10 Setups That Will Make Your Instrument Louder, Better, and Easier to Play.
From the Series »Music Pro Guide Books & DVDs«.
String
musicians, know only this: everything is vibrating. The movement of the
spheres? A guru's cryptic musing? Hypersensitivity to plate tectonics?
Not quite. This is the briefest possible distillation of Trager's
Principle, which states, »When a string instrument is being played,
everything is vibrating, from the top of the scroll to the tip of the
endpin«. This simple formula, the purest distillation of master luthier
Chuck Traeger's lifetime of learning, holds the key to configuring your
instrument to your specifications. It also forms the crux of his third
and final book: String Instrument Setups: 10 Setups That Will Make Your
Instrument Louder, Better, and Easier to Play.
At the height of
the Big Band era, Traeger, a double bassist, performed alongside a
veritable who's who of New York jazz musicians including the likes of
Louie Armstrong and Sidney Bechet. In was in this capacity – as Charlie
Traeger, one hip cat and a regularly frustrated client of NYC's
instrument repair shops – that he began his pursuit of sonic perfection.
In 1969, satisfied with his abilities but devoted to constant
self-improvement, he opened his first repair shop. Before he knew it,
his reputation was preceding him, and he found himself handling the
instruments of school band novices and the New York Philharmonic alike.
On his seventieth birthday, Traeger retired from musicianship and
devoted himself to comprehensively documenting all he had learned about
his craft. Two decades later, shortly after he put the finishing touches
on String Instrument Setups, Chuck Traeger passed away on November 9,
2016. Scarcely a month had elapsed since the death of his beloved wife,
June, to whom he was married for over sixty blissful years. Albeit with a
heavy heart, we at Hal Leonard Books are proud to present this
remarkable man's parting gift to generations of current and future
musicians.
String Instrument Setups is the culmination of
forty-five years of acoustic research involving Trager's old standby,
the double bass, and, in turn, any string instrument with a moveable
bridge and a moveable tailpiece, or one that can be made moveable. Armed
with this book, we're confident that the average musician can enter
almost any string instrument maker or repair shop in the world (the
exception being a shop that has already read String Instrument Setups),
ask for their best repair or restoration, then make that instrument
sound louder, better, and easier to play, every time. This is neither
braggadocio nor hyperbole; rather, it's the confidence instilled by one
man's extensive research, wholehearted devotion, and firm belief in the
sacred bond between instrument and musician. After reading String
Instrument Setups, we're sure you'll feel the same.
Format: Softcover, 138 pages.
Author: Chuck Traeger.
Publisher: Hal Leonard HL00160580.