Hello,
my name is Musicaloris. And I like playing on my instruments. How come? Listen...
I am a pianist by heart, I started lessons back in fall 1995, when I was only 5 years old. From then on, my fantastic piano teacher was keeping my interest and love for music alive for some years... and at some point I discovered that I could kind of 'feel' the music. Perhaps that sounds a bit odd, but it's just the fact that I inherited an absolute pitch from my father's line. Not my fault, so far ^_^
From then on I started playing what my ears picked up from the radio and/or TV. Eventually, at some point, I also started creating sweet little pieces on my own, mostly developing them sitting at the piano.
In 2005, however, at the World Youth Day convention in Cologne, I suddenly learned that if I wanted to play my music to people or make them sing along to popular and other songs, I couldn't always carry around my piano. That was when I decided to start playing the guitar.
I learned playing the guitar by myself (in the beginning, I was shown how to read a fingering chart, though) starting back in early 2006, on my mother's (and later, also my sister's) classical guitar. They were standard classical guitars, no pickup, no cutaway etc. Nothing in special, but not too bad concerning their quality.
When I finished school in summer 2009, I got my first very own guitar, I chose it by playing in my local music store before. It was my semi-acoustic Crafter FSG280 roundback steel-string guitar. Crafter is the international brand of Korean manufacturer Sung-Eum music (which means ‘accomplishing the sound’ in Korean).
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| (promo pic by Crafter) |
That guitar is very similar to a series of Ovation roundback guitars, but still it's a high-quality instrument, not just a bad copy. I really like it because when I play it on my amplifier (I have a little acoustic-style one), it can sound both very acoustic and very electric, which had also been important to me when I chose it. At that point, I was very much into jamming and playing loud, powerful songs. But it's also nice to play other styles on it. And it really looks good!
Then, at some point, it must have been around October 2009 (I don't really remember exactly) I reached my limits of playing smooth fingerstyle melodies (as in the first impros here) on my Crafter, which is only natural on steel strings unless you are a pro or Chuck Norris. So I decided to buy a classical (also known as acoustic or concert) guitar. Because I really got to love the pickup system and cutaway at my Crafter, I chose the Takamine EG124C (which has both features) in the music store in Cologne. I really love this guitar too, sometimes playing on it feels a little bit like communicating with it, and it really inspires me to play even just a few notes on it. I love its warm sound!
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| (promo pic by Takamine) |
Takamine is a well-known Japanese guitar manufacturer.
Over the time, I found out my semi-acoustic guitar was way too quiet to play to more than two people (when they sang along), so I began to think about an acoustic steel-string guitar with a full wood corpus and a massive front. Then, by chance, a good friend of my girlfried wanted to sell his Stagg SW203CE-BK, a really wonderful guitar he bought one year before but didn't really get to play. So I played for testing - and was instantly in love with the sound! It happened to become my third guitar. And of course, it also has a cutaway and a built-in pickup system so I can play on amplifiers.
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| (promo pic by Stagg) |
Stagg is a Belgian/Flemish manufacturer, which makes this guitar my only European-made guitar so far.
In summer 2010, the idea of an acoustic bass guitar began to take control over my mind (and my money!), and in September I found a really cheap second-hand one on eBay: My Sunsmile SAB10.
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| (promo pic by Sunsmile) |
This guitar is from the Chinese Liaocheng Sunsmile Musical Instrument factory, and yes, that sounds like really really cheap. I'm sorry, ambition doesn't buy me instruments, so criticize me for this when I got rich, okay?
Despite that, it really sounds good (regarding the price) and of course, my usual favourite features - cutaway & electric pickup system - are onboard, although that pickup system somehow manages not to pick up the first and the last string, strangely.
I got an "HK" branded version (German importer Hermann Kempf), which is, in technical terms, identical.
Since I've been (again) to Taizé in France back in summer 2010, I had a crush on the sound of 12-string steel-string guitars: So broad, so full, so rich, so brilliant! I was getting more and more convinced that one of these would be my next guitar.
When a new music store (part of the expanding fabulous start♪music group) opened in my city in late 2010, I instantly checked them out, also for my new object of desire - and fell in love with an Ibanez V7212E-NT.
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| (promo pic by Ibanez) |
Guess what - on christmas 2010, one of those became mine. In the contrary to all my other guitars (except the following, look below), this guitar has no internal sound pickup but only a built-in tuner (which works surprisingly good, try to tune a 12-string in less than 90 seconds otherwise...).
To tell you something you might don't know (just as I didn't): It's my second Japanese guitar. Whoever thinks Ibanez was a Spanish brand because it sounds that way should know those instruments are as much from Spain as the Pokémon are.
Some little time later in early 2011, when I heard Israel Kamakawiwo'ole sing his version of Over the Rainbow / Wonderful World (remember he's been dead for 13 years when they re-published it in 09/2010) I really liked the ukulele sound in that song. When I asked for such an instrument in my music shop (see above), I was given a Yamaha Guitalele GL1, which is kind of a 6-string ukule in ADGCEA tuning.
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| (promo pic by Yamaha) |
In March 2011, a friend of mine called me saying she wanted to sell her electric guitar - an instrument I've admired a few times before when I was at her place. An electric guitar was somehow missing, although my ambitions are mainly acoustic. So I said yes.
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| (self-shot and -edited pic under CC-BY-NC-SA) |
As you can see, it has an "Gibson Explorer"-type body and two humbuckers. It also features a Floyd Rose Tremolo and a Martinez neck and head plate. And that's where my knowledge stops, because I was told the neck was put in later as the original one broke, and the corpus is a totally different brand. But who cares - all in all, after having it adjusted by an expert, it's super-easy to play and powerful concerning the sound.
Concerning a different field of instruments, I built a cajón from a Schlagwerk myCajon CBA2 kit. I like the feel of that drum, respondig directly to my hands.
To build a cajón is a very logical step - it was one more element missing for having all the instruments needed for a nice and sponteanous acoustic band ;-)
I managed to get a white KORG SP-170 stagepiano for christmas 2011. The stuff I record on it belongs to my project FlauschGAU and is also available in the "Music Player" section of this blog.
Here's what it looks like:
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| Front side |
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| Back side |
I managed to get a white KORG SP-170 stagepiano for christmas 2011. The stuff I record on it belongs to my project FlauschGAU and is also available in the "Music Player" section of this blog.
Here's what it looks like:
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| (image by keymusic.com) |
If you want to know about me... I'm a German guy in his (very) early twenties, studying industrial engineering near Cologne.
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