As traditional forms of media and entertainment have become fragmented with the arrival of easy upload online videos, so has the mainstream tastes and preferences become more diverse. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, George Lucas described today's Internet content as circus-like and similar to the zeitgeist of the Romans feeding Christians to the Lions.Stupid pet tricks, karaoke tapes, cartoons; anything obscene, obscure, meant to shock and offend, all of which I think are fine forms of entertainment but I do wish that content like this at least have developed ideas when they're strapped to the budget of a handheld.

For example, a little video titled Death of a Cello seems to be circulating around the MySpace string community. The premise, as the white title blocks explain to us,"What do you do...When the Music Stops." A brief synopsis: we are witness to three kids who take turns blasting away at a cello until no more. If you don't believe me, you can follow the thread of comments at the MySpace Group "Violinists Unite" posting of the video or click onto the earlier link if you have a MySpace.

Give people what they want, as the Roman Emperors did, may mean give the kids some guns so they can shoot out their musical frustration on a such "uncool" instrument. Better yet, there's always some kind of allure of destruction. Sure it was "cool" to see the neck splinter, top pop off, just like the car wrecks that we can't seem to turn away from. But in a matter of seconds, what for? and why? Why such a death of content after a climatic timing of the sound track that ended with some random line, "For the American tourist bastards." It's stuff like this, where I have to wonder, what was the point of it?

Although I found this video to be of cheap amusement, the point is that it was meant to be shared where its true content of destructive entertainment could be realized and appreciated among friends with similar tastes and preferences to its creator. I certainly can't explain to you 'why' these forms of Internet content are the ones in the limelight. Leave that job to a social commentator or talking head on t.v.

Grant it, this blog is about the shop life couldn't resist in a little commentary of how Internet content is affecting the string world.

A rental instrument came in the other day, and the mom wasn't worried sick about its condition. The player it in a soft padded case, but manged to drop the cello bridge impacting the ground first. The top of the cello now has a significant crack.

Thank goodness for the insurance and maintenance policy, as the two of them drove back home with a different cello.

Meanwhile, we're trying to fix this guy up!

A little instruction by the boss on clamping process. Some hot hide glue used to fill the cracks and specially designed clamps to hold it in place without getting clamp marks all over the surface.

The dove tailed corner blocks need to be scrapped off of excess glue.

Les has just about finished on this bow. He currently has the bow under some tight winding.

As of now, he's trying to fix the camber on another bow. It was pulled out of a bath of nitric acid and left to dry in some sunlight. The bow is otherwise in playing condition.

Bowmaking

A quiet Saturday with very little foot traffic into the store. With some of the spare time, I thought I'd catchup on some old Amazon listings and blog a bit about current works in the progress. Les is at his bench, ready to plane out another bow.

The wood he's currently working with is a called pernambuco. It's considered the gold standard for bowmaking material. Very expensive stuff as this single orange blanc of this orange stick can go upwards of $600. Besides the cost, there's always the unpredictable nature of wood with all its flaws and cracks that can't be seen to the eye. Don't worry, no problems on this bow though.


I didn't show you the step before this, but Les gets the blanc ready with critical markings in chalk and pencil. He also has a gold template of the bow head & tip, which he has to design, and trace its outline on to the head of the blanc.

He than takes a Japanese knife and scrapes out the arching under the bow head.


Les has been trained in the French traditional bow making style and he's pretty strict about sticking to it. Sometimes though, he takes a short cut and does a bit of filing like he does above.


Shaping the blanc into an octagonal or round stick has to be done with one of these little tools. It's a specially made "finger plane" that can give your digits a grind session. Les has to get the cutting edge sharp with a wetting stone, then grin and bear as he planes. It ends up being a real workout for him.

Will be back next week to blog more about his finished bow.