About Guitaresque

Guitaresque is a Singapore-based non-professional classical guitar quartet. All our members are full-time working professionals but have come together because of our shared passion for guitar music.

We are alumni members of the NUS Guitar Ensemble (GENUS), the premier Niibori-styled guitar orchestra in Singapore, founded by Mr Alex Abisheganaden.

Guitaresque won the first prize and second prize (ensemble) in the 2004 and 2001 Singapore Guitar Festival Competition respectively.



Monday, July 14, 2008

The Divo's 7 string guitar

The Divo's 7 string guitar has finally arrived! It is a spruce-top instrument, with an additional string (A), which allows the player to get the extra "ommphh" when playing some bass lines notes/runs.

I tried my hands on it during our rehearsal last Sunday, and found out that the additional 7th string actually changes the whole experience of playing a CG! It is definitely NOT a case of simply playing a normal 6-stringed guitar, and hitting the 7th when the music demands it. Rather, it involves getting used to a larger fretboard (wider), a different right-hand positioning (since now it feels "weird" to rest your thumb on the lowest string for stability and balance), not to mention becoming 'crossed-eyed' when glancing down at the fretboard/strings - there just seemed to be so many strings all of a sudden! :PP

Anyway, I'm so glad that the Divo has finally gotten his instrument. It has been a long and hard struggle for the rest of us (hahaha!). But yeah - it's done at last: We can now tackle some additional low notes on some of LAGQ's notoriously difficult scores!

See below for Divo's entry on his new instrument (taken from his blog) :
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Haha... my 7-string guitar has finally arrived. Just picked it up yesterday!The sound is pretty decent, the 7-string bass sounds a little like contrabass though. I was running through the notes in "Waltz of the flowers" and suddenly realised that there was a fret extension up to the 22nd fret! High D!


Previously I asked Yudi to help me ask if they made extension up to high C, Yudi got back to me to say that the asturias people don't do it. It was a little disappointing, since I thought I was making the guitar for the quartet, might as well solve all the range problems we encountered in our scores. But hey... I was so surprised to find the extension done nicely and beyond what we needed. Hahaha...


Must thank Shuhann for helping a lot in this... the looking and sourcing for the guitar, the negotiations and everything else. Without his grizzly intervention, I probably would be guitar-less for still quite some time yet.

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