Nick Takenobu Ogawa

This song is called Jigsaw - it’s kind of a rough mix, but this is what the new cello sounds like.

here’s where you can learn more about the electric cello

The prototype is done, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty bad ass. I’m pleased with the results, at least for a first try. I wanted to see how putting frets on would go, and while they work, it never occurred to me how essential vibrato was to the overall sound of the cello until I was unable to use it. I’ve already gotten the ball rolling for the next version, which will use an ebony fingerboard and no frets. I learned a lot in the first run so more than likely the second attempt will be the one I use for performance.

I’ve been slowly but surely putting the finishing touches on this body, using a beautiful piece of curly maple. It looks about a million times better than the plywood version i did below. I’ve just started finishing it, using a nice “vintage amber” stain. The photo resolution on this pic doesnt reveal the shimmery curly effect of the grain, but that should come out more when I add the gloss coat. In a couple weeks expect to hear how it sounds!

I routed out a trial run of the body. It needs some serious sanding, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to use it anyway. The plywood started to split, and while the glue seems to have done the trick for now, I’m not sure I want to go ahead and install everything onto something I’m not sure of. Nonetheless it’s good routing practice.

got a router and started on it, but i totally underestimated how loud it would be. Not to mention the sawdust. Tomorrow I’ll get earplugs and a mask. It probably wouldn’t be too bad an idea to talk to the neighbors too, just to let em know what I’m up to. Here’s what the first pass looked like at least:

I bought a cello neck and fingerboard through the internet and they finally came today. I’ve got this pet project to build my own electric cello. I have one of the Yamaha ones, but it’s very robotic and mechanical looking and I want to take a stab at making my own design. It will basically be a trial run because I’ve never built anything like it before, but it will definitely be a fun project. The design will be loosely based on the shape I use for waxatronic - which is my electronic stuff that you can find here.

The TVOTR concert this weekend was awesome! I thought the flow of the show was really well done, although I was skeptical at first. They played “Wolf Like Me” for their 4th song, which seemed like a bold move, especially in the typical save-the-hits-for-last concert mentality. But it really brought the crowd in and they kept the energy high even through some of the slower sparser songs after that. “Golden Age” was a lot faster than on the record but it was still good. Dave Sitek had these windchimes hanging from the end of his guitar for a bunch of songs, which was pretty crazy. It was hard to tell what they were really doing, but I guess they must have added some kind of sustained overtones to add to the overall wall of sound he makes.