Last week, Lester Korus, aspiring bow maker, has returned.A. Cavallo back at full strength! But where are his tools?That's what should have arrived, but apparently they were still being shipped via ground delivery.  Thus, upon an enthusiastic arrival last Tuesday, Lester was delayed in getting back to work.  He was offered to work with the general shop tools but was left frustrated after realizing these simply could not do.I don't know what it is, but in a craftsmen environment like a violin shop, the workers are always particular about their tools and space.  They carve and cut at their projects as if it were natural biomechanical motions of their body.  and can be easily upset by the slight disturbance of this practice around their bench.The next day...his tools still didn't come.But......he did get something else:)

When the kids start itching to get out of school in May, it means that music shops better start hustling for sales.  Whether its graduation recitals, music school auditions or music camps, that transitory phase before the summer schedule hits is critical for the shop's survival of the inevitable summer sales drought.  This retailers sales are often presumed to go down, to be cash poor, overstocked, and serve up summer discount sales to hang on to customers.

How wrong could we have been!  During our fourth of July week that we were closed, I had to make daily trips to process and ship these Amazon orders away.  Granted, we're still new to selling on Amazon and many of these sales on small unit items like rosins and mutes, its the highest volume of sales we've had during the summer. The bows left with invoice copies asking for Les' bow rehairs have take up space on the rack.  More little old grandmas and rural family members came by our shop to see if their heirloom was worth appraising or restoring.In fact, this has been our most successful summers.  In terms of sales, this July had more than twice the amount of transactions and volume of sales done from the previous years' summer.  It's also the biggest amount of July sales in the history of the shop.

The reason?  We're not sure.  We've theorized that Amazon's spike in sales is a result of last minute orders or forgotten equipment for summer music camp needs.  Perhaps, our online presence is starting to pay off at a regional level.  This still doesn't explain our local foot traffic though which resulted in instruments being sold and major repairs on cellos.  Who knows but who cares because being busy is good for business.  As our boss has been saying around the shop, "Just when you think you know this business, you never know...it's always changing."

I suppose then, what will August hold?  A belated dry spell for retail sales in the violin world?On the optimistic side, can we manage to hold the fort down during the month of August.  I can't begin to imagine having to service those or back-to-school musicians needing instruments for their orchestra.

Here's an interesting video I found.  I would like to coin this device as the very first air violin?  It's a much more sophisticated version of the 1980s Nintendo Power Glove.A better fit perhaps are the gloves that Tom Cruise wears to orchestrally scrub images of crime in Minority Report.Could this be the prelude to the final form of the air violin?  We've already witnessed thebreakdown of the its traditional physical form with groundbreaking industrial designs such as silhouette shaped Yamaha Silent Violins and see through skeletal structures by Ted Brewer.  Perhaps the next logical step in the air violin's progress for ethereal performance is when the player's body movements and directions controls the instrument.  Who knows, maybe even the mind in the future:)In case you're wondering where I've been getting these videos, check out Democracy Player.It works a little bit like RSS readers except they read updates on video uploads and searches from various sites such as YouTube, Bliptv, DailyMotion, etc.

• Air Violin
• Democracy Player (go here to download air violin, if link is having problems)

Sales Rep Visits Again

Another visit from the traveling sales reps. This time, they come from West Coast Strings. Parked outside the shop with their van, they we're already unloading before I came into work.
Our boss was here a few hours early for them to open up and look at the items they had to offer.
Their driver couldn't speak much English but he said 'Okay for a quick snap of the camera.
A truck full of instruments, and how we wish we could stock up. Like many retailers, summer time cash flows are pretty low which means fewer purchases for the fall back to school rush.

Two violins, two carbon fiber bows, and perhaps a double bass? Sorry the last one was a stretch.

At this year's Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, the event celebrates its 20th year with a painted violin project.  Keeping in the theme of twenty, 20 violins were commissioned to be painted by 20 local artists and are to be auctioned off for at a '20s dinner-auction gala.This article reminds me of a few weeks ago, when we had a post about our attempts to auction off a Mexican Folk Violin on eBay.  It was an instrument that has been lying around the shop from some time now, and we never were able to liquidate it.  When a local artist stopped by shop, we thought here's a chance, let's give him an opportunity to be creative and sell it for him. 3 re-listed auctions later, still no bids.  There are somethings, as hard as we may try, that just cannot sell on eBay.Although our venture wasn't profitable by any means, we tried to see if this kind of folksy instrument art market exists.  You might think that these creations would be found on the sidewalk sales and street markets of the local arts or bohemian parts of town.  There seems to be a bigger trend at work here.  Painted violins have caught the eyes of those with philanthropic aims.  The players involved in this creative process is the artist and a non-profit organization.  The local artist is granted creative exposure and his completed instrument is held up for charitable auction or fund-raiser toward the organization.  Such collaborations have been extended beyond its originators to all across the community and brought them together for civic festivities. In the 2005 March-April's issue of SYMPHONY:

...at least 40 organization across the country- the vast majority of them orchestra, but also the occasional arts or community center- that have conducted a violin art project over the past three years, some making it a regular, if not annual events.

In other words, this phenomena is in the same zeitgeist of community based art projects such as the famous CowParade or New York Apples.  For a more in depth analysis of this painted violin trend, definitely check out Rebecca Winzenried's article over at SYMPHONY magazine.This raises trend interesting question though.  If people are finding incredible appeal and success with these painted violins in the world of good causes, why not in the land of profit?  You could argue that there have been some success.Those bright rainbow color factory spray painted ones don't count.  Neither do some of those violin backs by Gliga.  Certainly electric violins with polychromatic colors or Walmart's Barbie Violin don't either (if any one finds one, please do send us one for auction).Many of these attempts are rather sloppy; almost like slapping decal flames on the back of your hotrod and calling it "pimped".  The same kind of lagging quality is even found with some of these non-profit creations.   Artists are donated cheap fiddles to begin with.  Fund raising deadlines takes away the cuts away at the artistic quality.  And unfortunately, function is inevitably lost for aesthetics.Wouldn't it be an interesting venture for shops to arrange a collaboration between the violin maker and the painter?  Purists, and traditional craftsmen could not fathom such an idea.   The only brush they want touching instruments are the ones coated in varnish.  History though tells a different story, as such ventures did in fact happen.Case in point:  the King ViolonCello by Andrea Amati.Experts say this instrument was built around 1538 but in 1560, it was painted to serve as one of a set of 38 stringed instruments that were painted and gilded for the French court of King Charles IX.  Justice and glorification of the King are the themes depicted on the back.  Read up some more on and see some other views of this masterpiece at the National Music Museum.If any of you makers, painters, or readers out there ever feel inspired to look at these instrumental works of art, here's a list of links to some galleries of instruments that we found interesting:

• Painted Violins
• Denver Young Artists Orchestra (2006)
• SOGO's 2007 Painted Violin Auction
• San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts

The long awaited India parts are finally here!Due to complications such as custom inspections and floods that delayed shipping last week, a 6 week turnaround for these precious parts.It's like Christmas in July here, as we unwrap the packages and inspect each part for quality.  There is a point though that when the gifts keep piling up, you simply don't know what to do with them.  Our stockpile of cardboard bins for tailpiece were ready to receive them but we're still clueless on how to organize the chinrests and pegs.  On top of that, we have to photograph & describe more of these new parts for Amazon under our house name "Alessandro Fine Fittings".

We are back!  Our boss has returned from his long needed vacation.  Meanwhile we have been busily fixing and tweaking our various online sites over at MySpace, eBay, and here at Blogger.  All this online social networking exciting has gotten us excited.First off, for this posts' agenda:  please check out David Heath's Double Bass Blog. For any of you  bass players or makers, since there relatively few of you around, this is a much needed place for you all to congregate in cyberspace.  David seems to be very active with numerous projects such as a podcast show "Contrabass Conversations" and his soon to be director position on International Society of Bassists.  Some day, we'd love to have this blog as sophisticated as his but we're still a long ways from that.Speaking of basses, when the sales rep from Texas came by with the bows, we happened to purchase a great carved bass from them to help ease their load in their already crowded van.  What follows are some photos showing how this 3/4 size beast was setup.Onto the operating table upstairs.  The bass's back is protected from scratching with linen free cloth.You can't see it in this shot, but we have a small neck rest to stabilize the instrument when the sound post is being propped up.  Probing into the f-holes is the black sound post setter.The shot of the bridge with the feet set in place seems to a simple "plop-and-drop" deal but this is actually the most difficult part.  Les had to work on correctly carving out the feet of the bridge so they would match the top's surface.  Small but proportionate details that can alter how the bass sounds.This is a two man effort as the gear mechanism on bass is wound by one person and the other has to make sure the cable like strings anchored into the tailpiece and set on the right bridge notch.And there you go!  Les takes it for a test drive and he's giddy as heck.  It's the first time we've had a column of basses in the shop for him to try- but most importantly maintain them.

Folks, we are officially closed for the week of the 4th. I'm glad to indulge in a little vacation away from the monitor.

The only person that has to work is Les. He is currently back in Durham, New Hampshire to add more training under his belt. In particular, he wants to learn how to make frogs.

Every summer,the Violin Craftsmanship Institute has a series of workshops and classes that range from repair, making, restoration, etc. Under the tutelage of the great bow making masters such as George Rubino & Lynn Hannings, Les has been spending his summers there to sharpen his skills.

In 3 weeks time, he'll be back with skills sharper than a knife, "be busting out some bows today."