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  • I always try to put a little bit of my soul into a guitar.

  • This is a mixture of sweetness,

  • which I sometimes have, not always,

  • and a little bit of bravery.

  • The part that I love the most about working with wood

  • is touching it, the feeling of the wood in my hands.

  • It's something that always reminds me about who I am,

  • where are my roots, where I belong to.

  • The wood needs to be dried at least for 30 years,

  • which means that I'm using the materials

  • that my grandfather bought.

  • I’ve never met him; he died one month before I was born.

  • So I get to touch the things that he picked

  • without knowing they would be for me,

  • because I'm the first woman in the family to make guitars.

  • So it's quite special.

  • Once you have picked the material,

  • then you start to prepare all the parts of the guitar.

  • We always start with shaping of the neck.

  • The second part, it's the top.

  • When we decide the materials,

  • we decide which one of the templates that we have,

  • that we're gonna use.

  • The first thing that you do when you cut it

  • is to put it in the solera.

  • The solera is the mold that we use for the top and the back

  • to give the guitar this little curve so it sounds better.

  • And then for the top, we need to put the rosette in it.

  • And it's little pieces of wood,

  • and we make the drawing, the design,

  • and we have to start putting every single piece

  • so it matches.

  • The rosette, it's one of the most difficult parts to do.

  • But it's also one of the most creative ones,

  • where you are allowed to do whatever you want.

  • It takes me like two months and a half

  • to make a couple of guitars,

  • because we are always making a couple of them

  • so when one is gluing we can work with the other one.

  • Actually when a guitar is gluing

  • you're going to use this old form of clamp.

  • These ones we made ourselves here,

  • so we can put pressure on the guitar.

  • The flamenco and classical guitar they may look equal

  • but in the construction they are different.

  • Classical player, they always look

  • for a neat note, bright sound.

  • But the flamenco ones, they just want soul.

  • Everybody asks about the sides bending.

  • You have to put them under the water for a couple of hours

  • and then you do this bending with heat.

  • We use a little oven and if you get the wood wet,

  • through the process you can bend the sides

  • to the shape of the guitar.

  • The Conde business started with

  • an uncle of my grandfather in 1915.

  • Nowadays, in this workshop we are three people,

  • plus my father.

  • At first, continuing the tradition,

  • it was not something that I had in mind.

  • My father suggested me to come

  • to the workshop in the evenings, just to try.

  • And I found it beautiful to know

  • how the family business worked and how to make a guitar.

  • The first guitar that I closed, I remember going back home

  • and my smile couldn't be bigger.

  • Because it's the first moment

  • that you see a complete guitar.

  • For joining of the back, we need to put enough pressure

  • to stick the back and the sides,

  • but it's not so much so the sides could break.

  • The tradition is to give your first guitar to your mother,

  • but I'm not a boy, so I decided to give it to my father,

  • which was my master.

  • I was totally afraid that it would be a mistake

  • and a mess and it wouldn't sound.

  • But it did sound, and it did sound well,

  • and I couldn't be more proud.

  • I remember this as one of the most exciting days of my life.

  • Once you have stuck all the guitar together,

  • then you start with the fingerboard.

  • We always use ebony, from Africa.

  • It's a really tough material because

  • it has a lot of density, it's really heavy.

  • You have to be very careful in

  • the distribution of the frets.

  • If you are mistaken by just one millimeter

  • you wouldn't be able to tune it, it would be impossible.

  • After that you only have to give the last touches.

  • Once a guitar is finished, you have to adjust

  • the neck bone and the bridge bone.

  • And this is really important because

  • that will decide the tension of the strings.

  • Sometimes you need a whole day to adjust a guitar,

  • to find it perfect.

  • But I guess it will never be perfect

  • because it depends on the person who plays the guitar.

  • I have really good memories with flamenco music

  • and then for me it means home actually.

  • It comes from the heart of a person.

  • I have this romantic idea that this is my grain,

  • that I live in this world so someone else can make music,

  • which gives life to all of us.

I always try to put a little bit of my soul into a guitar.

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