For hundreds of years guitars have been made the same way, but now this could all change. A new music documentary, “MUSICWOOD” follows the journey of a band of the most famous (acoustic) guitar-makers in the world as they attempt to save a primeval forest and the acoustic guitar.
Musicwood Documentary – 2 min trailer from Helpman Productions on Vimeo.
Of course, Paul Fischer already foresaw the problem of diminishing stocks of precious instrument hardwoods and in 1983 he was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship to extend his research into the forest of Brazil.
He produced many instruments with alternative, non-threatened hardwood species and did a memorable “blind test” with John Mills playing traditional Brazilian rosewood and mixed other species (e.g. Kingwood, Jaguar wood) behind a curtain, with the audience invited to judge whether or not they could tell the difference.
Nowadays, it is quite common to find instruments made of alternative hardwoods (the most common and long standing being the so-called “Indian” rosewood). but Paul was a pioneer who did research with the help of native Brazilians such as Sergio Abreu.
