I'm thinking about going to some kinda lutherie school mayyyybe? (alternately the rabies life crisis thread)

So I still haven't figured out what to do with my life though I've been long tired of working grocery store gigs and such. But it hit me the other day that I will probably never stop geeking out over guitars and I do like working with my hands. There's a school about 60 miles southwest of where I live, I dunno.

Is this worth the money to get like...I don't even know how it works. Is it just like certification?

Are there better ways to do/get into this?

I've tinkered around on my own guitars a lot, pieced together a few, I'm infinitely curious about the workings of them, but I lack concrete hands-on experience (not to mention tools, knowledge of how to really, truly operate them properly, money to obtain said tools). I try to learn via the internet but ppls views seem so full of hyperbole and pixie dust and...harmony central goons...I just. And you can't really absorb anything without the real hands-on.

Jjjusten I figure you got some angle on the matter? Does anyone else among us have a veiw on it all? Or know someone who does this? What kinda work is out there? Etc?

I just don't know. But man my life's at the POINT, and I gotta come up with some workable plan to do something and this feels like a viable option for me.

It depends on how much this course costs and how it might fit in with a job, but it could be the quickest way of gaining skills and finding out if it's something you want to pursue further.

Well, this is the program I was looking at: http://www.redwingmusicrepair.org/guitar/coursework.html , because it's nearish, though I wanna scout out other options. It's a year long program, $177/credit, with a couple optional workshops for students who graduate and want to hammer out a few more complex things wrt finishing and some more complex building iirc. They seems to have a big focus on repair, which would expand and solidify a lot of what I already know, and goes into more advanced building-from-scratch type work.

As far as how it might "fit in with a job", um, I guess that's the bit I'm tryin to figure out.

Bumping this thread. That course looks expensive, but presumably it's modular so you can take the bits you need? Also this thread is slipping down ILE New Answers a bit quickly, so it might get more response if it's moved to IMM.

Ohhh lutherie as in luthiers, I kept seeing this thread title and thinking you wanted to go to Lutheran priest college or something lolol o_0

There's a Violineri store in inner Melb I've always been fascinated by - this old guy with a long white beard sits in the window all day long, quiely and skillfully hand-carving violins. I kinda envy that kind of old school, skilled craftsmanship. There's just no work like that much any more.

Lutherie Burgers

Actually I have "amateur luthiery" in the "Personal Interests" section of my CV/resume. One time a recruiter phoned me up - not because he had a vacancy for me, but just because he wanted to know what "luthiery" meant.

LOOL oh shit can a mod fix my spelling mistake?; I was too far between pots of coffee when I posted this.

Oh wait I think that is an accepted spelling nm I am retarded.

Well I spell it "luthiery" but I pronounce it "lutherie". I guess it's another of those "aluminum"/"aluminium" things.

No apparently lutherie is a correct alt spelling! Welll it worked in wiki anyway.

Yeah I've seen it spelled both ways which is where my wires crossed just then.

I cannot tell you how many times hearing "aluminium" threw me off when tryin to help ppl find stuff at my grocery store job in NZ. Gave me pause every single time.

Doing this, if I am ever able to pull it off, also figures into my fantasy of being Harry Partch.

OK i've decided to do this. fall semester 2011.

turns out a good friend of my girlfriend's dad's went to the exact school linked above. gets up to like $5k per guitar (??!?!) gf is being really nice and says she'll move to the weird small town with me.

now i just have to figure out like...money. :\

when u build things i will sell them 4 u

and when u sell them i will give you a cut of the green. as i assume this is how "business" "arrangements" work.

damn, this is going to be really cool.

its the music business, so who knows really, i think we both just stand there and give things to people and bum change for smokes mostly

i can lead you thru the zone when it comes to red wing, its kind of a cool town tbh (grew up just north of there)

huh it never occurred to me that that red wing might in fact be cool and my gf and i wouldn't have to be weird sad hermits for a year or so.

man I am so behind you on this. I stand in awe of people who actually build guitars. I have one that was built for me, there's only one like it in the world. I think fondly of the dude that built it every time I take it out even though we have never met. do your thing I bet you never regret it.

have you been there? its surrounded by nature, def more of a small town than a suburb thing, very into its isolation (in a good way), lots of music, plus whats his head from husker du still is the head chef/owns a restaurant down there which is supposed to be AWESOME (i think)

tbf, its been a while so some of this might have changed. also a very cool customer dude from the store is a cop down there, so i can get the heads up from him on newer hip shit.

xpost

oh shit and also i have another dude i know that builds stuff for us that is a grad from there duh. so if youve got any questions about the school itself i can prob hit him up for info.

nah i've never been there but i'm glad to hear it's not as suburban as i'd assumed. we're planning to check it out sometime and if not soon than at least to apartment hunt when the time comes.

only question i got about the school itself at the moment: the electric guitar building stuff; this is a "second year" deal, and kind of a tipping point as to whether i do 1 yr or 2, but ummm appears to be the one and only second year class--very interested in this but don't totally get it.

thanks a ton for the support and help dudes. i tend to beat myself up and tell myself i can't do stuff so every bit has been useful/effective and means a lot.

red wing is great!

learn to rock climb imo

where would i do that? there was a rock climbing wall in the back yard at the place i used to live in Phoenix! wasn't high but i used to scale it side-to-side as many times as i could until eventually it was like 'ok i'm just going to do this forever'. would totally get into that again.

I did this for six months between high school and college (graduated early). I didn't go enough cos I had a pretty girlfriend and I was a fucking 18 year old, but I did build my guitar which I love so very dearly. There's nothing quite like hearing someone who's really good play it.

you know i used to absorb myself in endless time doing minute pixel pushing during my web design days and man i am seeing that transferring pretty directly to shit like this. feeling better and better about this decision on the daily.

man i missed this thread! really happy for you--guitars are so cool and if i had any skills at all i'd love to mess with em

Yeah, you're gonna have fuuuun. I really wish I'd kept going with this, would have been a much better day job than pill counting.

applied and accepted btw. that maybe seemed implicit in the 'decided to do this' bump a while back but i finally got off my scrawny ass and applied. receiving stuff in the mail makes it feel real now. bought a bunch of books on guitars in preparation; i've historically been a terrible, terrible, absolutely awful student so bigtime prep work should do me well.

i tried to find that norton's restaurant when we visited but i guess it's called 'sarah's' now? i don't think KG would have been quite as tickled by the huskers angle, anyway.

it's gonna be hard to make real guitars ppl actually want when all i wanna do is make replicas of ancient chordophones. "yes i can build you a guitar precisely and rigorously to your specifications...OR...now hear me out...glue these branches to a turtle?"