Classical bass guitar

[HaphAsSard]

that's not accurate

Somewhere in the late 50's, Hiroki Niibori invented the concept of the classical guitar orchestra, lifted off the Italian "plectrum (in this case, = mandolin) orchestra", and gave every member its name. In his nomenclature, the "bass guitar" is only a fourth below the "prime", or standard Spanish-tuned guitar: the former is what we would call a baritone guitar instead. His contrabass is a further fifth down, or a full octave below the prime. These naming choices were probably made so that members matched their bowed counterparts, the classical bass i.e. the cello, and the double bass ("contrabass" in many languages including mine, and Japanese). Totally in violation of the more established relative naming of instruments but hey, that's what they're called. Hey, if you think about it, even Anthony Jackson's different usage of "contrabass guitar" (= the modern long-scale, BEADGC 6-string electric bass, in practice) is just as idiosyncratic and "not accurate": it is not tuned a full octave below the Fender bass after all.

Anyway. Your guitar is amazing! Play it in good health!

 

[B-Mac]

Mucho dinero, but, hey, it's cheaper than paying for bass or cello lessons. ;-) The luthier who built this contra guitar is named Jeroen Hilhorst and he lives in The Netherlands.

More information about the guitar can be found here:

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I'm sure you can find the price, but, please don't post it, you'll just reinforce my opinion that I've gone completely mad. ;-) I've posted here to gain support in playing such a monster. Besides, I think this is a one of a kind instrument, and so am amazed that it even exists. I don't know if the luthier has built more than one, I don't think so.

A friend of mine, a talented classical guitar player, has arranged a bass part for a composition by Baden Powell, the Brazilian composer and guitarist, so I already have something to work on. He also wrote a cool bass intro which looks too difficult for me right now, but, hey, maybe I can get there in six months. Patience is the key.

Join the club as far as going completely mad...I have 42 basses.....
Here's my ABG collection.

The solid tops are def the loudest unplugged. They would be the two 32" scale Dean Performers and the Takamine GB72CE Jumbo.
Plugged in hands down the Dean ABGs with Aphex.

 

[bholder]

Join the club as far as going completely mad...I have 42 basses.....
Here's my ABG collection.
View attachment 3088957

Going, going, gone, forget counting, I've got too many to even try to get pictures of!

 

[ContraGuitar]

Going, going, gone, forget counting, I've got too many to even try to get pictures of!

Haha, amazing, beautiful guitars! Ok, I feel a little bit better now. I have two regular 650mm classical guitars, one cedar, one spruce, a small Romantic guitar which is 640mm scale, and this one, Babar the Elephant guitar. I bought my two regular guitars from the same seller. He had over twenty five classical guitars in his dining room and his wife started to complain about not having room to eat dinner.

I'll probably sell one regular classical so I that I wind up with one each of small, regular, and large sized guitars.

 

[ContraGuitar]

Somewhere in the late 50's, Hiroki Niibori invented the concept of the classical guitar orchestra, lifted off the Italian "plectrum (in this case, = mandolin) orchestra", and gave every member its name. In his nomenclature, the "bass guitar" is only a fourth below the "prime", or standard Spanish-tuned guitar: the former is what we would call a baritone guitar instead. His contrabass is a further fifth down, or a full octave below the prime. These naming choices were probably made so that members matched their bowed counterparts, the classical bass i.e. the cello, and the double bass ("contrabass" in many languages including mine, and Japanese). Totally in violation of the more established relative naming of instruments but hey, that's what they're called. Hey, if you think about it, even Anthony Jackson's different usage of "contrabass guitar" (= the modern long-scale, BEADGC 6-string electric bass, in practice) is just as idiosyncratic and "not accurate": it is not tuned a full octave below the Fender bass after all.

Anyway. Your guitar is amazing! Play it in good health!

Ha, I don't really know what to call the thing, to be honest. ;-) I have heard about the Japanese guitar orchestras. I guess we don't share a common language so that's why I don't find their 900mm guitar players. How in the world are Japanese players managing to play it?

Peter Constant's group, Z.o.o. Duo, plays a family of guitars by Graham Caldersmith, a luthier in Australia:

Link Removed

that includes a 880mm bass, a baritone, a treble, and an octave guitar.

 

[mikeoso]

Funny you mention fado, as I keep reading that the contrabass is used in fado but I have yet to see one like this being played in video of a fado group on YouTube. Do you have any links?

Not that I know anything whatsoever about fado, but...what I've seen in looking for info about MY bass is that the fado bassists seem to be playing whatever they can get, from Guilds to electrics to uprights. My information via the builder's son is that he made this one because there wasn't anything available that he liked. I have no clue how it ended up in a pawnshop in Providence. He had very light bronze rounds on it, with an extremely low action...the saddle was less than 1/8" off the bridge, and the nut was also cut very close. I wanted volume and the sound of an upright, so I shimmed the nut, slid in a much taller saddle, and put in La Bella tapewounds. It's quite a lot louder than my Tacoma, and has the echoic tone of an upright. I'm sure the maker would hate it

 

[ContraGuitar]

Not that I know anything whatsoever about fado, but...what I've seen in looking for info about MY bass is that the fado bassists seem to be playing whatever they can get, from Guilds to electrics to uprights. My information via the builder's son is that he made this one because there wasn't anything available that he liked. I have no clue how it ended up in a pawnshop in Providence. He had very light bronze rounds on it, with an extremely low action...the saddle was less than 1/8" off the bridge, and the nut was also cut very close. I wanted volume and the sound of an upright, so I shimmed the nut, slid in a much taller saddle, and put in La Bella tapewounds. It's quite a lot louder than my Tacoma, and has the echoic tone of an upright. I'm sure the maker would hate it

Ha, I don't know anything about fado either, except that it is sung in Portuguese, and is so sad, that you don't need to understand the words to break down in tears. Maybe I can run away and join a fado band.

It sounds like you got a good deal. My goal is to keep this one out of the pawnshop. ;-) The luthier threw in a higher saddle if I want the action higher. So far, the current action seems ok but I will see. Nobody wants to hear a lot of fret noise unless you're playing flamenco, I guess, but flamenco in the bass?

I just finished my first serious practice session with it and I feel a little more hopeful than I did yesterday. I can play my friend's easy bass accompaniment. I have to stop those open stringed quarter notes that are followed by rests, or fret them, they ring on forever when open. Everything rings on forever, which is pretty amazing, actually. The rumble from it is out of this world, what growl. Still, it sounds pretty clean considering the register.

 

[Garret Graves]

If you look up the Wikipedia article on ‘range’ of musical instruments, you will see that ‘contra’ is used for many instruments that go down into the range of C1- the lowest C on the piano, it’s the lowest C on the Low B string of a Bass, the Low open B being B0. Pipe organs and other instruments such as the ‘octobass’ go lower than that, in fact, you see the octo designation for more than one instrument too. Keep in mind when we read bass music, it sounds an octave lower than written- your open D string in the middle of the staff is actually sounding the note that would normally be written as the D an octave down.

 

[ContraGuitar]

If you look up the Wikipedia article on ‘range’ of musical instruments, you will see that ‘contra’ is used for many instruments that go down into the range of C1- the lowest C on the piano, it’s the lowest C on the Low B string of a Bass, the Low open B being B0. Pipe organs and other instruments such as the ‘octobass’ go lower than that, in fact, you see the octo designation for more than one instrument too. Keep in mind when we read bass music, it sounds an octave lower than written- your open D string in the middle of the staff is actually sounding the note that would normally be written as the D an octave down.

I guess the only point I was trying to make is that the word "contra", means against, and in music terms, means "pitched lower than", so, in this case, calling this guitar of mine a contrabass guitar is a misnomer, as it shares the same low range with an acoustic bass:

Contrabass guitar - Wikipedia

The Wikipedia entry on range is indeed fascinating:

Range (music) - Wikipedia

 

[HaphAsSard]

+2 on the Wiki article, which highlights regularities as well as inconsistencies in nomenclature.
"Bass" and "contrabass" tend to be relative terms, applied to larger and lower-ranged versions of the corresponding "prime" members of the relevant family. This alone dictates the fact that similarly-prefixed instruments have different ranges across families: a bass clarinet has the range of a baritone sax, not of the bass one.
Moreover, whether the prefixes mean "one octave lower" or just "lower" apparently depends on the whims of whoever named them first. For example, the bass flute is pitched lower, and one-octave so, than the standard flute, and the contrabass flute one further octave than the former; the same happens with clarinets; it notably does not happen with saxes: the bass member is one octave below the tenor, but the contrabass is one octave below the baritone and two below the alto, meaning the contra and the bass are just a fifth apart, not an octave. Finally, within the bowed string (fretless) family something intermediate happens, with the bass member i.e. the cello going one octave below the viola (which is at least linguistically the prime member: it gives most of the others their name, not accounting for shortened, common forms), but the double bass being able to do the same, relative to the cello, only with a C extension (or having an extra string).

In the case of the Niibori classical contrabass guitar, as I said, the "bass guitar" to which the former is "contra" (meaning "lower", albeit not "8va-lower") is not, I repeat, not a Fender-tuned (or upright-tuned) E1-A1-D2-G2 instrument, but a ~27.5" scale guitar tuned B1-E2-A2-D3-F#3-B3, like an electric (or acoustic steel-string) baritone guitar:
Contra guitar / low octave guitar
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Contra guitar / low octave guitar
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In other words this other, second-lowest of Niibori ensemble guitars called "bass" is, in turn, pitched only a fourth below the "prime" Spanish guitar (which was probably perceived as being already a bari-tenor instrument in itself).
Again, I suspect that Hiroki-sama had in mind the same, more "absolute" if you will, meaning of registers that @Garret Graves mentioned; or, as I surmised above, he planned to have some/all instruments in his orchestra (roughly) correspond in range to a bowed counterpart.
Also of note, the first recorded mention (in the 1899 catalog of Chicago-based luthier Joseph Bohmann) of "contra bass guitar" as mentioned in the relevant Wiki (ultimately here) is of an instrument we know next to nothing of, and which may have been tuned lower than E1 but it's reasonable to think it wasn't.

^Here too the naming was probably to be intended as: "contra bass", that is to say as low as (but likely not lower than) a "contrabass"=double bass is. Then again, in 1899 there was no instrument named "bass guitar" whose name could have been a source of confusion: the Regal Basso-Guitar appeared in 1936 I think.
[Final EDIT, I promise -
Even the "tenor guitar" owes its name to a similar phenomenon of interference from other families: in its traditional tuning, C3-G3-D4-A4, it's simply the guitar version of the tenor banjo, which in turn may be thought of as a banjo version of the mandola, with the same tuning of the latter but a range-name perhaps more appropriate for the octave mandolin, with its G2-D3-A3-E4 tuning. Speaking of which (and in light of the obvious dependence of the mandolin family from the violin one, re names and uses), why does a bowed G2-E4 instrument not exist to bridge the gap between the cello and the viola? Apparently it did at one time, but it fell out of favour in the classical period proper.]

All the above being said, @ContraGuitar is by no means alone in his opinion. It was expressed in similar terms by @Cristofre in this thread of his:
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"Bass guitar", as we commonly intend it, exists and has for decades deeply shaping a number of music genres in the process (notably the most popular ones), and the objection to another instrument being called in English "contrabass guitar" even though it's pitched no lower than the bass is absolutely sound.

 

[TapyTap]

ContraGuitar,

Your new acquisition is the finest sounding contraguitar that I have heard to date. The extra scale length seems a tonal improvement over the 34" Caldersmith. My only gripe is that the upper bout does not terminate at the 12th fret...I know, I'm a bit picky.

Hannabach makes some wonderful strings. How is the string tension/feel of that low E-string?

 

[ContraGuitar]

ContraGuitar,

Your new acquisition is the finest sounding contraguitar that I have heard to date. The extra scale length seems a tonal improvement over the 34" Caldersmith. My only gripe is that the upper bout does not terminate at the 12th fret...I know, I'm a bit picky.

Hannabach makes some wonderful strings. How is the string tension/feel of that low E-string?

Haha, thank you for the kind words, I think the luthier, Jeroen Hilhorst, spared no time or expense to build this guitar. I think it is a unique instrument as I have found nothing else like it. I believe it was a commission. Why I wound up with it is a mystery. I suppose the player couldn't come up with the cash to pay for it, I don't know. Musicians and money are often strangers to each other. ;-)

If the body of the guitar went to the twelfth fret, this thing would be even more massive, I don't know how it could be played without an endpin, in a vertical position, and I really don't know how to play the guitar like a cello. There are fret markers but I have to retrain myself to find the twelfth fret. I have to retrain myself on all the frets.

Hannabach makes excellent strings, I played their Silver Specials for many years on my classical guitars. Sure, a set of these is expensive, but I'm just happy that I can order them without a problem. Peter has to buy custom cut Hannabach strings for his 880mm Caldersmith bass.

I'm not sure how to answer your question about the string/tension of the low E, I guess it is much better than with a shorter scale, lower tension bass guitar but I don't have any experience, I'm classical guitarist.

 

[bholder]

Haha, thank you for the kind words, I think the luthier, Jeroen Hilhorst, spared no time or expense to build this guitar. I think it is a unique instrument as I have found nothing else like it. I believe it was a commission. Why I wound up with it is a mystery. I suppose the player couldn't come up with the cash to pay for it, I don't know. Musicians and money are often strangers to each other. ;-)

If the body of the guitar went to the twelfth fret, this thing would be even more massive, I don't know how it could be played without an endpin, in a vertical position, and I really don't know how to play the guitar like a cello. There are fret markers but I have to retrain myself to find the twelfth fret. I have to retrain myself on all the frets.

Hannabach makes excellent strings, I played their Silver Specials for many years on my classical guitars. Sure, a set of these is expensive, but I'm just happy that I can order them without a problem. Peter has to buy custom cut Hannabach strings for his 880mm Caldersmith bass.

I'm not sure how to answer your question about the string/tension of the low E, I guess it is much better than with a shorter scale, lower tension bass guitar but I don't have any experience, I'm classical guitarist.

I really did not need to know such a thing even existed. Now I want one! drool (Thanks for making it so easy to find the luthier.)

 

[TapyTap]

Musicians and money are often strangers to each other. ;-)

No doubt, I can relate.

If the body of the guitar went to the twelfth fret, this thing would be even more massive, I don't know how it could be played without an endpin, in a vertical position, and I really don't know how to play the guitar like a cello. There are fret markers but I have to retrain myself to find the twelfth fret. I have to retrain myself on all the frets.

This makes sense...the thing is massive!

Hannabach makes excellent strings, I played their Silver Specials for many years on my classical guitars. Sure, a set of these is expensive, but I'm just happy that I can order them without a problem. Peter has to buy custom cut Hannabach strings for his 880mm Caldersmith bass.

Indeed. It is nice that the 841MT Hannabach strings are readily available in the 90cm length.

I'm not sure how to answer your question about the string/tension of the low E, I guess it is much better than with a shorter scale, lower tension bass guitar but I don't have any experience, I'm classical guitarist.

That's not a problem. I'm probably comparing apples to oranges. Do you find the contra string set requires a lighter touch relative to your classical set? (I tend to use a medium tension set on my classical guitar.)

 

[ContraGuitar]

No doubt, I can relate.
This makes sense...the thing is massive!

Indeed. It is nice that the 841MT Hannabach strings are readily available in the 90cm length.

That's not a problem. I'm probably comparing apples to oranges. Do you find the contra string set requires a lighter touch relative to your classical set? (I tend to use a medium tension set on my classical guitar.)

Well, I'm just in the beginning stages of figuring out how to play the thing, but I did have a rehearsal today with a friend of mine, a talented guitarist. He wrote a bass intro and arranged a bass part for a composition by the Brazilian composer/guitarist Baden Powell. Yes, Baden Powell's father named him after the founder of the Boy Scouts.

Anyway, after my friend played the contra guitar, he realized that he had been thinking of the instrument as a large classical guitar instead of as a bass. So, a lot of the notes he wrote sound better when moved up an octave and are not played on open strings. The open strings can be played to great effect, but not when overused.

During rehearsal, we found that if I drove the guitar hard with the side of my thumbnail, closer to the bridge, that I could really push out a lot of sound. and that it was more focused. So, to answer your question, I don't think I need a lighter touch on the contra guitar, I think I need a heavier touch to make it come alive. I think this makes sense because I have to move a much longer string than on a regular sized classical guitar and that takes energy.

And, oh, I heard from the luthier, and this guitar became available when the guy who ordered it could not pay for it, as I guessed, so the same old story.

 

[HaphAsSard]

Anyway, after my friend played the contra guitar, he realized that he had been thinking of the instrument as a large classical guitar instead of as a bass. So, a lot of the notes he wrote sound better when moved up an octave and are not played on open strings. The open strings can be played to great effect, but not when overused.

I haven't heard the arrangement, but my experience leads me to think the problem is not with open strings per se but with letting either of the two lowest ones ring while something else happens that causes intervals to form that are too narrow for that register; relatively speaking, in our case (lowest octave of a bass, and lower) "too narrow" includes thirds, fourths and unfortunately even perfect fifths, and sixths, if you go low enough. Minor and major seconds, in a sostenuto style such as when distributing a scalar passage between adjacent/open strings (what banjoists call the "melodic" or "Bill Keith style") are a fortiori rougher than they would be an octave above, and better restricted to colouristic effect or avoided altogether.

The cause for the above is a physioacoustic phenomenon called "critical bands", wherein concomitant frequencies interfere with one another's vibration imparted upon the basilar membrane if they're closer than a more-or-less fixed distance in Hertz. Since musical tones of the chromatic scale get spaced out in frequency the higher you go, and conversely closer together in the opposite direction, the implication is that the width of this no-go zone between two tones (within which they jumble up each other's vibration in the membrane, having the receptors send a partially masked signal to the brain which usually gets labelled by the latter as roughness) is a register-dependent concept which, towards the bottom, grows (apparently) to engulf intervals that would be totally kosher only a little higher up, such as perfect fifths as said.

The abridged version is, pianists know not to play close-voiced chords with their left hand in the leftmost section of the keyboard; bassists also know to stick to, or favour chordal voicings that are not too down there; even 8- and 9-string metal guitarists switch from power chords to single notes at a certain point. Us contrabass guitarists and bass-VIers, with less of an established literature to rely on and the temptation to apply familiar chords and structures to a deeper instrument, have to rediscover the unpleasant truth about the musical space not having the same, infinitely recursive properties throughout.

I have friends - one in particular - who are obsessed with Brazilian music and am familiar with Baden Powell de Aquino's work with Vinicius de Moraes, their Afro-Sambas album plus a couple odd numbers. My friend's staple is a medley of "Berimbau", "Consolação" and "Canto de Ossanha" that Vinicius later did with Toquinho, which we've performed on together occasionally. I've been planning to include another afro-samba, "Canto de Xangô", to my repertoire for a while, I should probably get to it already.

 

[mongo2]

This is very interesting. I've recently started exploring more classical/Latin music. My son has played classical for about 15 years and I guess it finally rubbed off on me.

As far as instrument availability, there are many acoustic guitar style basses I could try but I'm more apt to use my Hofner HCT 500/5 President (or El Presidente as I call it) for now.

 

[bholder]

I haven't heard the arrangement, but my experience leads me to think the problem is not with open strings per se but with letting either of the two lowest ones ring while something else happens that causes intervals to form that are too narrow for that register; relatively speaking, in our case (lowest octave of a bass, and lower) "too narrow" includes thirds, fourths and unfortunately even perfect fifths, and sixths, if you go low enough. Minor and major seconds, in a sostenuto style such as when distributing a scalar passage between adjacent/open strings (what banjoists call the "melodic" or "Bill Keith style") are a fortiori rougher than they would be an octave above, and better restricted to colouristic effect or avoided altogether.

The cause for the above is a physioacoustic phenomenon called "critical bands", wherein concomitant frequencies interfere with one another's vibration imparted upon the basilar membrane if they're closer than a more-or-less fixed distance in Hertz. Since musical tones of the chromatic scale get spaced out in frequency the higher you go, and conversely closer together in the opposite direction, the implication is that the width of this no-go zone between two tones (within which they jumble up each other's vibration in the membrane, having the receptors send a partially masked signal to the brain which usually gets labelled by the latter as roughness) is a register-dependent concept which, towards the bottom, grows (apparently) to engulf intervals that would be totally kosher only a little higher up, such as perfect fifths as said.

The abridged version is, pianists know not to play close-voiced chords with their left hand in the leftmost section of the keyboard; bassists also know to stick to, or favour chordal voicings that are not too down there; even 8- and 9-string metal guitarists switch from power chords to single notes at a certain point. Us contrabass guitarists and bass-VIers, with less of an established literature to rely on and the temptation to apply familiar chords and structures to a deeper instrument, have to rediscover the unpleasant truth about the musical space not having the same, infinitely recursive properties throughout.

I have friends - one in particular - who are obsessed with Brazilian music and am familiar with Baden Powell de Aquino's work with Vinicius de Moraes, their Afro-Sambas album plus a couple odd numbers. My friend's staple is a medley of "Berimbau", "Consolação" and "Canto de Ossanha" that Vinicius later did with Toquinho, which we've performed on together occasionally. I've been planning to include another afro-samba, "Canto de Xangô", to my repertoire for a while, I should probably get to it already.

I actually have grown to like some low close-voiced harmonies. But yeah, the "jumbling" of the vibrations takes a bit of getting used to, but the brain eventually learns to sort it a bit better. Still wouldn't usually use a minor 3rd down there, but I'm good with 4ths and 5ths.

 

[HaphAsSard]

I actually have grown to like some low close-voiced harmonies. But yeah, the "jumbling" of the vibrations takes a bit of getting used to, but the brain eventually learns to sort it a bit better. Still wouldn't usually use a minor 3rd down there, but I'm good with 4ths and 5ths.

Well, I do believe there has to be some amount of subjectivity to it. Plus (and it's another element, one that I keep separate from the first i.e. people not having necessarily the same brick-wall limits when it comes to low intervals): it's not like art is only about the "pretty". Even assuming we agree upon a certain interval sounding rough, both, either or a third person could still make meaningful music with it.

 

[ContraGuitar]

I haven't heard the arrangement, but my experience leads me to think the problem is not with open strings per se but with letting either of the two lowest ones ring while something else happens that causes intervals to form that are too narrow for that register; relatively speaking, in our case (lowest octave of a bass, and lower) "too narrow" includes thirds, fourths and unfortunately even perfect fifths, and sixths, if you go low enough. Minor and major seconds, in a sostenuto style such as when distributing a scalar passage between adjacent/open strings (what banjoists call the "melodic" or "Bill Keith style") are a fortiori rougher than they would be an octave above, and better restricted to colouristic effect or avoided altogether.

The cause for the above is a physioacoustic phenomenon called "critical bands", wherein concomitant frequencies interfere with one another's vibration imparted upon the basilar membrane if they're closer than a more-or-less fixed distance in Hertz. Since musical tones of the chromatic scale get spaced out in frequency the higher you go, and conversely closer together in the opposite direction, the implication is that the width of this no-go zone between two tones (within which they jumble up each other's vibration in the membrane, having the receptors send a partially masked signal to the brain which usually gets labelled by the latter as roughness) is a register-dependent concept which, towards the bottom, grows (apparently) to engulf intervals that would be totally kosher only a little higher up, such as perfect fifths as said.

The abridged version is, pianists know not to play close-voiced chords with their left hand in the leftmost section of the keyboard; bassists also know to stick to, or favour chordal voicings that are not too down there; even 8- and 9-string metal guitarists switch from power chords to single notes at a certain point. Us contrabass guitarists and bass-VIers, with less of an established literature to rely on and the temptation to apply familiar chords and structures to a deeper instrument, have to rediscover the unpleasant truth about the musical space not having the same, infinitely recursive properties throughout.

I have friends - one in particular - who are obsessed with Brazilian music and am familiar with Baden Powell de Aquino's work with Vinicius de Moraes, their Afro-Sambas album plus a couple odd numbers. My friend's staple is a medley of "Berimbau", "Consolação" and "Canto de Ossanha" that Vinicius later did with Toquinho, which we've performed on together occasionally. I've been planning to include another afro-samba, "Canto de Xangô", to my repertoire for a while, I should probably get to it already.

Wow, great post, thanks! The Wikipedia article on critical bands is worth reading:

Critical band - Wikipedia

A guitarist friend commented to me that guitarists play close harmonies because that's what falls easily under their fingers. While a guitarist would play a third, a pianist would more likely play a tenth, as you alluded to. It strikes me that I am at the mercy of my arranger to a large extent. Hopefully, they can learn what works and what does not work on the contra guitar. My friend commented that he thinks the instrument has a lot of potential. It remains to be seen if I can realize that potential! I see that Bass VI people are my electric brothers, haha.

As for Brazilian music, I give you a recording of Berimbau by the great guitarist Roland Dyens, may he rest in peace.



Roland was born in Tunisia, lived most of his life in Paris, but had a Brazilian soul and went to Brazil often.

If you ever get a chance, check out the Brasil Guitar Duo:

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Their recordings are absolutely amazing. The level of playing demanded of duos in Brazil is high because of the Assad Brothers, I suppose.