ALEX BISHOP GUITARS
In the wilds of Wiltshire, a converted primary school plays host to a clutch of workshops, including that of guitar builder Alex Bishop
Like many before him, Alex Bishop began building guitars at what is now the London Metropolitan University, formerly known as the London School Of Furniture. He was on a three-year degree course, and from the start the inclination was towards the instruments used by Gypsy jazz guitarists. “It was just on the cusp of the cheaper imports coming in,” he told us. “At that time I couldn’t afford a Gypsy jazz guitar of my own, so I was keen to make one.”
Since finishing university, he has struck out on his own. “Figuring it out along the way, really,” he laughs. Alex first set up a workshop in a creative hub in Deptford, south-east London, after his work received an award. “I was the recipient of the NADFAS & Cockpit Arts Award 2010. NADFAS is the The National Association Of Decorative And Fine Arts Societies and that allowed me to work in a workshop space at Cockpit Arts for a year, rent free,” he explains. “Since I started there, there’s been an exciting growth of instrument makers based in that building. When I joined, there was just Stephen Thomson, a violin bow maker. Now there’s Ewen MacLaine, who’s a violin maker, and Alex Potter who’s a maker of folk instruments, so over a time there was a nice little collective there of instrument makers and that was really helpful in developing my skills and seeing other methods.”
So has making Gypsy jazz guitars formed the mainstay of his work since his move to the countryside? “Yes, that’s right,” he says. “Everything I build is rooted in Gypsy jazz guitar – the Gypsy jazz guitar way of thinking. Mario Maccaferri was a sort of innovator of this unique type of guitar, a really original thinker. As well as internal resonating chambers, he had this decorative flat cutaway and this Art Deco aesthetic. I’ve tried to carry on that way of thinking and keep progressing it.”
Despite a focus on the Maccaferri style of instrument, Alex makes folk guitars as well. “With my folk guitars, I’ve been trying to keep rolling with contemporary ideas,” he tells us. “I do side sound-ports and things like that, and I like Art Deco inlays. I’m hoping to build a harp guitar next year, that’s on the agenda.”
So there are plenty of new and innovative things still to come from Alex? “My ideas probably develop quicker than I can build guitars,” he laughs. “It can be quite frustrating, because by the time I finish something I’m already thinking about the next project.”
One might say that the world of Gypsy jazz guitar has become fixed in time since its main protagonist, Django Reinhardt, passed away in the 1950s. Does Alex find that his customers look to the past or are they open to new interpretation? “Gypsy jazz is a strange beast,” says Alex. “You play that sort of music on that sort of guitar and for a long time those guitars were assigned that genre of music. I always thought, ‘I wonder if you can change things a bit…’ and, actually, the style of the Gypsy jazz guitar is evolving and it’s quite interesting.”
How does this evolution make itself apparent? “Well, you’ve still got that template, but the sort of music that more modern players like Adrien Moignard and Sébastien Giniaux are making is taking it to another level, which I think opens up possibilities on what the guitar has to look like or be like, or what features it has to have. So I’m realising it’s the music, for me, that’s pushing the acceptable design of the guitar.”
The Gypsy jazz scene seems to be resurgent these days, meaning a new wave of players are attracted to Alex’s wares. “When you’re a Gypsy jazz guitar maker and you expose yourself to this sort of player, you become part of that world and that network of musicians and you think, ‘Is it just me that thinks that this music’s popular?’ I think it’s a style of music that has endless scope for technical innovation,” he says. “When I started making, I was going to Samois every year – to the Django Reinhardt festival in France – and now I’m booking up three or four festivals every year to go along to and, increasingly, they’re more and more local it seems, which is really exciting.”
Moving onto the folk guitar, obviously a lot of builders base their work on the past – designs that have become established by Martin and Gibson. But does Alex, as a younger builder, find that there’s scope for experimentation here, too? “I do, yes,” he affirms. “I would say I have made less headway because of the number of instruments I’ve made in the folk realm is less than I’ve made in the Gypsy jazz realm, but certainly I’ve got a few ideas in my head. I’m a big fan of side sound-ports; I think that’s a really nice feature.”
Certainly some of the instruments in Alex’s workshop that are nearing completion would confirm this, as many of them bear the essentially ‘modern’ idea of locating a port on the player’s side of the instrument. But what about timbers, we ponder – the traditional wood types used by the makers of yore are becoming ever more scarce today, not to mention the CITES restrictions on rosewoods. “I’m a big fan of walnut,” he says after some thought. “I’ve used a lot on folk guitars and even that comes from my Gypsy jazz guitar-making background, walnut being commonly used in Gypsy jazz guitars. Undoubtedly, it colours the tone in a way that is interesting and different and I think indigenous woods are increasingly the way I want to move. There are projects like the Leonardo Guitar [Research] Project that is looking at the effects of using non-tropical tonewoods, and I’ve been following that closely – it’s been quite revealing. The results of their work seem to indicate people are buying with their eyes rather than their ears.”
Oh, surely not, we say with just the merest hint of a blush. “If you play beautiful vintage Martins made of Brazilian rosewood you hear that tone, and when you make a guitar you measure against those instruments. But why are those correct?” he asks. “They’re correct because that was what was around – and they were well-made instruments. I’ve got nothing negative to say about them, but what’s interesting is, why should that be the right way a guitar should sound? I want to be different and if a guitarist wants to sound different, I think going for the classic wood combinations is going to lead to potential disappointment because it’ll just sound like another guitar, whereas you can go into interesting places with interesting tonewoods.”
Another facet of Alex’s guitars is the inlays and artwork he employs in his instruments. How did that come about? “The truth is I was thinking for a while I wanted to make my mark a bit more obvious,” he begins, “particularly on Gypsy jazz guitars. They’re jazz-age instruments and the iconography at that time was so strong. I’m quite drawn towards graphic imagery and strong lines – and the curvaceous form of guitars, to me, screams out for some hard lines, some intersecting shapes. I’d been thinking about it for a while and I was building a guitar for somebody and I had this beautiful piece of cyprus and I cut out the back the wrong way round!” he laughs. “One side was clean and beautiful with not a single knot or mark on it and I had cut it out so the inside was now the outside and it had a dirty great knot in the middle. So I thought, ‘Oh no, I’ve got to do something about this.’ So, in a way, it came from creative of problem solving.”
Necessity, as we all know, is the mother of invention. “Yeah, definitely,” he agrees. “So it was a moment of fate, really, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s all or nothing… So I based a lot of the inlay on a painting by Kandinsky that I’d seen when I was quite young in New York. That painting stuck with me and I thought it would be a nice reference, and I later learned that a lot of his paintings are abstract representations of music or sound and that just felt really appropriate. That was the only guitar I did based on an actual painting and from there I thought I’d start work on my own designs and I’ve been striking out on my own.”
Alex’s designs are certainly original – we’d go as far as saying they’re positively unique. “I enjoy it because if you’re a painter that’s how you work. You don’t necessarily plan out every brushstroke, you kind of go for it and let it evolve in front of your eyes. So I’m sort of taking that approach now, which is quite liberating.” www.alexbishopguitars.com