Gypsy picking on archtop? strings ringing! anyone??

plectroman

I remember Chuck Wayne used to make a little damper out of rubber band, plastic and foam and fit it just across the bottom of the first fret, which he said helped keep the amplified arch top from ringing sympathetically...I also remember Herb Ellis using a Van Epps damper which presumably did something similar, but that was only for a while and then it was gone...I think Birelli may be doing some pretty sophisticated selective left hand damping....Did you see the look on John Mclaughlin's face watching Birelli's acoustic technique?

spinality

Chuck Wayne used to make a little damper out of rubber band, plastic and foam

Yes, I mentioned these in an earlier post. (Chuck made me one of those dampers, but alas I think it was left sitting on his end table the last time I saw him.) You sound like another denizen of Gregory's. A lost era.

The other thing about this Birelli clip is that it's a TV spot, which (one hopes) means fantastic pro sound engineers and equipment, in a performance space that is acoustically dead. Se we might be hearing pure acoustic instruments -- or at least the amp levels are very low. So this is a very different situation from playing a gig in a bright, noisy lounge where resonance and feedback are to be expected. I really don't see much in the way of sophisticated left-hand damping going on here. Many of those strings are wide-open much of the time -- in a different venue, I bet he'd be taking more active steps.

plectroman

The type of left hand damping I'm talking about would be pretty subtle, for instance when playing a note on the 5th string, by flattening the fretting finger almost imperceptibly it's quite possible to deaden the 4th string...also, anyone playing an amplified archtop at higher volumes, which I believe was the original question, should at least consider some judicious right hand damping. I was lucky enough to hear and hang out a bit w/ Chuck Wayne and Joe Puma as well...I was glad when Chuck's wah wah pedal broke! He was the first player I saw who did something like economy picking and he let the amp do a lot of the work. Joe Puma used a lot of downstrokes and had a nice fat sound on his self-made thinline hollow body.

spinality

The type of left hand damping I'm talking about would be pretty subtle, for instance when playing a note on the 5th string, by flattening the fretting finger...[but] anyone playing an amplified archtop...should at least consider some judicious right hand damping

Agree on both points. My sense from the original question was that ringing was occurring on open strings that weren't even getting touched; as we know this will happen as the volume goes up. Then you need right-hand or other damping techniques, or electronic remedies to reduce acoustic feedback.

I was lucky enough to hear and hang out a bit w/ Chuck Wayne and Joe Puma as well...I was glad when Chuck's wah wah pedal broke!

Wah-wah, LOL. That brings back memories. Chuck had some funny ideas. He was once convinced that jazz banjo was about to make a huge comeback, and he made an ill-fated banjo record in the 50s. (I wonder if he got to hear Bela Fleck? He would have approved.) His picking style evolved through his frustrated attempts to phrase like Charlie Parker, whose playing hit Wayne (and so many others) like a ton of bricks when he arrived at 52nd St. In frustration, Chuck almost gave up guitar for sax, until he figured out how to get his legato tone that didn't sound like a plinka-plinka mandolin. I'm sure you heard those stories. (For a while, he was immensely popular and on top of the world -- the guitarist's guitarist. And that's another story.)

I remember Joe's funny little guitar. I really enjoyed their duo playing. They used to play at the Casa Mara in New Haven every Wednesday night. (And Tuesday's at Gregory's of course, with Warren Chiasson.) You'll also remember how he'd often play a Bach fugue between jazz tunes. Chuck's live playing never really seemed to get captured on record. His improvisational power and invention were tremendous -- we'd sit there slack-jawed listening to all this great stuff pour out -- and yet most of his records seem rather stiff. Not so unusual of course.

Bones

The kinds of sympathetic ringing that I have noticed to varying degrees seems to be caused by the first and fifth scale degrees exciting the open strings. I.e. play then damp the 5th fret second string E and it will excite the open 5th string A. The 5th fret 1st string will have the same effect on the 5th string, etc.

I notice this to different levels on different guitars but I am not sure what makes one more prone to it than others.

Any ideas?

marciero

All guitars do this, even a solidbody. When you sound a note of a certain frequency, the whole guitar vibrates at that frequency, especially the top on an acoustic. So of course you will excite an open string of the same pitch. The same is true of the partials, so that strings with frequencies that are multiples (or whose partials are multiples) of the fundamental of a given note will be excited. This will be less pronounced since the partials are weaker. The fact that the interval ratios of the partials are not even-tempered might also lessen this effect.

Mike