Narciso Yepes 

Please refrain from making edits to subjects you clearly know very little about. Yepes collaborated with Ramirez, not Bernabe, to invent his guitar. Bernabe (an apprentice of Ramirez) later formed his own shop and Yepes subsequently played a Bernabe 10-string. As for your comment about Yepes's hands, this is simply ignorant as to the true reasons why Yepes invented his guitar as well as the technique of playing it (which was NOT to use open basses to simplify technique as some nitwits think - including 10-string guitarists and clueless former students of Yepes). I have the autograph manuscripts to prove that more often than not he used fretted basses rather than open ones even when the open ones were available, depending on what best served the music. Do you have these proofs??? NO. So please stick to what you actually know. (FYI Yepes had extended techniques that enabled him to fret the first string's D together with the low G on the 6th string by using the left hand thumb. Again, we have the proof of this. It was even published in one of his old Scarlatti editions.)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.94.133.166   

 Your discussion at Narciso Yepes 

First, you added information that was NOT CORRECT, except for the reason you gave for Yepes's death. And it is not constructive to to add biased, unneutral opinions like Yepes was the most "notorious"...

Second, it is a well-established fact that RAMIREZ and Yepes invented his ten-string guitar. As I said, Bernabe was an apprentice at the Ramirez shop then, but the first Yepes-type ten-string guitar was a RAMIREZ guitar. Moreover, Ramirez had the idea to construct a guitarra d'amor with multiple string resonators INSIDE the body of the guitar. This was rejected by both Segovia and Yepes as impractical. It was Yepes who solved the theoretical and technical problems by adding only 4 strings tuned a very specific way (C, A#, G#, F#) alongside the normal 6 strings. You want a verifiable source? Here: Ramirez III, Jose. 1994. "The Ten-String Guitar" in Things About the Guitar. Bold Strummer. pp. 137-141. [ISBN-10: 8487969402]

Third, I clearly said Yepes fretted bass notes even when the same bass notes were available as open strings! F# or G# are very often played fretted rather than open! I have this in his own handwriting and own fingering yet you will presume to know better and call this fact "worthless" because it disproves your ignorant (unconstructive) remark about Yepes' "short hands" being a reason for playing a 10-string guitar. Furthermore, Yepes frequently uses the 7th fretted (because it is the lowest string), but not "frequently" the 8th (as you mistakenly claim), which is a minor 7th higher than the 7th string. Moreover, these strings can be used to voice chords as originally written in the urtexts by non-guitarist composers like Ponce or Rodrigo that are impossible on the 6-string (except in the edited versions). Being able to use open strings as "crutches" for a lack of technique was certainly NOT part of Yepes's entirely musical reasons for inventing his guitar - though (I will add) many ten-string guitarists today (who are second-rate guitariats in general) have adopted the instrument to make up for weak techniques. This has NOTHING to do with Yepes's own performance practice on his instrument. As someone who has studied for over a decade with one of Yepes's leading (long-term) students, as someone who has thoroughly researched all aspects of the 10-string guitar, as someone who has access to many many unpublished manuscripts and annotations, I can safely say that I know what I am talking about. Yepes even frets A2 and G2# on the 10th string rather than play them on the open A2 and G2# strings (5 and 9) in an example I have in his own handwriting, and the reasons for doing so are in the context entirely MUSICAL and not about any technical limitations, which exist only in your imagination!

, you know nothing.