We’ve been long time fans of local festival Bingley Music Live in August and we are super excited to announce that we are hosting the third stage there with Jam On Top.  Jam on Top provide great local rehearsal space and recording studios for bands and are an asset to the Bradford music scene.

This stage will give local bands a chance to play the festival, give everyone a chance to network, get new gigs and find out what there is to offer for musicians in the Bradford area.  It’s also an opportunity for us to all show how good our local bands are and hopefully encourage people near and far to go see more bands in the area throughout the year.

We’re all big local gig attenders at Musicians Centre and some gigs are as enjoyable, if not more enjoyable than going to see a big touring “signed” band.  We’re confident our stage will be entertaining for all and are looking foward to helping introduce some of the amazing talent we have in Bradford to a wider audience.

We’ll be on the right hand side of the stage as you look at it, check us on the Bingley Music Live map.  If you’re interested in playing get signed up on our website - musicianscentre.com/bml

Less than three weeks before our big move.  Lots done, lots of help from friends (thank you everyone!) and things are really shaping up now.

Not much time to say more, but check out all the events booked on the Exchange Arts website including the opening day of April 7th where we have a ton of exciting things going on.  In the mean time, here’s some new photos of our progress.

Acoustic section done

Everyone at Musicians Centre has been grafting hard on the Big Move. All the walls in the shop showroom area have been pulled down, false ceiling pulled down, ceiling holes filled sanded and painted and work is just about finished on the wood acoustic guitar wall.

Upstairs there has been lots of wall paper stripping, lesson rooms built and some re-plastering work done. On top of this we have removed about 30 cast iron radiators somehow while keeping our backs uninjured (14 stone radiators are not easy to move down stairs).

In the Exchange Arts Centre venue the stage and dressing rooms structure is now built, bar area prepped and some undercoating done. The electrician has been booked, lighting prepped and the small demo stage in the shop showroom is nearly finished.

The acoustic guitar wall is made up from 1958 bailey bridge wood and each piece had to be sanded and then stapled and glued to struts across the acoustic guitar wall section 12 times. A long arduous task but we are chuffed with the end result. There are sections still to be treated with a Hollywood technique of wire wool and white vinegar solution to give them a bit more of an aged look. The room we have made will give people a quieter area to try our our acoustic guitars and gives us much more wall space to hang guitars.

We have now set the date of opening on April the 7th with a big open launch day. You are all very welcome to come along, have a chat and a latte (or tea). We have exciting things in store for the opening!

We have been visited by local newspaper Keighley News who we’re excited about what we have planned and there’s talk of a film club being set up in the Exchange Arts Centre venue. The Exchange Arts Centre website is now up too and acts are getting booked in thick and fast.

We are on schedule for the April opening and are looking forward to getting the Corner House building used again by Keighley’s musical community.

How did you spend your Christmas?  We mostly spent ours ripping down walls and false ceilings and preparing our new premises for the Keighley music store on Russell Street.   We have bought the Old Labour Exchange in Keighley because, as anyone who has visited our Keighley shop in the past year will know, we have vastly out grown the current premises and we needed more room for all our ideas.

What can you expect?  Well, we will have a huge show room four times bigger than what we currently have, new bigger lesson rooms for our music tuition and on the same premises is the new Exchange Arts Centre, a venue which will host music and arts events not just by ourselves but for local and national bands, theatre groups, workshops and much more.

We’re very excited about what we have in store for you and can’t wait to show all our pupils, customers and teachers the new building which should be completed at the end of March.  In the mean time here are a few photos of ongoing works which may give you a rough idea of what is coming and how much work we have left to do!

Stadivarius Copy

We found an article recently about building a new copy of a Stradivarius violin using a CAT scanner and replicating the densities on 3D CAD software and then replicating the build into a brand new violin.

While this is an amazing use of technology and impressive in concept, it threw up a few questions to us in the wider area of musical instrument manufacturing.  While throughout the years we have certainly seen high points (and low points) in terms of classic design and workmanship, this direction gives the impression that the best instruments have already been made.

We can’t get over the fact that this outlook is pessimistic at best and anti-innovative at worst.  Why do we have to keep going back and trying to replicate the past when it comes to instruments?  Why not itterate and innovate so that people in 100 years will be looking back at us and saying, “Wow, they made amazing progress in the early 2000s when it came to amazing instruments.”

Some companies are better at this than others.  Yamaha guitars for example constantly itterate and improve their designs.  Listening to people who give them feedback and keeping an eye on returns and where the weak points in their products are and fixing them in the next version.  They should be applauded for this, Yamaha are one of the few companies that do improve dramatically model on model.  Tanglewood Guitars are another company that we have found listen to us and while the process of improving a musical instrument product is not a quick one it is going in the correct direction.

While it is a slow process in physical goods, if you look towards the software technology  sector where software is updated sometimes daily, you can see how companies compete at such a rate that consumers are getting an often amazing and constantly improving product.