The Psychology of Guitar-makers

[Jim Gallant]

As I announced earlier, I am working on a kind of novel--actually, a collection of thematically-connected short fictional works dealing with historical guitarists. A  number of members of this form offered valuable speculations relating to the career of Francisco Corbetta earlier.

I am now inviting speculations on a different subject: the psychology of guitar-making which is obviously  painstaking work requiring, among other things,  a delicate touch and ear. I have a friend who is very skillful woodworker, so I have a sense of the mentality likely to be in play. But I would be interested in observations on the subject anyone would care to share.

If Alexander Batov would be willing to confess all, that would be wonderful!

[Jan van Cappelle]

I would recommend to read books like "Historical lute construction" by Lundberg and "The violin maker" by John Marchese (about Sam Zygmuntowicz).
I'm always searching for excellence, in building as well as in sound. It's a passion, if you want to make money, don't built guitars. It's a being profession, like a priest, you don't close the door after a week and forget about it totally, like employees at a desk do.

Please don't make some pitiful Gepetto-like, apron wearing, almost autistic, alchemy using woodcarvers out of us. It's done too many times. Forget movies like Anthony Quinn's Stradivari and The Red Violin.

A week ago there was a guitar builing symposium in Hingene, Belgium. It's a pity you missed that. It would have been a nice study-object. Four days of total madness, wood, instruments, theories, tradition and technology.

[Jim Gallant]

Ian:

Thanks very much for the comments. Yes, I'm aware of the "passion" involved in guitar-making . I'll avoid the Gepetto-syndrome, and I know money has little to do with the matter. Torres the great 19th century luthier ended in a poverty similar to suffered by many classical guitarists down through the centuries--not to mention novelists!

You might tell me a little more about your experience of that passion. I mean, if you don't forget about a project away from the work bench, what is it you think about? Are you hurting if you aren't working on a guitar? Are there obsessional aspects to the experience? What is this passion vis-a-vis other passions easier for humans to embrace?

Is a guitar-maker trying to produce a sound that is, for some reason, all his own, or that which somehow expresses the Zeitgeist? Torres, for example, changed the sound of the guitar in the direction of Romantic lushness, and greater volume of sound, that most guitarists (at least the ones not drawn to the historical instruments) have preferred ever since.

Is the sound of a guitar a cultural sign of sorts? Or maybe a counter-cultural sign?

[Jan van Cappelle]

I am always on the lookout for new better techniques, or inspiration for instruments, decoration, inlay, tools.
I don't think hurting is the good word for it, but I'm a person who can't sit still. It's very relaxing to work on instruments, gets your mind of other things.

In a way it is a way of life. Since I was very young my passions where history, archaeology, techniques, science and constructing. I was always reading, trying and searchig. In building historical instruments all these passions come together.
You can say it is an obsession, but a healthy one.

I think every guitarmaker has a sort of sound in mind witch he tries to achieve. As with everything this will be influenced by his environment, the culture and time in witch he lives and is raised. Fashion influences all.

Over times our perception of a 'good sound' evolved. In medieval times people built harps with little hooks almost touching the strings, for a very nasal sound (like a sitar today). Or take for example the trumpet marine, or even the harpsichord (one of my teachers described the sound as two copulating skeletons on a corrugated zinc roof). Later instruments with sympathetic strings where he norm.

In the last 70 years there where major changes in sound, music and instruments. The instruments influenced the musicians and vice versa. Electric power influenced the way we live, make and listen instruments. It's an exotherm factor influencing our whole culture.
If you told someone living in the baroque era about our popmusic, he would have thought you were crazy. And someone medieval would think you're heretic.
I think the sound of instruments is thing reflecting the culture, but also influencing it (not in a large way, but it is).

[Jan van Cappelle]

It would be nice if other builders would reply as well.
There must be other visions or comments.

[Jan van Cappelle]

I think this will give more insight aswell:

http://www.kenparkerarchtops.com/NewYorkerArticle.pdf

http://www.kenparkerarchtops.com/JJGArticle.pdf

[Jim Gallant]

Jan--Thanks for all that you've sent along, including the oiece from The New Yorker. By the way, your written English is very good! I assume you're not a native speaker-writer?

[Jan van Cappelle]

Thanks, I try.
My native language is Dutch.

I am very curious about your book. Can you please inform we when it's available?

[Jim Gallant]

It might be a very long wait! The project I have projected is in its early stages. I anticipate it taking maybe four or five years. The research required is very time-consuming, and often distracting. And the market for serious fiction is, and is likely to be, terrible in the English-speaking world, and presumably everywhere. If I were writing for anything but the joy of doing it, I would have quit long ago. A lot like making guitars or playing them!