dave rawlings

What is an Archtop Acoustic Guitar?

May 25, 2011

in acoustic guitar, guitar links

We’ve discussed our love of archtop guitars before. Guitar Player magazine has just written an overview of archtop guitars covering their history, design, construction, tone, and performance. An excerpt:

Orville Gibson single-handedly invented the archtop guitar in the 1890s, working in his back-room shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, patterning it on existing archtop instruments such as the cello, mandocello, and violin. Several makers of flat-top guitars were already working in the U.S.—C.F. Martin and Washburn perhaps most notable among them—but these instruments were poor relations to the more popular mandolins, violins, and banjos, which retained their top-dog status through the first quarter of the following century. Throughout the 1930s, however, guitars were replacing banjos as a preferred rhythm instrument on the bandstand, thanks in part to Gibson’s development of pivotal models such as the Lloyd Loar-designed L-5 in 1922 and the massive Super 400 in 1934 (the latter’s 18″-wide body helping to further assault the tenor banjo in the volume wars). By this time, Gibson also faced significant rivals from the likes of Epiphone and Gretsch, which were soon to be joined by D’Angelico and, later, Guild, while companies such as Harmony and Kay dominated the lower end of the market.

Check out the article to learn more about these underrated guitars. Below is a video of David Rawlings rocking out on an archtop acoustic. He’s one of the very few guys around who still uses it as his main guitar. He plays an intro right off the bat, fill parts throughout the whole song, and a killer solos at the 1:10 and 1:48

Tagged as: archtop acoustic guitar, dave rawlings

{ 0 comments }

David Rawlings Tiny Desk Concert

February 9, 2010

in acoustic guitar, uncategorized

We’ve discussed David Rawlings on here before, and we’ll continue to because he’s just a master of the acoustic guitar. The recently released “Friend of a Friend” album under the moniker The Dave Rawlings Machine caught me off guard. I’ve enjoyed it just as much as previous efforts from Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, but I thought that with the group taking on his name for the project that the guitar would come even more into the foreground. However, Dave appeared to focus more on songwriting, singing, and creating a balanced approach with the Old Crow Medicine Show joining them on many songs. In this video from NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series he adds the guitar embellishments that were left off of the record. From a blistering solo on the bluegrass classic “I’m On My Way Back to the Old Home” to melodic touches to accompany Gillian’s rhythm guitar on their originals, this video is not short on great guitar playing. To download this video you can get the video podcast from iTunes.

Tagged as: dave rawlings

{ 1 comment }

Using other Instruments as Inspiration for Guitar

April 14, 2009

in uncategorized

I’ve been reading recently about the influences of John Coltrane on Duane Allman. Specifically Duane using pull offs to recreate some of the sounds Coltrane made with his sax. In fact Duane grabbed a lot of ideas from Coltrane and Miles Davis. From 10 Things You Gotta Do to Play Like Duane Allman:

“Whether it’s a ten-minute solo during “Elizabeth Reed,” or one of the Brothers’ trademark extended cadenzas, you’ve gotta get fluent with the kind of extended modal jamming that permeated the band’s live performances. The emphasis on Am7’s upper extensions—the 9 (B), 11 (D), and 13 (F#)—played over the Im7-IV Dorian-based vamp in Ex. 5a reveals Allman’s professed admiration for the modal jazz of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Ex. 5b is derived from three successive motifs that Allman regularly reprised during his extended closing improvisations in the Allman Brothers staple “You Don’t Love Me”: sliding parallel fifths reminiscent of his work on Clapton’s arrangement of “Little Wing,” a legato reading of the melody to “Joy to the World,” and a flashy display of upper-register A major-based thirty-second-note triplets.”

Then I also stumbled across this Premier Guitar article with Ten Mile Davis Tips for Guitarists. These ideas are adapted from a panel of Miles’ friends discussing Kind of Blue’s 50th anniversary.

“No one utilized non-notes for musical effect like Miles did. For some reason, when we play guitar we are conditioned to put 99.9% of our focus on the notes we’re playing. The spaces without notes in Kind of Blue are a big part of that record. It gives listeners time to absorb and process, both between passages and within phrases.

“The powerful thing with Kind of Blue is the space and information. There’s a lot of air in that record in the sense you don’t feel overloaded and you can take in each note. You don’t feel confronted with the music. You feel as if you’ve been invited into something very special.”
-David Fricke”

I’ve heard Dave Matthews mention that he feels like a drummer who plays guitar and he focuses more on the percussion of the instrument. Dave Rawlings at times seems to produce a mandolin like tone from his archtop acoustic. We all know about Jimmy Page’s experiments with bowing a guitar. It’s not always an easy thing to do, but looking to other instruments as an influence for your playing can help you create a unique sound. Whether it’s technique, rhythm, or note choices.

In Memory of Elizabeth Reed – Live from the Fillmore East 1970

Tagged as: dave rawlings, duane allman, john coltrane, miles davis, youtube

{ 0 comments }

Archtop Acoustics

May 16, 2007

in uncategorized

The New Yorker wrote a brief article about Ken Parker of Parker Guitars and his quest to bring back the archtop acoustic. The article is a good summary but the real gold is the accompanying audio that actually lets you hear the guitars. Music Thing has a picture of the Parker Archtop

I personally fell in love with archtop acoustics a few years ago when I first saw Dave Rawlings play with Gillian Welch. He plays a 1935 Epiphone Olympic archtop that just sounds magical. He often says that it’s unique because it plays every note on the neck at the same volume.

As a result of being so overly impressed with Dave’s guitar I tried to grab a cheap archtop off eBay. At the very least I thought it would look cool hanging on the wall. I ended up with a pretty crappy Harmony for around $100. It serves little musical purpose other than being set up pretty well for slide guitar and, as intended, looking pretty cool in the corner of my room.

(HT: Strat-O-Blogster)

Tagged as: archtop acoustic guitar, dave rawlings

{ 2 comments }