The passion and pleasure of the luthier go through a strong background in music, acoustic and good experience of woodworking.
This job requires attention to detail, patience and a sense of aesthetics combined with high manual skills by using all the senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell but also big touch of love.
The luthier is in the center of a creative process of the instrument in conjunction with the composer who imagines the sound, the performer who creates this sound and the lute-maker as a performer too who makes it physically possible.
The craftsman working in a small workshop needs to give life to a few pieces of wood, each type wood emits a clean sound that varies more depending on the drying time, quality … and the sensitivity of a woman is an asset to achieve this goals in a profession mainly occupied by men.
Every day she perfects with love of music and instrument itself, constantly seeking to perform better with great rigor and adapt to the desired musical style, specially when you want to perform gypsy music.
How to make a gypsy guitar style ?
First, you must play gypsy music as Christelle does and her knowledge of Django Reinhardt music is an asset.
A good gypsy guitar is characterized by the choice of a small or a big mouth, the length of the fork (12 or 14 boxes), the quality of wood used, with good acoustic rendering, more or less bass midrange or treble, or rather a round metal. At least you must play comfortably with a good size of the handle and her sensitivity is the final touch.
To learn more about gypsy music richness as a good introduction of this style of music there is one movie, “The son of the wind” and a unique festival dedicated in June to the musical legacy of Django Reinhardt.
Sons of the Win is a fantastic documentary filming guitarists Angelo Debarre, Moreno and Ninie Garcia and Tchavolo Schmitt.
Django Reinhardt Festival held each year near Paris
Push the door of Christelle Caillot Guitars workshop when ready to talked about a customised gypsy sound.
