Date: Thursday 23 February 2012
Venue: QV Square, Melbourne CBD
Address: Cnr Swanston & Lonsdale St (find General Pants on Swanston, walk up the laneway out to the grass patch where the stage is set up in QV Square)
Time: 5:30 till 7:30pm. Jenny will be on in the second half, around 6:30pm.

More details visit:

www.streetchange.com.au
QV Summer Concert Series
Getting there: QV Map

Throw your spare change in to keep Jenny crowned as "Melbourne's Best Busker"

Already over $1000 has been raised!

Electric Guitar Starter Pack to be WON!!!

Join us as, Sunday March 18 for some crazy hair shavin’ fun at Pure Pop Records (St Kilda – Melbourne).

This BRAND NEW Ashton Electric Guitar Starter Pack will be raffled off to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation

There will be HAIR SHAVING, HAIR COLOURING, MUSIC (from Jenny Biddle, Coen Dixon and more), and a raffle to WIN CD prize packs and an ASHTON ELECTRIC GUITAR starter pack!!!! Jenny won this guitar as part of the Tamworth Country Music Festival People’s Choice Award. All proceeds go to the Leukaemia Foundation!

Shaving:
Jenny Biddle
Chris Rickard
Phil Allen (Sydney)

Jenny will shave off all her hair (we’re talking a Number ZERO shave). She is aiming to raise $3000 herself but needs YOUR help to get there!
Come along on the day and show your support on this crazy fun day!

If you can’t make the event but would like to sponsor, please follow the link below and donate to the Leukaemia Foundation: World’s Greatest Shave

If you would like to be brave and shave (or colour, or wear a wig), email Jen jen@jennybiddle.com to get involved! You do not need to shave to be a part of this great event!

If you’re a musician/artist and would like to donate your talents on the day, get in touch with Jen jen@jennybiddle.com. This event will be advertised via social media, Jenny’s website, Pure Pop, and the Leukaemia Foundation.

BRAND NEW LIMITED EDITION EP

 CD available for $10 (plus postage) via Paypal: 

Track Listing:    

1. Chasing Stars
2. Somebody to Love
3. Enough
4. Across the Nullarbor

This limited edition EP features 4 original tracks from Jenny Biddle, solo and acoustic. If intimate and passionate is your flavour, this it the EP for you. There is only 400 copies available, as a taster before the release of “Little Treasures” acoustic album. 

Released: February 2012
Recorded at: Newmarket Studios, North Melbourne
Produced by: Chris Corr, Julian McKenzie 
Mastered by: Don Bartley at Benchmark Studios, Sydney
Album Art: Jenny Biddle
Price: $10.00 (plus $4.00 postage in Australia) 

Thank you for purchasing Jenny’s music. You are contributing to the production of more music from Jenny!

Jenny Biddle wins the People’s Choice Award at the 2012 Tamworth Country Music Festival!

Performing for nine days straight, alongside over 500 other street performers, Jenny Biddle won the hearts of Tamworth Country Music Festival attenders this January, taking out the People’s Choice Award in the 2012 Australian Country Music Festival Busking Championships.

Congratulations Jenny, and a big thank you to the many music lovers who showed their tremendous support!

Sides, bent into shape

DAY 12 – 8/2/2012

10-4pm.

I am SO stoked! The two side pieces are now bent into the shape of my guitar. I left them clamped into frames over two days, and released them from the frames today. VOILÁ! The sides held their newly bent shape. They look amazing.

The sharp bend of a cutaway

Joining the sides of the guitar:

Today was spent joining the sides of the guitar together.

There is excess length in the sides, and to get the right length you whack the sides into the small-acoustic-body-shaped template. I only cut the tail ends off the two side pieces first; the ends that join near the neck are more complicated for a cutaway-style body shape.

Gluing the sides to the tail block

Creating the binding:

While waiting for the glue to dry, I began to create the binding, which go around all the edges of the body on the outside of the guitar. I went through a few different options of wood. Firstly, I’m going to need to select a timber that is malleable. I will need to bend the binding to match the shape of the sides of the guitar, including the cutaway section. The good thing is, the bindings will be a little thinner (<2mm) and will only be 10mm wide. Cooba is easy to bend and generally easy to work with. But I wasn’t happy with the colour/texture. It just seemed to be too much with my sassafras sides. Jarrah was another alternative. I thought maybe the gorgeous deep pinky red colour may look great on the guitar, and bending Jarrah is supposedly doable. But visually, the colours did not compliment the sasafrass sides, in all their greens, pinks, greys, and blacks.

Strips of binding made from Gidgee

Chris was up for a challenge (the question is, AM I??) and suggested I used gidgee. I thought this wouldn’t be possible, as I am aware that it’s one of THE hardest woods around, and gosh it was a challenge to sand the fretboard. I thought it would make it impossible to bend. Plus it’s incredibly dense and heavy, so I wondered if it would add weight to the guitar. But apparently it won’t add that much weight, as the bindings are only thing. And it’s doable, bending gidgee. I was in love with its chocolate brown colour and believe it will look wicked on my guitar, especially in comparison to the gorgeous light-coloured bunya pine used for the soundboard.

I cut four 1 metre-long strips of binding, and sanded them to 10mmx2mm.

I will use these later.

Continuing to join the sides of the guitar:

The hardest part of joining the sides of the guitar together, was joining them at the heel block (this is the block of wood inside the guitar up near the neck end of the body). I had to go back several times to clamp, unclamp, reposition, align, reclamp in the frame, repeat, etc to make sure their alignment was precise. A guitar without the cutaway would just join the sides at the centre of the heel block and you’d be done. But the structure is different with a cutaway. The side with the cutaway stops shorter, and the other side continues longer across the entire heel block. The position of the heel block is crucial. The heel block firstly needed to be sanded, to create a slight angle on the side, so the cutaway won’t be SQUARE to the body, it will have a slight angle that will correspond to the neck. I needed to position the heel block so the end of the cutaway comes exactly 27.5mm (half of the neck width at that point) from the centre of the heel block, and is supposed to line up with the neck/fretboard when it is attached. But this was slightly complicated, and took a few goes of aligning, cutting and sanding, as the 27mm needs to factor in the width of the joining piece of cutaway. Finally I could glue it on.

Everything has to be precise. We’re getting there! It’s starting to look like a guitar… in peices….