Double Manual Harpsichord' title='Double Manual Harpsichord' />Keith Hill Instrument Maker My goal now is to do everything in my power to encourage a return again to a sane, meaningful, highly expressive, masterful way of playing great music and creating great art. It is to this end that my instrument making is dedicated. I have posted an article I wrote some years ago titled The Art of Listening in which I explain my understanding of the nature of what it means to listen. You can read this article by clicking on the ARTICLES button under the main heading of this page and selecting the specific page. I wrote The Art of Listening as a chapter in my Treatise on the True Art of Musical Instrument Making but was told that my view on the business of listening had no place in my Treatise, so I removed it even though I disagreed with the few readers who thought it best not to reveal how I listen. I hope you enjoy reading it and that it reveals something that will help you improve your own skill of listening. Cinema 4D Download Free Student Microsoft. Keith Hill 2. 01. Nashville I have been in the business of making musical instruments for 4. If you own an antique or vintage HILL harpsichord and have not had the instrument renovated somewhat recently, that instrument is in sore need of being renovated with new strings, new quills, and new dampers. This sort of work needs to be done regularly about every 1. I purposely assigned opus numbers to my instruments applying the label on the pinblock in the treble on most harpsichords and on the pinblock in the bass if there was no room in the treble. The reason first was to keep track of where my instruments were located and second to have a clear record of my development as an artist for my own use. In other words, if someone wrote to me and said they owned opus 3. I would tell them if their instrument was or was not genuine, as happened occasionally over the years. Third, and most importantly, was to demonstrate to those, who tend to attribute anything of high quality to ones talent, just how wrong that is. I have had to work extremely hard to figure out all that I have come to understand about making a high quality sound, one that I personally consider worth listening to. Anyone who would think otherwise is wrong. And central to all that hard work is being attentive to intelligent criticism and figuring out how to use it. By this I mean not succumbing to the usual reaction to hearing criticism, which is, being offended. I consider the inability to hear, accept, and use criticism as the principle reason why most musical instrument makers make instruments that are not worth listening to. As one very fine violinist and critic of my violins recently told me, You are one of the only violin makers I know who can actually accept and make use of criticism. I responded by saying that I learned that lesson after having built my second harpsichord, that is, one can wallow in feeling offended or one can pay close attention to what is being said by the critic in order to improve the work. It is just a choice, nothing more. To begin, here are some useful definitions of words used in this article to describe age or date of the instrument and especially the kind of work needed. DEFINITIONSANTIQUE means older than 2. Any Hill harpsichord built before 1. If you own an antique Hill instrument and you have not had any significant work done on it since it was made, then your instrument is in serious need of being reconditioned. VINTAGE means a particular period during which your Hill instrument was made. I delineate those periods according the degree of acoustical development andor place or year in which your Hill instrument was made. A harpsichord is any of a family of European keyboard instruments, including the large instrument currently called a harpsichord, but also the smaller virginals, the. The Harpsichord Clearing House gallery contains the largest global inventory of harpsichords, virginals, clavichords and fortepianos used and new. I began making harpsichords in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The instruments made between 1. I developed my acoustical thinking based of direct observations made of the acoustical behavior of my materials. A list of works in the composer category that are not included here can be found on this page. Please consult the manual of style for creating composer work lists. The Harpsichord Clearing Houses complete list contains the most comprehensive, global listing of harpsichords, virginals and clavichords for saleused and new. The instruments made during this time are labeled Opus 1 5. My second period includes, not only harpsichords, but also violins, clavichords and fortepianos. My instruments made during this time are labeled Opus 5. My third period involved a move, in 1. Manchester, Michigan, and was when my acoustical thinking had developed enough for me to write up my results in a treatise that I titled The True Art of Making Musical Instruments the Forgotten Craft of Enhancing Sound. My instruments made during this time are labeled Opus 1. My fourth period. This period was spent learning to use different ideas, further observations, and new information to increase my understanding of how the science of acoustic enhancement works. Instruments made during this time are labeled Opus 3. This period involved another move, in 2. Nashville, Tennessee. Opus 4. Those harpsichords from Opus 3. Hill instrument has been kept, will likely be needing to be restrung, requilled and redampered, in a wordrenovated, unless that has already been done earlier, that is, sometime within the previous 1. RENOVATING Means restringing because over time iron strings rust and brass strings corrode. Rust and corrosion act as an abrasive, which eats away at the tips of the quills causing the sound to become coarse and dull. This means the strings and the quills need to be replaced. Replacing all the quills with new quills often needs to be redone more regularly because over time many quills will have broken and were replaced by technicians who may or may not understand how to get the best sound from the instrument. Redampering is necessary if the damper cloth has been eaten away by the strings. RECONDITIONING Whereas renovating involves only those aspects of set up that degrade through time and use, a reconditioning includes renovating and can but not necessarily involve any or all of the following, things which I recommend, i. REBUILDING Usually involves replacing the soundboard, as well as everything done in a reconditioning. Since the soundboard has been removed, it also can involve acoustically adjusting the inside of the case and a re engineering of the bracing system, should that prove acoustically beneficial. UNDERSTANDING   HOW   TO  ASSESS  COSTBENEFIT   RATIOS To assess the quality of an instrument I rate every possible enhancement on a scale of one to 1. I always use the finest, best sounding great antique instruments from the 1. Why Because the ancient makers did everything in their power to enhance the sound of each instrument they made. The Colmar 1. Ruckers is an 8. The de Zentis that I restored in 2. Montisi, Italy was a 1. Ivory key tops had to be removed due to customs requirements in order to ship it to Italy. The Grimaldi in Nremberg, Germany is a 1. The Jan Couchet in Brussels, Belgium is also a 1. The Ahaus Ruckers used to be a 1. The 1. 76. 9 Taskin was a 1. I first played it 4. Indeed, most well restored working antique harpsichords average between being a 5. Baroque period had a complete knowledge of how to enhance every part of the instrument. The old serien plucking piano type harpsichords commonly made in the 1. Germany were only able to yield a 1 5 result. If the maker does everything any respectable furniture maker would do, by selecting the design and materials intelligently, the maximum result would be a 5 1. The best possible result most makers today can achieve, doing nothing to otherwise enhance the sound of the instrument beyond makinga jot and tittle copy of a piece of furniture, yields about a 1. For myself, I have always aimed to make 1. So should you own an earlier Hill instrument and discover that my opinion of it may not be as high as yours, that is my artists prerogative. I see it as my job to have a skeptical ear, especially of my own instruments. Today, because I have done a few, a full rebuild of one of my earlier period instruments can yield a 6. Buying Choosing UK Makers Hire Second Hand International Sources Building a Harpsichord Technical Drawings International Links to Makers. Define harpsichord a stringed instrument resembling a grand piano but usually having two keyboards and two or more strings for each note and.