Even as a collaboration, the project of collecting, restoring, researching, and recording 100 rare and vintage musical instruments would be daunting. Gregg Miner not only accomplishes this, but he does it through 27 of his own exquisite arrangements.
A Christmas Collection Featuring Vintage, Exotic, and Just Plain Unusual Musical Instruments
Musicians with a fondness for strings are bound to enjoy Miner’s two-volume Christmas collection. The familiar vintage tones of Martin guitars and Gibson mandolins won’t disappoint. And the unfamiliar sounds of lesser known octophones, ukelins, zithoharps, tremoloas, mandolin-banjos, and harp guitars offer a rich glimpse into a unique musical past.
Because hearing the instruments just isn’t enough for Miner, 52 page booklets accompany each CD. Color photos and engaging descriptions bring the 100 musical instruments to life. Miner’s passion is apparent in his dedication to authentic performance, but his attachment to this collection shines through in the personal way he introduces each and every instrument. It’s as though he’s invited the audience to an intimate holiday party and takes time to acquaint them with a group of 100 close friends.
The Story Behind Miner’s 100 Rare Musical Instruments
“Essentially, I did this for my own amusement and catharsis at the end of a two-year period without playing any musical instruments whatsoever,” Miner explains. At the time, he was working a demanding day job in aerospace, moonlighting nights in Disney animation art, and enjoying life as a newly wed.
After two years though, Miner was ready to get back into music. “I couldn’t stand not having music in my life,” he remembers. “My chops were gone, so I took the opportunity to start from scratch and do something completely different.”
One by one, Miner brought his instruments down from the wall, restored them, and learned to play them. “Some of them I’d never touched in my life,” Miner admits. “Some of them, no one had touched for a hundred years.”
The instruments in the collection were diverse, but Miner united his arrangements with a theme. “I love the music of the Christmas season,” he says. “It’s its own folk music, and it’s familiar. I knew it would make it fun for me and hopefully anyone else I played it for.”
When Miner began to record, he owned somewhere around three dozen musical instruments. During the four-and-a-half years it took to complete the album, he rounded out his collection to over 100.
The World Music and Exotic String Instruments of Gregg Miner’s Christmas CDs
Most of Miner’s tracks showcase vintage American string instruments, but the Japanese koto and Chinese yueqin feature in an exotic arrangement of “O Come, O Come Emanuel.” The Indian sitar and tambura flavor Miner’s rendition of “Little Drummer Boy.” Sounds of the Middle Eastern Oud and Saz are prominent in “We Three Kings.” The Charango, vihuela, and a host of other Latin American instruments come together for “I Wonder as I Wander.”
During the last six months of recording, Miner discovered he was wrapping the project up but still hadn’t found places to include his exotic instruments from South America, Japan, and India. This was when his wife observed, “You haven’t used your koto yet.”
Miner informed her, “There’s no way I’m going to use a koto for American Christmas music. It can’t be done.” A good-natured dare followed and Miner stepped up to the challenge.
To record these pieces, Miner had to rework the melodies to incorporate authentic tuning and scales. “I have to go in and out of crazy modes to make the arrangements both Middle Eastern and American, or Japanese and American,” he says. “It was quite challenging and quite fun, and as clever as I get.” In the end, these selections wound up as some of Miner’s favorite tracks.
Sharing the 100 Vintage and Rare Musical Instruments of the Christmas Recording
It was Miner’s wife who insisted the Christmas collection was a project which should be shared. There was interest from the record labels, but not the interest Miner had in mind. “They wanted to get a quick album out there, strip it down to public domain songs, and not show or talk about any of the instruments,” he remembers. “They missed the whole point that I had done this with 100 instruments.”
Miner and his family took the plunge and put the CDs out themselves. A year later, the project was picked up by Delos International. “Low and behold,” Miner recalls, “without much distribution at all, it took off. Here we are fifteen years later, and every year, it sells again and is played on new radio stations.”
Even on its fifteenth anniversary, Miner’s recording remains fresh and vibrant. Separately, his 100 vintage and rare musical instruments endure as works of art and pieces of musical history. Heard together, they become a timeless masterpiece.
Interested readers can check out similar articles covering…
- Techniques enabling Miner to learn 100 rare and exotic musical instruments for the recording,
- Miner’s thoughts on restoring, recording, and collecting vintage instruments,
- The equipment Miner used to multitrack 100 musical instruments in his home recording studio,
- And The Miner Museum of Vintage, Exotic, and Just Plain Unusual Musical Instruments.
Quotes taken in conversation with Gregg Miner January 2011.
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