From time to time, a representative from the workshops of Arcos Brasil visits our shop and I get to spend a morning poring over bows.  While they always have a beautiful selection, it is a special treat when there are several gold-mounted, special-edition bows to try.  When I have several customers shopping in these upper price ranges, I get to pay special attention to the unique qualities of each bow…using what I know about their preferences to select something I feel will meet their needs.  The cello bow featured in the picture below represents Arcos’ best work, which is very fine indeed.  We would welcome your visit to try these bows!  

As we settle in to our remodeled space, one thing we were missing were the acoustic treatments that would make our studio room a wonderful place to audition instruments.  Today, the acoustic panels and tiles were installed!  Now we need to hang a few pictures on the walls, get a rug on the floor, and deal with the glass panels (not quite the right size), and we’ll be able to call that room DONE!  It will feel so good to roll out the red carpet and invite all of our area customers in to see the completed new space.  

We recently received additional Euro-wood L’Ancienne cellos from the Jay Haide workshop. These have consistently been top performers with excellent tonal qualities, powerful projection, and incredible playing ease. It’s a busy time of year for the shop and it might take us several weeks, but feel free to call us to see if they are ready to play!

For many of us, summer break is drawing to a close and our thoughts turn back to school supplies, early mornings, bus stops, friends, favorite teachers, and a backpack that weighs as much as a baby elephant.  For those of us involved in music education, we have our own lists of needed supplies and planning to do.  Especially if your violin has spent more time in its case over the summer than you’d like to admit, it might be time to think about getting ready for orchestra. Most often, your instrument just needs to be tuned and your bow rosined to get ready for that first rehearsal.  Occasionally you might find a broken string, or a missing block of rosin, or a mute that left on its annual migration to wherever the billions of lost mutes go (how DO we lose so many mutes?!?).  Just remember that all of those supplies are here at Paige’s Music in stock, ready to go, and at competitive prices.  You can place your order over the phone and we’ll often be able to deliver it right to your school. Interested in those new strings or gadget you’ve seen advertised for your instrument?  There’s a

Whew…that took a while.  There was an entire shipment of Yamaha electric violins hung up in customs because of revised government regulations.  I’m certainly glad they got it all sorted out, because I had several people waiting on YEV violins.  We have both the 4-string YEV-104 and the 5-string YEV-105 in the natural finish available!  

Well, we opened up the wardrobe, put on our fur coats, and set out into the magical land of Narnia – we are in our new showroom!  You’ll have to excuse a few rough edges and a little bit of dust if you visit us over the coming few weeks, but it is coming along.  All of the same great instruments, bows, and accessories are here and ready for you!  We can’t wait for you to see it!  

In preparation for moving our showroom, we intentionally allowed our inventory of larger instruments like basses to fall below what we would normally have available.  We have a large shipment of step-up basses headed our way.  If you’re currently in the market for a better quality bass, be sure to let us know what you’re looking for and we can discuss both what we currently have available and what’s on the way!

By the time this post is published, we should be mostly moved into our new showroom!  The latest is that the flooring might be a few days behind the move, so you might want to wait until later in the week to come and visit if you’re hoping to see it in its finished state.  We’ll have weeks of tweaking and arranging, but I’m thrilled that the final result will be a space that is capable of better serving our customers. I’ll be sure to give you an update when we’re all settled in!

Derek DeZarn is moving on to the next adventure in a magical land called “Austin, TX”. It’s impossible to tell the story of Encore without talking about Derek. His skill, kindness, and sensitivity to his clients’ needs earned him the trust of many local musicians. We will miss so much about having him here at Paige’s and Encore! If you want to stop by and say goodbye, you’ll want to text him first and then do it in the next couple of days. He’s in the middle of selling a house, restoring an Airstream, selling the vast majority of his earthly possessions, and tying up a hundred other loose ends before he and Morgan trek across the country. I’m fairly certain no one in Paige’s Music’s 146 year history – or anyone else in the next 146 years of our future – will ever wear better sweaters. We love you Derek! STAY TUNED for an EXCITING announcement on Wednesday about who will be joining our shop… (cue dramatic music)

Some of you have noticed all of the construction at Paige’s Music during your recent visits.  We are going through a massive remodel and we’ll feature brand-new retail showrooms for Encore as well as the Indy Flute Shop, Chops Percussion, and the brass and wind instrument area.  I am particularly excited about the changes coming to Encore because the new “Studio” or “small room” where we feature our finest instruments will have some acoustical tuning to improve the room’s usefulness as an instrument trial area.  We’ll have additional room where we can display cases and the look and feel of both rooms should be an improvement across the board. Plus, I get an office! We should be moving in a few short weeks – stay tuned!

For so many students, this is one of the last weeks of school.  If you’re currently renting an instrument from us and aren’t sure what to do with it over the summer, make sure you are communicating with us via phone or email.  For most of you who plan to continue playing in your school orchestra, simply hang on to your instrument through the summer so that you can continue to play.  If you have any questions about the status of your agreement, or are wondering when we’ll be at your school, we can help you with answers.  We just ask for your patience as we field may end-of-year questions.  Thank you!

One of the essential pieces of gear for any string player is rosin.  Rosin is the processed tree sap that, when applied to the horsehair of the bow, creates the friction between the bow and the string.  Without rosin, all we would get is a faint “whooshing” sound as we pull the horsehair across the string. Rosin comes in many different styles and quality levels.  Many beginner, inexpensive rosins tend to be hard and difficult to apply to the hair.  In combination with student bows, which often have lower quality horsehair, applying fresh rosin to a brand new bow can be a very challenging endeavor – especially for a beginning student who has never rosined a bow before. One classroom tradition is to scratch the surface of the rosin with a key – the idea being that it will make it easier to apply to the bow.  However, putting scratches in the surface of the rosin can potentially provide a groove for individual bow hairs to travel and be pinched/broken.  The preferred method for getting a block of rosin “started” is to tighten the bow, lay it across your knee with the hair facing up, find a 2″-3″ section of

Those who know me know how excited I get when a great modern instrument comes to the shop.  I received shipping notification on Monday that the Michael Koeberling cello he recently finished was headed our way.  Tracking today indicates it is slated for delivery tomorrow morning!  It is always a thrill to pull the first notes on a new instrument and start to discover its voice. Please give us a call to arrange a time to come and play this beautiful new cello!  

I’m just old enough to have studied the cello as a young person without the benefit of Youtube!  It is astounding to me the wealth of resources available to us now with the advent of video sharing sites and the internet.  Just this morning, I can across a video of Glenn Gould playing a Bach Gigue that was incredibly inspiring.  This led me on a hunt for other video of Gould and I found this video capturing a performance of Bach’s “Die Kunst der Fugue”.  The opening bars are mesmerizing! Do you have favorite videos of artists that inspire you?  

Many of my friends will remember the trip I took last summer with my dad to Germany to pick up a cello I had commissioned from Michael.  It was an amazing trip and I’ve been thrilled with the instrument he made for me.  Upon my return, I ordered a cello from him for the shop so that we would have an example of his work available for purchase.  That cello is still slated to arrive this fall, but in the meantime he finished an instrument that unexpectedly became available.  I was pleased that we could bring that cello across the Atlantic as well so that it was available to our customers.  It should be here in the middle of May and I can’t wait!  It is a modified Garimberti pattern and will be slightly more slender than my personal cello.  It is covered in a beautiful, red-amber varnish that displays the beautiful material Michael used.  Once it is in the shop, I invite you to come and play!  

Perhaps…maybe…possibly…winter is over?  For many of us, that means firing up the lawnmowers, cleaning out the grills, and opening up the windows.  For cellists and bassists, it means we can finally start breathing and not worrying as much about low humidity, open seams, and cracks.  However, the wildly fluctuating temperatures and humidity levels that spring brings can cause our instruments to develop “head colds” – they might sound stuffy and/or feel sluggish.  Much of this is normal seasonal adjustment, but it doesn’t hurt to bring your instrument in for us to check the soundpost and bridge…and possibly make some adjustments to help optimize your instrument.  Feel free to call us to chat or just bring your instrument in!

The tension required to bring a string up to pitch varies between string materials and string designs.  I’m not going to dive into the theory of why you might want “lighter” tension strings or “heavier” tension strings, but I did want discuss how manufacturers list the specifications.  Most strings that are offered on the market are offered in light, medium, and strong tensions.  Each manufacturer calls these three tensions different things based on language and tradition.  I’m currently experimenting with Thomastik Dominant cello strings on my instrument because they are significantly “lighter” (even in the same tension) than what I was using before.  For example, a Thomastik tungsten-wound Spirocore C-string is rated at nearly 30 pounds whereas the Thomastik Dominant C-string is only about 23 pounds.  The decreased tension puts less downward force on the top of the cello through the bridge.  Generally speaking, this produces less volume but a warmer, more overtone-rich sound.  I’ll keep you posted with the results of my current experiment!  

The slide on the frog of a bow serves a physical purpose, but it is also a part of the bow that can showcase beautiful material.  Makers use all kinds of materials for the slide: Carbon-fiber (Coda bows) Silver (plain or inscribed) Gold (plain or inscribed) White Pearl Yellow Pearl Abalone Goldfish (Awabi) Silverfish …and more Enjoy this photo of a particularly beautiful slide!