Guitar Musings

I just purchased “The Acoustic Guitar: Adjustment, Care, Maintenance, and Repair,” (thoughts on book in upcoming posts).  Mainly because I want to be able to make the necessary adjustments to my instrument without having to take it into a shop all the time.   Some might want to work on their own guitar as well but others would rather give it to a professional but how can you find a good repair shop in your area?

I have a new friend through Twitter who provides great help in finding such guitar repair shops.  It is repairmyguitar.com, which is a searchable database of repair shops throughout the United States.  All you need to do is visit the site, choose your city, state and you will be given a list of local repair shops.  I would say the list is pretty decent for the areas that I looked up and I’m sure that it is growing everyday.  In the future, I hope to see an option to search for luthiers.

If you are looking to repair, setup or just do some standard maintenance on your guitar, check out repairmyguitar.com and find a local shop.  They currently have a promotion where if you can win $50 if you submit a review of a shop that you used.  Reviews will give us even more confidence in using this search tool.  If you own a shop or repair guitars, visit the site and get listed, it’s free and a invaluable tool to promote your business.

Links:
www.repairmyguitar.com

In my conversations with guitarists over the years I have mentioned a web site that I thought was well known but maybe not as much as I thought.  The site that I am talking about his the Eythorsson Guitar School web.  Based in Iceland, Eythorsson offers an incredible amount of free classical guitar music for people to download.  From studies to sonatas, ensembles to duets, there is something for all to enjoy.  The catch is that the music has to be in the public domain for it to be on the web and free.  You will find works of Sor, Bach, Carcassi, Scarlatti, Tarrega, etc…  I have dabbled with Classical throughout my trials as a guitarist and I have found they studies and methods have helped a great deal, especially with working on the independence of my thumb and learning new voices for my writing.  I haven’t worked on too many of the solo pieces but I did download some of the Scarlatti sontas and they were arranged wonderfully.  Too bad my playing couldn’t do them justice.

I have been using this site as resource for as long as I can remember and am surprised how much it has grown over the years to have such a library of music.  Check it out and see what you think.

Links:
Music for classical guitar
http://www.eythorsson.com/