Devoted Studies 🎶🎵🪚🗜️

One of the most important things we need in life is focus on the goals we want to achieve. As Galen says, tomorrow isn't promised. He's right. What we don't do today will have repercussions on our future.

Taking into consideration this, I wanted to share my thoughts on the topic about being able to study one thing. I believe the idea is being devoted to the subject and trying to comprehend it to our best capacity and even further knowledge on that area.

It's easy for my to say I would study the Venezuelan Cuatro. I'd become a Scholar of the instrument. That would mean all the know-how of it's construction and playing it. Any goal would be to debate myself to understand what are the best ways to make an instrument like this and go beyond traditions to establish a sort of cannon that would help anyone who goes about the idea of becoming a luthier and trying to build one have the best starting point to craft the best instrument possible in their own accord.

I'd also create the basis of a pensum to give students the workframe to develop their skills and become a competent musician that can play with harmony and melodied while creating rhythms with all the percussive resources available for this awesome instrument.

Devoting oneself to an area of study used to be the norm of the past. It opened the doors to many other possibilities. I believe that's how the Renaissance people got to learn to do so many things. Dedication to their work gave them an understanding of how to further knowledge and rediscover lost ideas from the past.

Maybe there are some details for this instrument that reside in its past. And that's the best way to pave its future. As far as I remember, people are granted funds to develope areas of knowledge and they can dedicate their life to do this work. It would be awesome to save the funding to do such a thing.

I think having the chance to study some of the processes involved in sound production and other areas related to lutherie has given me the want to keep learning more about this craft. But it also makes want to learn to play more instruments. Instead of diluting myself, I would pick the Venezuelan Cuatro and learn all there is to know about it and then start with the synthesis of all that to see what other secrets these four strings hide.

It would be an interesting journey as it would get me around the whole country learning from the ways the Cuatro is used in different regional musical cultures and even get me to the roots of the instrument which would take me to Spain and then to the north of Africa and then who knows where. Learning form musicians and musicologists, historians and else to create a comprehensive guide of everything there is to learn about it.

It wouldn't be something new. Antonio de Torres did something similar for the modern Spanish guitar and someone must've done the same for the fretless bowed-strings instruments that compose the Violin family. Devoting my life to something I already love would be so good I can't even put it in words.

If only it were possible... Dreaming is free at least.

Thanks for reading. Is there something you'd like to study in depth? Let me know in the comments!

• Photos 📷: taken by me (Redmi Note 8)

• Editing 🎬: by me, made with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

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