Hi, Rich, At 02:25 PM 1/8/2001 -0600, you wrote: > Could you generally describe your approach to building tone >in S&S USA hammers...beginning w/the un-juiced set. Include >when you sand, what you sand,etc.string fitting... etc., etc., There have been several such requests in the fairly recent past, and I do want you to know that I am thinking on ways to honor them. At the same time, the last time I taught such a class, researching, setting it up initially, and then the individual preparations for each presentation were massive. The class took most of my spare time for over a year and over $9,000 of my own money to develop. It was a very good class, and was very well received. It was also very labor intensive, and quite "expensive" for guild conventions. (How this is the case when I even had to pay my own freight for equipment escapes me.) The class was the most successful when presented in a college or university environment, where there were instruments readily to hand, reasonable to quite good facilities, and willing hands to help with setup and take down. It was significantly more work (for me), and much less successful when presented at conventions. At this moment, my sense is that I might be willing to consider putting on a day long seminar, at a college/university, for a finite number of folks - if other conditions were right, things like a couple of instruments in good enough condition, etc. I am pretty sure that I have no real interest in doing this at a convention. I am not the only non-sponsored instructor to have had to take this kind of position. Others that immediately come to mind are Chris Robinson and Bill Garlick. To be clear, I do know that I cannot do this for free. I am undecided about exactly what that means, but it does mean that there would be some kind of daily fee and paid expenses involved. In terms of publishing something: Here, too, I am thinking about ways to approach this. I have written a few things to CAUT, which are probably archived somewhere; and I do have a sort of a precis version of a voicing system. But, I truly do not believe that this is a subject which lends itself to what might be called distance learning. One needs to be at an instrument, working with the instrument/room/acoustics/etc in order to talk/present intelligently. As you well know, this is an aural art form almost before it is anything else - in this case, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a sound is worth ten-thousand. With the Askenfeldt lectures now available on the 'Net (somewhere, I'll post the link if I can find it, unless someone else has it), it has occurred to me that there might be some way to do some of this using well-prepared and recorded CDs; but, right now, that is not even really a pipe dream. There are costs involved there, too, and since this is not really a vehicle for the sales of some product or other, there does not seem to be a way to recoup costs, let alone return anything on the time spent in development. Anyway, I do appreciate your thoughts, and will try to come up with some basic outline. Beyond that is rather like joining Magellan on some voyage or other. Thank you very much for your kind words and thoughts. Horace ********************************************* Horace Greeley, CNA, MCP, RPT Systems Analyst/Engineer Controller's Office, Stanford University 651 Serra St., RM 100 Stanford, CA 94305 Voice: 650.725.9062 Fax: 650.725.8014 *********************************************
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