Hi all,
The time has come to decorate the soundboard. Many harpsichords are built with no soundboard decoration at all – not even a rose. Decorating a soundboard is just that – decorative. It adds nothing to the sound of an instrument. In fact, if poorly applied, decorating the soundboard could be detrimental to the sound. Get the soundboard nice and shiny by putting several coats of gloss varnish on it and you run the risk of killing the tone. No oil-based products should be used on a harpsichord soundboard. Given the possible danger, the increased time involved, and the subsequent increase in the price of the instrument, why do it? The answer, for me, is aesthetics. The first harpsichord I ever saw in person attracted me by its looks – not its sound. It was completely decorated, but not ornately so. I thought it was beautiful, stately, regal and elegant. As a working piano technician, the sound didn’t thrill me. I had the sound of too many pianos in my head. I’ve since come to love the tone and consider it to be first and foremost in evaluating an instrument. But I’ve never lost my love for the aesthetics of a beautiful instrument and, as a result, I’ve never built an undecorated instrument. Gold bands, lid papers, marbling, soundboard painting, and lid paintings all serve to enhance the beauty of a harpsichord. Fortunately, given my total lack of artistic abilities, my wife Sandy paints quite well even though she doesn’t think so.
Before she can start painting her flowers, bees, bugs, trees, etc. there’s some grunt work that has to be done on the soundboard. As the grunt-in-chief, this work is my job. We’ll start by sealing the soundboard with a thin (1 lb. cut) coat of shellac applied with a cloth.
Traditionally, decorated soundboards have a design painted around the perimeter of the board as well as around each bridge. This design often consists of a line with half circles painted above it. Here’s a sample of that design.
I know of no quick way to do this. It just takes time – a lot of it, and lots of coffee and a TV tuned to the Sci-Fi channel, and a lot of time. There’s probably over a thousand little half-circles to paint and just thinking about doing it makes me punchy and repetitive. Did I mention it takes a lot of time? So here we go.
First we’ll paint the lines by masking them off like pinstriping. Then we’ll apply two coats of acrylic black paint.
When all of the stripes have been painted the tape is removed and the lines are finished.
Now we’ll turn on the TV, make some coffee, and start painting the semi-circles. It looks much neater if the open ends of the semi-circles are exactly the same height so we put a piece of masking tape at what will be the top of the squiggles (my term for the semi-circles which really aren’t semi-circles but more of a lopsided letter U). The height of each squiggle is taken care of by the tape and we try to make the width of each squiggle the same as its neighbors. Here’s the beginning.
Progress is being made.
And, finally, the finished version.
And now that the grunt work is done, I’ll turn the soundboard over to Sandy for the real decorating. Since it’s difficult to take photos of the entire soundboard without losing the detail, I’ll concentrate on the area around the rose and try to show, in some detail, the process she uses. While the soundboard is being painted, I’ll get started on making the lid.
Before pencil or paint comes planning. Sandy has literally hundreds of photos of flowers, birds, bugs, trees etc. that she looks at to help her decide what will be painted on the instrument. When in doubt, she asks for my opinion and then does the opposite of what I say. This has proven to be a wise strategy.
Once she decides on a plan, the first step is to lightly sketch everything onto the soundboard in pencil. This is difficult to photograph – here’s the most visible one.
Next, a colored base coat is applied to the penciled drawings – light green for the leaves and a buff color for everything else. This base coat acts somewhat like a primer. It helps to obscure the grain of the spruce and make the painting surface more opaque.
Once the base coat has been applied, Sandy begins to add the color and detail. As you can imagine, it will take several days to detail the entire soundboard. Here’s some progress after the first day.
Several days later, all of the detail is finished except for the greenery.
A few more days pass and the greenery is added.
Finally, the highlights are added which gives depth to the flowers and greenery. After all the paint has dried, two thin coats of shellac are added which makes the painting pop out and, at the same time, protects the soundboard against dust buildup. Any dust that does accumulate on the soundboard can be removed by gently brushing the board with a large but soft paintbrush and then blowing the dust clear. After the strings are on, the same brush can be used directly through the strings. Here are some photos of the finished soundboard.
All that remains now is to string the instrument, install the jack action, and make it play. It is, after all, a musical instrument – first and foremost. While this could easily take up another 10 posts, we’ll show it all in the next post which is post #28. Post #29 will be the final post where we’ll summarize the entire project and show the final pictures. Thanks to all for staying with me for all these posts. Relief is coming soon – kinda like how good your head feels when you stop banging it against a wall.
Till the next time,
Ernie
The time has come to decorate the soundboard. Many harpsichords are built with no soundboard decoration at all – not even a rose. Decorating a soundboard is just that – decorative. It adds nothing to the sound of an instrument. In fact, if poorly applied, decorating the soundboard could be detrimental to the sound. Get the soundboard nice and shiny by putting several coats of gloss varnish on it and you run the risk of killing the tone. No oil-based products should be used on a harpsichord soundboard. Given the possible danger, the increased time involved, and the subsequent increase in the price of the instrument, why do it? The answer, for me, is aesthetics. The first harpsichord I ever saw in person attracted me by its looks – not its sound. It was completely decorated, but not ornately so. I thought it was beautiful, stately, regal and elegant. As a working piano technician, the sound didn’t thrill me. I had the sound of too many pianos in my head. I’ve since come to love the tone and consider it to be first and foremost in evaluating an instrument. But I’ve never lost my love for the aesthetics of a beautiful instrument and, as a result, I’ve never built an undecorated instrument. Gold bands, lid papers, marbling, soundboard painting, and lid paintings all serve to enhance the beauty of a harpsichord. Fortunately, given my total lack of artistic abilities, my wife Sandy paints quite well even though she doesn’t think so.
Before she can start painting her flowers, bees, bugs, trees, etc. there’s some grunt work that has to be done on the soundboard. As the grunt-in-chief, this work is my job. We’ll start by sealing the soundboard with a thin (1 lb. cut) coat of shellac applied with a cloth.
Traditionally, decorated soundboards have a design painted around the perimeter of the board as well as around each bridge. This design often consists of a line with half circles painted above it. Here’s a sample of that design.
I know of no quick way to do this. It just takes time – a lot of it, and lots of coffee and a TV tuned to the Sci-Fi channel, and a lot of time. There’s probably over a thousand little half-circles to paint and just thinking about doing it makes me punchy and repetitive. Did I mention it takes a lot of time? So here we go.
First we’ll paint the lines by masking them off like pinstriping. Then we’ll apply two coats of acrylic black paint.
When all of the stripes have been painted the tape is removed and the lines are finished.
Now we’ll turn on the TV, make some coffee, and start painting the semi-circles. It looks much neater if the open ends of the semi-circles are exactly the same height so we put a piece of masking tape at what will be the top of the squiggles (my term for the semi-circles which really aren’t semi-circles but more of a lopsided letter U). The height of each squiggle is taken care of by the tape and we try to make the width of each squiggle the same as its neighbors. Here’s the beginning.
Progress is being made.
And, finally, the finished version.
And now that the grunt work is done, I’ll turn the soundboard over to Sandy for the real decorating. Since it’s difficult to take photos of the entire soundboard without losing the detail, I’ll concentrate on the area around the rose and try to show, in some detail, the process she uses. While the soundboard is being painted, I’ll get started on making the lid.
Before pencil or paint comes planning. Sandy has literally hundreds of photos of flowers, birds, bugs, trees etc. that she looks at to help her decide what will be painted on the instrument. When in doubt, she asks for my opinion and then does the opposite of what I say. This has proven to be a wise strategy.
Once she decides on a plan, the first step is to lightly sketch everything onto the soundboard in pencil. This is difficult to photograph – here’s the most visible one.
Next, a colored base coat is applied to the penciled drawings – light green for the leaves and a buff color for everything else. This base coat acts somewhat like a primer. It helps to obscure the grain of the spruce and make the painting surface more opaque.
Once the base coat has been applied, Sandy begins to add the color and detail. As you can imagine, it will take several days to detail the entire soundboard. Here’s some progress after the first day.
Several days later, all of the detail is finished except for the greenery.
A few more days pass and the greenery is added.
Finally, the highlights are added which gives depth to the flowers and greenery. After all the paint has dried, two thin coats of shellac are added which makes the painting pop out and, at the same time, protects the soundboard against dust buildup. Any dust that does accumulate on the soundboard can be removed by gently brushing the board with a large but soft paintbrush and then blowing the dust clear. After the strings are on, the same brush can be used directly through the strings. Here are some photos of the finished soundboard.
All that remains now is to string the instrument, install the jack action, and make it play. It is, after all, a musical instrument – first and foremost. While this could easily take up another 10 posts, we’ll show it all in the next post which is post #28. Post #29 will be the final post where we’ll summarize the entire project and show the final pictures. Thanks to all for staying with me for all these posts. Relief is coming soon – kinda like how good your head feels when you stop banging it against a wall.
Till the next time,
Ernie
