Choosing a Custom Jazz Archtop Guitar

Do you play the jazz guitar? It is such a wonderful instrument! In fact, many would say there is something awesome about the sound of a jazz guitar, because it adds fullness and life to a piece of otherwise drab music. But if you have never given any thought to purchasing a custom jazz archtop guitar, and now find yourself considering it, what do you look for? Is the most expensive jazz archtop guitar the best one to purchase? Is one body style better than the other is?

Well, like many things, the answer to these questions is not a straightforward response. It depends much on what style of music you want to play, how much you can afford to invest and what your preferences are. So, if you are deciding what will be the best custom jazz archtop guitar is for you, then here are a few tips to keep in mind.

· The solid body - Ideally, you will want one with a solid body as this is the type of guitar used not only jazz guitarist like John Abercrombie, J. McLaughlin and Mike Stern, but it is also a very popular guitar for country, blues and rock music. A solid body guitar produces a very consistent tone, has a high volume output and is nearly 100% immune to feedback---a common occurrence in other types of guitars.

Competition or Collaboration

An interesting subject came up recently whereby some who is assisting with our band was disappointed by one of the bands she manages/assists deciding to go it alone. Her model is very simple and very artist focused. She has built a community of artists and supporters of live music. The artists want to play - she has the venues for them to perform, the supporters want to hear great live music and aren't necessarily fans of a particular band but fans of original live music.

Unlike most promoters she doesn't ask the bands to bring hoards of paying customers (but they are of course welcome to). So the bands and artists have the opportunity to play at some great venues with a crowd of 150 - 300 people. That's a great opportunity to build a fan base right there.

But it appears this band in question prefer to go it alone and it brought up the subject of whether it is better to compete or collaborate.

My own view is collaboration every time. Having run businesses before you have your own niche where you specialise. For example, the company I have right now builds large scale solar parks. We do not install domestic systems, but collaborate with those that do. It is of no issue to us to pass on referrals to people we know can do the job. It is also reciprocated as those same installers don't have the capacity nor knowledge to build utility scale parks. So they pass those to us and we utilise them in those projects.

Is Music The Most Important Thing When Going To See A Band?

The study was carried out with visitors to a web site being asked to judge the winners of a music contest with three options:

1. Listening and watching the video of the performance
2. Watching the performance without music
3. Listening to the music only

In case number 2 a very high percentage (more than 60%) guessed the winners correctly. In the other two samples the results were on a par with guessing (35% or less).

What does this prove?

It proves that audiences don't go to a concert or gig to listen to music, they go to be entertained. A show is exactly that - a show. If audiences want to just listen to music they would just listen to a CD. Do you hear people saying "I heard Bon Jovi at Wembley last week"? Or do they say

"I saw Bon Jovi at Wembley last week"?

Most likely the latter

And that's because of a simple statistic. 15% of what an audience experiences is what they hear, 65% is what they SEE! And 20% is down to emotion - what they feel.

And yet most bands focus on that 15% and forget about the rest. I've been to see many bands in my time and some have been technically brilliant but left me cold, some have been under par musically but had the audiences begging for more.

I was fortunate enough to meet Tom Jackson last year at a festival in Los Angeles. I was even more fortunate that he came to our rehearsal and gave me some advice on performance on two songs.