Instrument Making

It has been said to me recently that we are in a luthierie renaissance, there are more instrument makers around than ever before - many local and most making a superior quality instrument to anything you could hope to buy in the average music shop. With arcane traditional construction processes supplemented by, or giving way to technical innovation, experimentation, research and sheer serendipity, a range of instruments are being produced against the rules: witness the evolution of the Irish bouzouki! Prices too are extremely competetive and, in most cases, one can be quite prescriptive about the detial of your instrument. It impresses me how many poeple will pick up a book on guitar making or banjo assembly and give it a go. I know of some musicians who have made instruments purely for their own playing and never made another. A case in point would be Christchurch guitar legend, Graham Wardrop who made an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, a mandolin, a bass guitar and a couple of other instruments; wrote a bunch of music and songs, and then recorded it using only these instruments and his own technical know-how, producing a stunning album called (naturally) "Signature". Read about it here.

Books on instrument making abound, so if you are so inclined, give it a go. Some start with a simpler instument like a lap dulcimer (Appalachan dulcimer) or a bowed psaltery. These days music teachers in schools are making all sorts of instruments from marimbas to "bucket basses" out of simple household wares, demonstrating how accessable music really is.

From the list: Bush Bass Resource

The Washtub Bass Page Clearinghouse for Washtub Bass Information. In the Antipodes we call it the Bush Bass or the Tea Chest Bass. The defining feature of the "washtub bass" family, for The WTB Page, is that the vibrations of a string are amplified by a prefabricated container or chamber of some sort (and that it produces notes low enough to function as a bass).