Colorado Voices
Like my ukulele? Thanks, I made it myself
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Volunteers at the Red Rocks Community College build instruments for music therapy patients
Red Rocks Community College students and volunteers, led by RRCC lutherie instructor Seth Gustin, spent their Spring Break building ukeleles for instrument donation nonprofit Blue Star Connections.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS
Colorado Voices
Like my ukulele? Thanks, I made it myself
Clip | 2m 55sVideo has Closed Captions
Red Rocks Community College students and volunteers, led by RRCC lutherie instructor Seth Gustin, spent their Spring Break building ukeleles for instrument donation nonprofit Blue Star Connections.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship[wood cracking] How do you do this?
[sanding] How do you bend wood that's so thin without breaking you know, just how do you do this?
And when you dig into the nuts and the bolts, it, it really starts to make sense and you start to see how it goes together.
In one sense, it kind of takes the wonder of how it gets made.
But then on the other end, when it's done and it just sounds so beautiful, the wonder is, all right back again.
[bird crows] What we've undertaken is 20 concert ukuleles built in five days, all done with student volunteers from Red Rocks Community College.
We literally start with blocks of wood and just selectively go through the process of making these instruments.
No, no I leave those on.
[sanding] Across the grain here.
A luthier is a person that works on stringed instruments.
Lutherie stringed instrument building.
Fine furniture is my main focus.
Its just super, super precise and lutherie is also very precise, but its but its a lot more artsy, I would almost want to say.
There's a lot more carving, and paying attention to the sound, right?
We're going to start with bending and cutting the sides.
Once the sides are bent, you're on to gluing the brace work.
We're carving those braces in a way that we're getting the structure that we need to hold the instruments together.
But not so much that it's tightly bound and it holds back the sound.
The main thing we're looking for is to kind of keep everything smooth and avoid any right angles.
The right angles really block the sound and make it just a less pleasing tone to hear.
The instruments will end up going to Blue Star Connections.
Blue Star Connection's mission is to provide musical instruments to kids and to young adults that are facing serious illness and serious life challenges.
Music therapy is an incredible outlet for people.
For that moment, they can put their bodies and their minds into a music outlet versus constantly continually thinking about what they're doing or what they're going through.
The ukulele it's gained in popularity hugely over the last decade or so.
Ever since a gal won America's Got Talent on a ukulele, liiterally the next day, people started calling about them.
Ukuleles are very important.
I get a lot of requests for those, and it's because of their size.
They are able to be put into children's hospitals, other health care facilities, Theyre easy to play.
They can be used by a kid that might be bedridden, Finishing an instrument and playing those first few notes on it.
I used to think there's no better feeling than that until I started teaching instrument building.
And then watching your students go through that same thing is just it's very fulfilling.
I just really love music.
I guess it's a really big difference between fine furniture and lutherie is you probably get to hear how it sounds in the end, and it really is so cool.
When life gives you a house, move it.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS