Buying a classical guitar

Last year I started playing the guitar, and since I thought I'd prefer playing rock music, I bought a steel-string acoustic to learn on. While I've loved playing the guitar, I've realized that I prefer playing classical music.

Classical guitar music is typically played on guitars specially built for the purpose. Classical guitars have smaller bodies than steel-string acoustic (and steel-string electric) guitars; they have shorter¹ and wider² necks; and they use nylon strings instead of steel strings (see Wikipedia for a description of guitar construction). The changes in the neck make fingering somewhat easier (the strings are farther apart, meaning that while the fingers must stretch farther, it's less likely that a finger will accidentally hit multiple strings), and the nylon strings change both the sound (it's mellower) and the pain coefficient (the strings are much easier to hold down without causing pain)³.

So, buying a classical guitar has been on my to-do list since last summer. Regular readers may recall my joyful experience buying my first guitar online. To summarize, I ended up having to return two different guitars, and even the guitar I eventually kept had been slightly damaged. It wasn't a pleasant experience, and it drove home the point that online music stores don't seem to quality-check their merchandise before selling it (or, at least, the two stores I purchased from didn't). Additionally, finding comparable sound samples of guitars online is nearly impossible, making comparison shopping difficult. Given that when I started shopping I was considering spending at least $500 on a classical guitar, I didn't want to take the risk of buying it online.

Shopping advice I found for buying a classical guitar can be summed up as: "Check the guitar for mechanical flaws (buzzing strings, odd noises when playing, cracks, etc.), play a few guitars, and then buy whichever guitar sounds the best to you." Oh, and "bring an experienced player with you if you're a novice." Unfortunately, I didn't have any experienced players who were willing to go shopping with me, and the advice to "buy whichever guitar sounds best" meant very little to me at first, as I had no clue what to listen for. So, that advice wasn't terribly helpful.

To make a long story short, my SO and I made about a dozen trips to different guitar stores over the past six months, and at each store I played as many classical guitars as I could (often about 5-10 different models at each store, until I started narrowing the field). Playing (and more importantly, listening to) all of these different guitars was excellent experience: by the end of the six months my SO and I had both developed better ears, and we felt confident distinguishing different guitars in my price range.

Over this time we figured out a few things that might help someone else shopping for a new guitar:

1. If you're not great at tuning by ear, bring an electronic tuner and use it to tune every guitar you play. Even at specialty stores, we found that most of the guitars were out of tune⁴, and even the best guitars sounded awful out of tune. I felt a bit embarrassed about bringing a tuner at first, but it was well worth it.
2. If possible, find specialty guitar stores in your area. We went to one of the chain retailers, and were disappointed by the quality of their classical guitars (the guitars tended to be horribly out of tune, some had very old/damaged strings on them, and a surprisingly high fraction had mechanical problems, something we didn't find nearly as often at specialty stores). The specialty stores also tended to have a better ambiance (they were quieter and calmer, which is important when the entire point of the excursion is to listen to the guitar you're playing).
   
3. Play as wide a range of guitars as you can. Even though I knew I couldn't afford the $4,000 guitars, I still played them, and it was by comparing the sound of $4,000 guitars to $200 guitars that my SO and I started learning what to listen for.
4. Bring someone with you who can listen to the guitars as you play, even if that person isn't an experienced guitar player. Even though both my SO and I were novice listeners (and my SO doesn't play the guitar), we found it educational to be able to discuss the sound of the guitars (as together we heard more than either one of us individually).
   

While the shopping was a slow and often frustrating process (models that were in stock one visit were often out of stock the next visit, and the different stores all stocked different models, making comparing our favorites difficult), it was fun to play so many guitars, and this past week I finally settled on one. At the start of the process I'd hoped to spend around $500 for a new guitar, but I ended up spending nearly three times that, as I realized that guitars in that price range just sounded better to me. It's the most expensive chunk of wood I've ever bought, but I love it.

¹ The neck of my new classical guitar is 32.5cm long (from the nut to the joint with the body), while my steel-string's neck is 35.5cm long. On a classical guitar the neck joins the body at the twelfth fret, while on my steel-string acoustic the neck joins the body at the fourteenth fret.
² The width of the neck at the first fret on my new classical guitar is 53mm, while my steel-string acoustic is 44mm wide at the same point.
³ Acoustic steel strings are like little razor blades: they require a lot of force to push down at the frets, and they're so thin that they jab into your fingertips as you do that. When I first started playing on my steel-string acoustic, I couldn't play for more than 15 minutes a day before my fingers started killing me; after a few weeks I built up calluses, but even so it's still mildly painful to play for more than a few hours a day. Nylon strings make fretting much easier - they're thicker and they're plastic, so they don't cut into the fingers nearly as much.
⁴ While many guitars were just awfully out of tune (and even a simple relative-tuning check would discover the problem), some guitars were relatively in tune (i.e. the strings were in tune relative to each other) but were way off from standard tuning (e.g., the B string was actually playing B-flat). Thus, just checking the guitar by ear to determine if it's relatively in tune wouldn't be sufficient to compare all the guitars on an even footing.

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet's Brazil concert

A few weeks ago my SO and I attended the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet's CD release party concert for their newest album: LAGQ Brazil. LAGQ is a four-man classical guitar quartet that's been around for more than 20 years, but which I just learned about this summer thanks to one of my guitar instructors.

The majority of the concert consisted of the quartet sitting in chairs playing their classical guitars. There was very little showmanship, but they didn't need any; we managed to get front-row seats, and I spent the entire two hours mesmerized by their playing. The group played a range of pieces including Bach's Bandenburg Concerto #6, the Overture to the Barber of Seville, Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo, and a number of tracks from their Brazil album (including Jorge Ben's Mas Que Nada). I'm no expert in classical guitar, but I was amazed by the guitarists' skill: their hands flew over the strings, and the fluidity, speed, and apparent effortlessness of their movements were awe-inspiring. I've started listening to a lot of solo classical guitar music in the past few months, and the complexity of the quartet's music was a refreshing contrast.

The quartet ended the concert by playing four songs with Katisse Buckingham and Kevin Ricard, the woodwindist and percussionist they recorded with on their CD. These two musicians made for a great end to the concert, though sadly the group implied that they wouldn't be touring with them.

LAGQ isn't going to be traveling to many cities on their tour (see their schedule here), but if you're lucky enough to be in one of the cities they're going to, and are at all interested in classical guitar, I'd highly recommend attending.

Another semester begins!

Another semester has started at Rhosgobel U. This summer was filled with fun visitors, an amazingly productive garden (we've been harvesting pounds of fresh tomatoes, peppers, and beans every week for the past month), and lots of rest and relaxation. This was a contrast to the past few summers (when I've done field work out of the country during the summers), and thus I'm feeling much more rested and relaxed than in recent years.

Regular readers will note that I've been silent for a while; I apologize for this, and should explain it. The primary culprit, as one would expect, is that other avenues have started taking up my time. First on the list is that this semester I'm creating a new online course from scratch. While I'm enjoying this (I've been planning something like this for years), it also means that all of my writing time is now dedicated to the course.

Additionally, I've found that I really enjoy playing the guitar. My summer course was a blast, and thanks to it I've improved a lot (though I'm still a complete novice). The course took a tremendous amount of time (at least 15 hours a week combined in class and practicing), and I'm still practicing for an average of half an hour a day. I'm finding that when I've got some spare time, I don't sit down at the computer (or, rather, I don't continue sitting at the computer), but instead wander over and pick up the guitar. Right now I'm focusing on classical guitar, and might even be buying a new classical guitar soon ( since I “need” a classical guitar to play classical music).

But never fear, kind reader, I'm not going to tell you I'm quitting writing. I've enjoyed this for too long to do that. Instead, I'll be reducing my frequency of posting; so, I'd expect something about weekly, though I give no guarantees.

That said, here's looking forward to an exciting semester filled with new things.

A few updates

It's been a while since I posted, and thus I wanted to reassure folks that the slow posting is due to nothing more than being distracted with other items. On the list of (enjoyable) distractions are house-guests (which we'll have three sets of this month), guitar playing, birthday celebrating, and starting work on my new online course.

The guitar course has been going for a few weeks now, and I'm having a blast. The course is focused around playing classical guitar, which I'd never really listened to before this course, but am now finding that I quite enjoy (both playing and listening to). I've still got a long way to go before I can do much of anything with the instrument, but it's fun to plink away at it every night.

And, as is traditional, I cooked my SO a birthday feast on the big day. This year the feast consisted of cheese blintzes (which will likely be this week's end-of-the-week recipe blogging post), crab dip, chicken ravioli, and a white chocolate cake filled with lemon curd. Everything was homemade, including the ravioli:


While the ravioli took hours to make (I remember now why we haven't made them for about three years), they were excellent with a sauce of nothing but butter and Romano cheese. My SO should have birthdays more often!

Video game sheet music

I'm a bit chagrined to admit it, but one of the types of music I'm looking forward to learning to play on the guitar are the themes from various video games. In fact, over spring break I partially learned to read sheet music by listening to the music from various video games (e.g., Metroid) while reading along with the sheet music for those songs. Hey, you gotta start somewhere.

I've ended up finding a lot of sites that have video game sheet music or guitar tabs on them, and thought I'd list them here¹:

• NobuoUematsu.com - Sheet music (in gif format) of music by (you guessed it), Nobuo Uematsu
• Nintendo on Piano - Sheet music (in PDF format) for Castlevania, Metroid, Super Mario Brothers, and others
• RabiteMan's Game Music - Sheet music (in .gif format) for Final Fantasy IV and VI, Chrono Trigger, and others.
• Video Game Sheet Music - Sheet music (in pdf or NWC format) for Megaman, Super Mario Brothers, and others.
• Game music themes.com - Sheet music (in pdf format) for many games, sorted by console type.
• Shivasar’s RPG Sheet Music - Sheet music (typically in .gif format) for a number of RPGs, including lots for Chrono Trigger and many of the Final Fantasy series.
• Riulyn's RPG Sheet Music Shrine - Sheet music (typically in .pdf format) for lots of RPGs, including Chrono Cross, lots of Final Fantasy's, and others.
• NinSheetMusic - Sheet music (in .MUS format) from various Nintendo games, including the Mario Brothers games, Metroid, Pokemon, Castlevania, and others.
• Ichigo's Sheet Music - Sheet music (in a variety of formats, including PDF, gif, and MUS) for a whole bunch of games (titles list here)
• Piano Themes - Sheet music (in PDF format) for a huge list of games
• Video Game Jam - Guitar tabs (as .txt files) for a lot of games, sorted by console type.
• Nintendo Tabs - Guitar tabs (as .txt files) for a number of Nintendo games, again sorted by console.

In addition to working through my guitar books, I'm currently working on the first-piano left-hand portion of Compression of Time from Final Fantasy VIII (music on this page, though I've shifted it up an octave to be able to play it with notes I currently know). It has a range of four notes, but that's about as much as I can handle for now.

It's nice to have something to distract me from the mountains of papers that are awaiting grading.

¹ (VGmusic.com's list of links helped quite a lot)

A tale of two music stores

Or: how to get your customer to buy from the competition in five easy steps.

[Warning: A long, boring post about troubles purchasing a guitar follows. If you're interested in problems with new Washburn D10SBs, or a comparison of Musician's Friend's and SameDayMusic.com's customer service, read on. If not, don't.]

Regular readers will remember that back in March I decided to start learning to play the guitar. The first step was to obtain a guitar, which I attempted to do by placing an order for a Washburn D10SB from Musician's Friend back in late March. It took me until yesterday to actually finally have a working guitar; in this post I'll recount this tale of woe, and review the customer service of both companies I dealt with.

Musician's Friend shipped my package the day after I placed the order, and it arrived via UPS ground in the usual time. The order consisted of my guitar (which came in a hard case), another hard case I ordered for a friend, and some other miscellaneous items (a guitar stand, extra strings, and some picks). Unfortunately, Musician's Friend had packed everything into one (giant) box, and had put exactly two sheets of paper into the box as padding (my guitar's hardcase wasn't even in a plastic bag). As one might expect, the UPS elephants had had a blast with the package, and thus virtually everything in the order was damaged. Even the box of picks had been broken open during shipment, and thanks to a minimal taping job of the box's seams, most of the picks had fallen out during transport. Most distressing was that the two cases had rubbed against each other, leaving large gouges on both.

Musician's Friend was quick to respond to all of my e-mails, but unfortunately their responses were often uninformative. For instance, the first e-mail they sent said that I should ship everything that was damaged back to them, and that they could either exchange everything for new items or give me a full refund. I still wanted a guitar, so I said that I wanted to do an exchange. Only later did I find out that by "exchange" they meant "send us back your guitar and four days after we receive it we'll place a new order for you," while by "refund" they meant "we can place an order for a replacement guitar immediately for you."

I packed the guitar up and sent it back the next day; it took the usual time to get back, and then a few days later I got a notice that they'd placed a new order (X') for me for the replacement items. The next day I got this:

Dear Radagast:

Thanks again for your recent order #X'. The items which were in stock have been shipped, and we've sent your package tracking information via a previous email.

As you may recall from the Item Status on our website or from speaking with us when you placed your order, the item(s) listed below are not in stock. Our orders for this gear have been expedited through the manufacturer, and we are still expecting to ship your products within the timeframe originally quoted. If we anticipate an extended delay, we will contact you again to verify any changes you may wish to make.

As you might guess, at no point before this did Musician's Friend ever mention that they were out of stock. In fact, I'm fairly certain that they had a D10SB in stock when I initially shipped back my damaged guitar to them. At the end of the e-mail they informed me that the soonest they'd ship the guitar was now May 11.

I was furious. It didn't help matters that Musician's Friend had never once apologized for anything; the words "apologize" and "sorry" are completely lacking from any of the numerous e-mails they sent me. While the other replacement items did ship the next day, they arrived with the same mediocre packaging (no bubble wrap, and all the small items were put loose into the same box as a guitar case, which led to the new pick package breaking open and spewing its contents all through the box).

After doing some shopping around, I found SameDayMusic.com, another online music store that seemed to be fairly large, had a good return policy posted, and had the D10SB in stock, albeit for a higher price. SameDayMusic had a price match policy on their website, and within a day of finding their site I had a URL available to purchase an in-stock D10SB for $5 less than I had paid at Musician's Friend. I placed an order with SameDayMusic, and took great pleasure in cancelling my Musician's Friend order (though I only later found out that the customer service representative "incorrectly" cancelled my order the first time, and thus it took me multiple e-mails and more than a week before the money was refunded to my credit card).

SameDayMusic lived up to their name and shipped the guitar out the same day I ordered it. It arrived the usual time later, and I was ecstatic to find that they actually knew what bubble wrap was¹. Unfortunately, the guitar case arrived missing one of its feet, and the guitar had a few small scratches on the side. The case was packaged in what appeared to be the manufacturer's bag, and there wasn't a foot in sight, so it seems likely that the foot was broken before shipping.

SameDayMusic's response to my e-mail was refreshingly thorough and kind. The very first sentence of their e-mail was apologetic (including "apologize" prominently), and they clearly explained all of the options for either exchanging or returning the guitar. Unlike Musician's Friend, they made it clear that they would ship out a replacement item the very same day, even saying that they'd only charge my card if they didn't get the return item within a few weeks.

SameDayMusic did indeed ship out a replacement guitar the very same day, and they did one better: they shipped it out second-day air (Musician's Friend shipped out their replacement items standard ground). This replacement (the third guitar and case I was to receive) arrived two business days later, and again was packaged with bubble wrap.

The case was in great shape this time, but the guitar had a dent on the front. The guitar and case both appeared to be packaged in the manufacturer's bag, and there was nothing in the case that could have caused the damage, so this damage again appeared to have happened before shipping. I informed SameDayMusic of the damage, but unfortunately by this time they were out of stock of the D10SB as well, and wouldn't have it in stock until June. To their credit, SameDayMusic apologized profusely, and reported this problem to me in the very first e-mail they sent after I told them of my damaged shipment.

At this point I had two guitars and two cases (as SameDayMusic's return shipping label hadn't arrived yet), but fortunately one of each was in fairly good shape. One case was perfect, and I could live with the scratched guitar (as the scratch wasn't too noticeable, and was only in the finish). I proposed that I'd be OK with keeping the better set of items if I got a small discount; SameDayMusic wrote back the next day saying that they'd be happy to give me a 20% discount for the trouble. That was more than I expected, and thus I'm pleased to say that as of yesterday I finally have a guitar I can keep.

Thanks to their excellent customer service, SameDayMusic has now won a customer for life. Musician's Friend, on the other hand, won't see my money again. It's amazing what an apology, a speedy replacement shipment, and some flexible thinking will do for you.

¹ To clarify, while SameDayMusic's packing was better than Musician's Friend's, it was still sub-optimal. The guitar was packed in its hardcase, which was put in a plastic bag, but then the case was put into a box just barely bigger than it was, with bubble wrap was stuffed into one end of the box to attempt to lock the case into place. I would have preferred it if the entire case had been wrapped in bubble wrap, or if it had been double-boxed.

Where have I been?

Unfortunately this semester's heavy workload (I'm in the classroom 7 hours a week more than I was last semester, and am chair of a committee that has a large project to complete by June) is keeping me extremely busy. Many work days recently have been in excess of 12 hours, and it doesn't look like that's going to get better anytime soon. So, while I'm going to try to keep posting regularly, I'd expect quiet periods to occur sporadically from now until the end of the semester (which is about seven weeks away). Sorry.

On a separate note, I've been asked how things are going with my new guitar. Sadly, things aren't going. I ordered a guitar and two hard cases¹ from Musician's Friend two weeks ago, and everything did indeed arrive last week. However, the two cases (one of which had the guitar in it) were shipped in the same box, with no padding to protect them from either the other items in the box or the elephants in the UPS facilities. So, long story short, virtually everything in the shipment was damaged, and thus my guitar is now on its way back to the Musician's Friend warehouse. A new one will hopefully be arriving (with better packaging) in a few weeks.

¹ No, I don't need two cases; one was for a friend.

A true break

This spring break has turned out better than I anticipated; even though it has been work-filled, I've managed to take some real time off. In fact, I've even become absorbed into a new hobby: the guitar.

Yes, that's right, your host is going to start learning to play the guitar. Now I should make it clear that as of right now I don't even have a guitar in my possession, but thanks to the miracles of the internet and UPS I should have that minor problem fixed by early next week.

While I've toyed with the idea of playing the guitar for a while, the catalyst for this sudden hobby acquisition was a local friend who's just started playing the guitar herself; I got to play with her acoustic guitar over the weekend, and fell in love with the sound after my first few plucks.

Considering that I haven't played an instrument since my age was something close to a single digit, this is going to be a big change. However, I think that's at least part of the appeal; it's been great fun to spend hours and hours of this spring break reading up on guitars, shopping for instruments, and starting to learn the basics of reading music¹.

I'm looking forward to making time to learn to play the guitar in the coming years; lets just hope that someday I'll actually be able to make musical sounds with the thing.

¹ Indeed, before the start of this week I did not even know how to read music. I'm about as much of a beginner as one can be.