the guitar to its original state without it being noticeable
if it has a crack repair it without being noticeable
to modify the fretboard/angle because the guitar has given way, do it as if the guitar maker had done it.
So if we buy a guitar that is bad, we have to look for a professional.
It has to be expensive because there are very few of them and if the guitar is worth it, then it is good to do it.
Historical guitars I have tried everything in the house of maestro Romero. He has one of the most important collection in the world
I have tried everything during I have had the opportunity to try them for a long time Hauser I
second, third, Domingo Esteso, Santo Hernández… of all of them several units, not just one.
Miguel Rodríguez… who has been for me the number one along with Santos Hernández.
I have tried I have had the opportunity to try all the guitars that have had a
huge impact on me? Well, I have been very impressed by some Torres, some Miguel Rodríguez’s from
the 73’s, also some from the 80’s something…, all of Rodríguez’s eras are incredible
from the 54’s, I tried a spectacular one. Guitars by Manuel Reyes are also very good And of course
Santos Hernández let’s say… for me, along with Torres and Rodríguez, they are one of the historical ones,
they are my favorites, right? They are guitars that have not been surpassed, that those who make
the best guitars that exist today what they do is base themselves on
their work and be able to understand it to work on it and and reach that level
and and Furthermore, they all agree on the same thing, which is that they respect him very much and none of them
are ever going to tell you that what has happened to them, right? Because it truly is a union of them
in which they rely on each other to continue in what they did for them, right? There are
very few guitar makers… just because you make a copy does not mean that you do what he did
or that you are imprinting on that guitar some of the thoughts that he had. Although the
guitar is aesthetically one – one, right? and well that’s my opinion on that subject
Well, for me there are several names that are key of course Giuliani, Sor eh Now more
modern I think Llobet, Tarrega of course the romantic one the one I call the “Spanish Chopin”
and Furthermore, the one who made a fairly large amount of music that has permeated
many years later when he died in 1909, when then there was nothing of all the
nonsense and facilities that we have today, right? Then, the key figure of the guitar of the 20th century,
perhaps he is not a guitarist, is Joaquín Rodrigo and Joaquín Rodrigo is perhaps the one who has done the most for
the guitar of all those who have had a relationship with the guitar, composers and guitarists, one
of the things that Joaquín Rodrigo did very well. It is to show who the best
guitarists are or who they have been or who have been the best guitarists to this day.
He showed it with Andrés Segovia in the Fantasía para un Gentilhombre that Segovia… I was also born in
Linares because I have lived all of that when I was little, and Segovia was the… some say that he rescued… that Segovia… no he didn’t rescue
the guitar from anywhere, what he did was something much more important which is to use all the
modernities that were emerging in his time, airplanes, radios, using all that technology to
work very hard and carry the guitar many kilometers because to all the corners that
he could, then this diffusion was the first perhaps that had the opportunity to do it and
also playing, well, wonderfully engaging composers to write And
we all know all that, right? and then there is a family that is the Romero family, which is the one that continues in that
already with a brutal exhibition and also with four members who each played their role and of
course there is one in particular who is Pepe Romero who for me is the best guitarist probably
from the history of what we know of what we have heard of what we have recorded
one of the virtuosos who has taken virtuosity to the highest level on any
instrument that has not only been said by me that this has been said by Joaquin Rodrigo , many people have said it
because it is meridian, the superiority the ease Because it also does it in a
totally natural way. And the characteristic that would stand out in him, of course,
is the musicality that is sublime, but above all, one thing that is missing today in the vast majority
of guitarists is the search for the beauty of sound. It doesn’t matter what guitar
you have if you don’t get sound out of it, if you only look for speed, which is what is sought today,
today we are looking to get there now and I want to be from Granada to Madrid in 20 minutes. Look,
it won’t take you 20 minutes. to take what you have to take. Before, when we started
playing, we had to go to the conservatory, you had to do your whole journey
as a child, go to courses, you study with some, with others and everything was very slow and such… now everything is on
YouTube, with I don’t know What, with classes, but in the end the short way to this does not exist and the sound, the
power of the sound and the power that a guitar has to get it out, you have to study a lot.
I have sometimes been asked why guitarists today They don’t look for that power
in the sound, right? first because it is very difficult to get power in the sound in a natural way without
straining the hand and doing it because, as it is done in other instruments, the guitar is more
complicated, but the clearest thing is that the sound, people believe that the sound is in your hands and the
sound is not in your hands, the sound is in your head, so it depends on… I remember when I
was very little and I repeatedly saw a Pepe concert, which was the first time I saw a
concert As a guitar player, my father took me to Linares to the central concert of the centenary of
Andrés Segovia and Pepe played a concert with Odón Alonso and the Reina Sofía orchestra. So the next day
they broadcast it on television and I recorded it on video and watched it continuously. And I practically
learned by watching playing by watching that video non-stop since I was 10 years old, right? I loved it and of course
when you are with an instrument the sound that you want to hear when you start you
are not able to produce it So look for how you make that sound if I play… it depends on what you
want if what you want is to play fast, what you are going to look for is to play quickly, but if what you
want is to look for a quality sound and a strong sound, the speed you have is not
going to determine how fast your fingers move, but rather you are going to stop at speed
when you lose quality that is the the honesty of the musician the honesty of the artist And that is a
There is a great lack today that today what is sought is speed, impression, searching for programs
that are not classical music that are something else. You can wink but
you cannot be a crossover guitarist from the moment you get on stage until you get off, you are a
classical guitarist and you have to work there and you have to know what the public wants
from you and that is a huge problem that the guitar has, wanting to reach places that the guitar
does not have financially, in cache and in things that the guitar does not have because it is the classical guitar
we are never going to be a flamenco guitarist We should not play with a microphone because the microphones
take away the sound that one has the first thing that the classical audience goes to hear is the
particular sound that the musician who is listening has, not the microphone, the speaker and the sound engineer.
So that for me is worth nothing, in all the concerts that I do, which are hundreds and hundreds of
concerts that I have produced and directed in all the festivals that I do, uh, practically everything
is done without amplification and looking for that quality and the public perceives it and rewards it by returning.
Well, the Granada Festival I have a… I direct a foundation, I preside over a foundation called
the European Guitar Foundation that I created in 2015 and It is made to hold events around the
guitar to disseminate the guitar and above all because in my stage as a concert performer
I have seen that the vast majority of guitar festivals had a huge problem which is that they are
made by guitarists. . That should be fine, right? but the problem is when those guitarists
use those festivals and those budgets that in most cases, not in mine, in
most cases they come exclusively, they are festivals, uh that are done with public money
And then they use those festivals and that position that they direct to bring other guitarists
who have festivals and do concert exchanges. This may sound… well there
is no problem… Yes there is a problem. There is a problem in which if I am a programmer and
I want to do something of quality, I cannot ask the public to sit down and listen to something
that I am not able to stand, much less, or that I do not like, right? and much less pay
an entrance fee. So what I program always has to be something that I like
that excites me or that if it doesn’t reach me I know that it can work for the public because I can
have my, let’s say, my thought but I know that my thought It is not unique and it does not have to
be 100% right, I could be very wrong or somewhat wrong or I have to share success with others
with other thoughts and then I look for other things even if I don’t like it 100%
The guitar festival was born with a union with the California State University, which is ours, the
main sponsor is the city council of Granada but they are, let’s say, our
main international support and quickly I would say that from the third festival onwards, which is when… in
the second the Ángeles Guitar Quartet already came. Already in the third we paid tribute to Rodrigo
with Juanjo Mena … The festival is already consolidated as one of the largest and strongest in the world
Today, I’m not going to say it’s the best because you can’t say it’s ugly, but I think
there are few that equal it. Last year the maestro Antonio Marín turned 90 and I believe
that he is the person, not only in the guitar but in the culture of Granada, one of the people who
has contributed the most and will contribute the most in the future to the culture of Granada. Granada Why? Because Antonio Marín,
through his very long career, has made an enormous number of guitars and that number of guitars will
last for collectors, concert artists, instrumentalists, guitar lovers who have them. And those
guitars for the next centuries if we don’t self-destruct first Eh well they are going to give birth
to the name of Granada just as Federico García Lorca has done just as
my friend Enrique Morente has done and left his legacy just as Juan Habichuela has done just as so many
but in the guitar in having done in having been someone an absolute world reference to
the point that today he is still alive and working and is the most famous and most important guitar player.
who is alive so I believed it was fair to use the festival to give glory to Antonio
by celebrating his reaching 90 years of working. And since
last year the Granada International Guitar Festival “Antonio Marín” has been named after Antonio. ”
strings I don’t like carbon strings at all. Why? Well, because they are thin
, they give a very artificial and good sound, I think that they are strings that were made for guitarists
who don’t play, supporting that they don’t play hard, so a string that yes, if you
pull it, if you pull it gently, well, that’s it. It makes a sound if you squeeze it it chokes no it doesn’t pull no… then
the normal nylon strings work very well I particularly like the
nylon strings but rectified what is the rectified? Well, what do they do once the rope is ready,
like a normal polished nylon rope, they pass it with a special stone, they give it a few passes and
then they rectify the finish, let’s say, to a rougher feel. What does this look like?
Well, this is a bit similar to the feel and sound of the old gut strings.
What’s the problem? If you don’t have a short nail and you have a nail that is too
long, this guitar, for example, has these strings. If you have long nails and you play this way
, they make noise. So you have to have a very short nail so that when
you play, you can get it out. the sound without any type of noise, if you get
that, you don’t change them because it has a quantity of timbres,
quality power dynamics that neither the normal nylon nor the
carbon one has, plus a string that teaches you why how you are Listening to the
noises it makes, it teaches you the attack and at what moment you have to let go of the string and
release it so as not to make noise and it makes you a bit of a touch teacher. Well, I don’t like the carbon ones
because first because they don’t work with my way of playing and then because I think
there is a string that doesn’t bring out the potential it has inside the guitar.
It is a string that is made with a material that is very thin that gives incredible tension
to the guitar that is not necessary and and has a sound that is very thin and very metallic. They
sound like Mars to me when I hear them, it is not the Spanish guitar sound. It sounds like a string that makes some
over-excited harmonics, it over-excites the harmonics, but then in the center of the sound when you
give the note, if you want to get strength out of it, if you do it with body, it drowns out, it
doesn’t have that consistency that normal nyon or nylon gives. that gives another type of nylon
Well, the contest was born, the first edition was in 2017, we only stopped doing it in the
pandemic in 2020 because it was impossible to travel and contestants came from all over the world and it was
an idea that I had to be able to have a contest that defend the traditional Spanish guitar, the
way of building that is done in Spain against so many things that are invented today trying to
reach places that have been reached all their lives working and slowly and learning Well, now
the nomex is invented, the double cover, the I don’t know what, the… the carbon, the… all these kinds of things so that the
guitar sounds loud and sounds much louder and so on. It seems very good to me but the
Spanish guitar doesn’t sound so the guitar is the Spanish guitar and the sound it has is the sound that
Segovia had the sound that Pepe Romero had that Pepe Romero has the sound that
Ángel Romero has the sound that it has that Carlevaro had, who also invented another guitar, the sound that
Cacho Tirao had . a guitar sound. However, the sound that is sought with those
guitars is a powerful sound, the guitars have no personality, in my opinion, so
I sought to force all these guitar players, to make a competitive prize with prizes as
important as those of the prizes. from Guitar Salon, this whole story, not about Visesnut, all this
that I create around, the strings of Pepe Romero, The in short… all this is to motivate those guitar makers
who have a name, who have come guitar makers, with a lot of names that don’t He needed to come and
try to get the prize. And in quotes, we have forced or made some of them
Those who did not make the traditional guitar have made it to be able to come to the contest and with that
we try to preserve the traditional Spanish way of building. Why is it named after
Antonio Marín? Because he is, of course, the most important guitar player that Granada has produced, one
of the most important in Spain in the history of the world of the guitar, and well, the success is
brutal. I don’t know how many hundreds of guitar players have come from all over the world, but we have had
years. of 27, 28 guitar players coming from Australia, Japan, China, Korea, that is… from the United States… from the
entire world and the main importance that the contest has, apart from the name
and the prizes and that it is held in Granada and that it is the European Guitar Foundation
that is behind it, it is the Jury. The prestige that the Jury has, in which you are also Alberto,
all these years, is the most important thing. Because it is what gives rigor to
a contest. If I hold a contest and put my cousin, my sister, my friend on the Jury, then
of course in the end what I say will come out in the contest, no, but if in the contest I put
one of the best guitar players from Germany of course one of the best guitar players in the world
Edmund Blochinger, if I put Manuel Cáceres one of the number one in Spain, if I put Pepe Marín
(José Marín Plazuelo) who is one of the best guitar players in the world who is also the collaborator of…
Antonio Marín’s collaborator, 40-something, 50 years old, I don’t know how many years he has been… if I put
David Collet as the president of Guitar Salon, if there is also Yuris Zeltins, the most important guitar restorer-maker
alive considered alive of all….the Wonderful has rescued such… all
these stories… right? Well, of course, what prize is it going to be? Well, whatever they say. And it is a Jury
of an entity and a brutal power that makes the contest have this significance And that
every year we receive… last year I don’t know if there were 24 guitar players from around the world and
well, a very complicated thing, You have to be very smart not to fail, but I think it’s
very nice and that it’s changing the lives of many people, not only those who win but
others who come, maybe they don’t even make it to the finals. But there is a store. the Guitar Salon
or yourself [ MaderaGuitarras.com ], or who notice him… And from there a relationship begins. It has happened to many
and it has changed their lives and so, apart from being a great event, it is nice
to see that it is useful to change the professional and economic lives of many of those who come.
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