Life With Strings Attached

For this week’s episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Sheldon Dingwall outside of the ancient Osaka Castle in Japan.
 
Sheldon is the founder and CEO of Dingwall Guitars. The modern champion of the multiscale bass, Dingwall boasts an artist roster including Lee Sklar, Adam “Nolly” Getgood of Periphery, Jacob Umanksy of Intervals, Jean-Michel Labadie of Gojira, Ali Dean of Architects, and musicians that play with Hans Zimmer, The Dave Matthews Band, Devin Townsend, Dweezil Zappa and many more top artists.

Something that sets Dingwall apart is its ability to balance boutique craftsmanship with a more corporate production style business model. With Sheldon’s unrelenting drive and ambitious vision pushing it forward, the company has gone from strength to strength as a major force in the world of bass design.

I wanted to know what shaped Sheldon into the entrepreneur he is today, what he sees as the philosophy behind his business, and what the life of a bass company owner is really like. 

Explore more about this guest and related makers:
https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/dingwall-guitars

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Zackery Belanger is an expert in the form and material of acoustic architecture. For most of his career, he has questioned the dominant approaches in acoustics, convinced that intuitive, creative approaches are possible. He is the author of the essay Acoustic Ornament, which argues for consideration of non-acoustic surfaces and objects. In 2017 he founded the Detroit-based studio Arcgeometer. Belanger is a prolific speaker on acoustics and has worked extensively on architectural projects and products.

I first got to know Zackery and his work when he was a guest on a panel I co-hosted for the Venice Biennale. Fascinated by what he presented there, I was keen to have Zackery on the podcast to discuss the place of acoustics in architecture, how his approach is different to the dominant thinking in the field, and what this can teach us about sound as a part of our everyday lives.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

For this week's episode of Life With Strings Attached, I joined Michael Spalt at his home and workshop in Portugal, where he recently relocated from Vienna.

For decades, Michael's work has developed at the intersection of art, design and instrument making, pushing boundaries and experimenting with surprising materials. Whether in series like his Totem guitars featuring resin tops, or in one-off highly decorative display pieces featuring built-in amps and inspired by literature and myth, he's been a pioneer in bringing an artist's approach and technical knowledge to the field of guitar making. 

But now settled into his new life and workshop in a new country, what's next? In this conversation, we explore Michael's perspective on his career, what place art and artisanal craft has in the business of making instruments, and where he believes his work will take him next.

Explore more about this guest and related makers:
https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/michael-spalt-guitars

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

For this week's episode of Life With Strings Attached, I had the pleasure of joining my good friend Bruno Bacci in Tuscany, where he has forged an enviable career as a guitar maker.

With a background in design, Bruno talks about how his whole life has actually led him to guitar making, how he's managed to establish a successful guitar business, and how his passion for working with musicians has led to collaborations with some of the biggest guitar players in the world.

Explore more about this guest and related makers:
https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/bacci-guitars

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

For this week's episode, I sat down with Adriano Sérgio of Ergon Guitars in Portugal.
 
It's always fascinating to speak with skilled craftspeople about their work, but it would be remiss to only talk about guitar making in an episode with Adriano. Fleeing his homeland as a child; serving as the equivalent of a Navy SEAL in Portugal; gaining a degree in jazz performance; touring in musical theatre; working as a tech for Ozzy Osbourne and Iron Maiden – Adriano's life is one filled with stories, passion and deep contrasts, all of which comes into his instrument making.

Speaking with Adriano really captures the purpose of Life With Strings Attached: through a passion for the guitar, music and creativity, we become connected to so much more beyond those spaces, and it's in exploring those threads between things that we come to better understand ourselves and the world around us.

Explore more about this guest and related makers:
https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/ergon-guitars

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

From producing Fight Club and screenwriting for the BBC to partnering with UNICEF and creating films about some of the world's most important environmental projects, Ross's work has many threads. But they're all connected by a single mission. As a writer, producer and director, Ross has harnessed the power of storytelling to make an impact, and as an educator, narrative consultant and strategist, he's helped others do the same. Driven by the belief that storytelling is perhaps our most powerful tool for changing the world, he's dedicated his career to finding and telling the stories that matter.

We sat down to talk about his time as a producer in Hollywood, what storytelling really is, and his current projects that are taking him around the globe.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Bryan Galloup's impact on the guitar industry has been enormous and multi-faceted. For over four decades, he's been dedicated to the preservation of vintage and contemporary musical instruments; he's the President and CEO of Galloup Guitars; and through the Galloup School of Guitar Building and Repair, he and his team have trained more than 2500 luthiers, some of whom are now themselves considered among the most respected guitar makers in the world.

In everything he's done, Bryan has brought a thorough sense of purpose and an understanding that building a business means providing value to your community – and beyond. I sat down with Bryan to discuss what it means to be an entrepreneur, the challenges of running your own business, how to be a businessperson in the guitar industry, and what the key values are that he holds when it comes to his work.

Explore more about this guest and related makers: https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/galloup-guitars

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Julio Martins and João Petiz are the founders of Everythink, a design company based in Portugal with an incredibly diverse portfolio of projects. From airplanes and medical equipment to guitars and robots, they design products, services and experiences that impact people's lives in a positive, easy and happy way. 

I sat down with them on location in Porto to talk about the connections across disciplines, the value of generalists, and why designing a guitar is so much harder than you might think. 

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Daniel Rowland is a music producer, engineer, tech executive and educator. He's worked with artists from Nine Inch Nails and Philip Glass to Gucci Mane and Jason Derulo. In the world of film, his credits include movies from Pixar as well as the Star Wars, Marvel and Fast and Furious franchises. 

As Head of Strategy and Partnerships at AI music production platform LANDR and co-founder of browser-based DAW Audiotool, Daniel draws on decades of experience working at the cutting edge of music technology. At this moment of rapid and monumental technological change for the industry, I wanted to hear Daniel's thoughts on AI, the next steps in streaming and digital communities in the world of music.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

In this wide-ranging conversation between myself and renowned Canadian luthier William "Grit" Laskin, we discuss the role of the artisan in the digital age, what the physics and physiology of sound perception teach us about instrument making, and why the mysteries of the guitar may remain mysteries for centuries to come.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.