Actually, before the beginning there was the 3.30am alarm call (after a night out with Rod Banner!) and an Easyjet flight at 6am from London's Gatwick airport to Ibiza, followed by the 15 minute taxi ride to the port and the 30 minute ferry to the island of Formentera, before I was met by Eric and our good friend Michael for an early 'livener' in the bar. Aaahhh. . . .
What followed was 3 days of olympic drinking, eating, drinking, music and more drinking that would have made Bacchus and his good mate Dionysus pack up and go back to debauchery school . . . .
Staying in Eric's house in Formentera, an amazing Balearic (or more specifically Pittyeuse) temple of sun and alcohol worship (and a few other things when neighbour Gerd visits!), an outdoors house with living area under the trees and ramas with 3 single storey stone buildings providing core sleeping and cooking facilities . .
We drank great wine, ate some stunning food both at the house and at Paco's wonderful restaurant Sol on nearby Playa Cala Saona.
Suffice to say, the recycling facilities on Formentera were sorely tested (and are still being hammered!) . . .
But this wasnt really the beginning . . . The 'pre-beginning' was a couple of years ago when I was visiting Eric and we found out about a guitar workshop on the island where a talented luthier and all-round semi-retired hippy ran a class twice a year for three weeks to build a guitar of your choosing.
Being frustrated musicians, and not having enough guitars to fill a decent room, we decided to go for it.
'It will be a laugh', I remember saying . . . . . .
That was before I asked my liver . . .
Anyway - REAL DAY 1 was yesterday, and the anticipation was electric as I crawled from my bed a little worse for wear at the ridiculously early hour of 9am. We met the other inmates for a cafe solo at 10am in San Ferran (15 minutes from the house) and the hard work of studying the theory of wood formation and guitar making commenced at 10.30.
I have chosen to build a guitar that should look like a Paul Reed Smith (PRS) as the main picture shows above, but would play like a Gibson Les Paul. One warning I received from our professor of guitar was that the humidty here is about 80% with a typical daily temperature of 35 degrees centigrade (or 90 degrees for those of you of an American persuasion). It feels a lot hotter, but that is probably the humidity - we are on a small island in the Mediterranean of about 20 kilometres in length and width varying from 2 km to 10 km. So its SMALL. When I get the guitar home, it will take about 3 weeks for the wood to adjust to the new humidity of under 50%. So basically, I have 3 weeks to play tunelessly with a good excuse! After that, blame the player . . .
After discovering the rules of resonance and sound, I selected a beautiful single piece of mahogany for the body, and am planning a mahogany neck also to give a warm, throaty, bluesy sound. Having learnt that pretty much all commercially built guitar bodies are designed from two planks glued together, I was pretty fascinated by the idea of building the body from a single massive lump of mahogany. But I may live to regret this . . . .
It looks a little sad at the moment (see photo), but it could be the start of something great. I just hope it will play!
Eric has decided to build an SF4 5 string bass with a walnut body and an as yet undecided neck . . . .
Another cafe solo is necessary now, as we must get to the workshop for Day 2 . . . . . .
