Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Scott Martinez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Scott, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I’ve always wanted to get more involved in woodworking, and have in the past mostly stuck to carpentry – building things for my homestead and home remodeling. As a musician, guitars are close to my heart and I decided to try and start making them. Youtube is a great instructor, but making sawdust and messing things up is the best teacher! If I was able to do this full time, I imagine I would have gotten better much quicker, but not being able to make a living doing it – even still today – I have to do it in my spare time.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

The story about what I want to do is that when I was a kid, I wanted desperately to play guitar. My parents couldn’t really afford to get me one, so one day I found $50 and bought myself an acoustic guitar at a flea market. Obviously it wasn’t very good, but my parents signed me up for lessons. The guitar was so bad, with a very high action, it was extremely frustrating and hard for me to play. It made me give up.

I founded Samsara Guitars in the hopes of making guitars, and giving them to underprivileged kids. I also want and DO use reclaimed materials whenever possible, and that figures into the name of Samsara – which means rebirth, life cycle basically, flowing together. Materials are given new life in my care.

I became a guitar builder by accident. I’ve always been an artist, first a visual artist – and then a musician and was in bands for YEARS. I also own a recording studio and have seen many instruments come through here. I finally got back into guitar (I played bass most of my life), and started collecting them. I have been thinning the herd though because I only want to play my own!!

I want to build bespoke, heritage, heirloom instruments. Made from family heirlooms (wood/furniture, etc.) and/or instruments that will BECOME family heirlooms. I also have a Youtube channel that features me building guitars and I’m hoping to start a Patreon where people can help contribute to my ultimate goal of building guitars for kids.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think people need to BUY art from artists, including music. Streaming is OK for discovering new music, but the only people making money from music are the executives at Spotify and other streaming services. I usually buy vinyl and a lot of the times they come with digital downloads. I listen to the downloads in my car and the vinyl at home. It’s really the BEST way to support an artist and YOU own the music forever. When you stream, they can take things down and replace with “new versions” at will. You never really own the music. There has been uproar around record companies trying to appeal to a “Modern Audience” by autotuning classic music – like QUEEN! They’ll take down the original and replace it with that, even if you own the album in your library online. THEY control the content. So you won’t be able to listen to anything but what they WANT you to listen to.

I don’t mean for this to seem political, but it’s all totally true and it’s also part of the reason why concert tickets are so expensive. Artists need to make money somehow, because they’re not making money on albums anymore. You can’t complain about ticket prices if you don’t buy music!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is “discovering” my art through new eyes. Specifically, through my guitars – seeing the face of a person that holds an instrument I made for the first time is unimaginably awesome. It makes all of the struggles, the blood sweat and tears – and YES I do all of that during construction – WORTH IT.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.audiocaverecording.com/samsaraguitars
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samsaraguitars/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samsaraguitars
• Twitter: https://x.com/SamsaraGuitars
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@samsaraguitars