Early romantic guitar (Paris around 1830) by Jean-Nicolas Grobert (1794–1869). *String scale-length: 635 mm. Instrument top shows signatures of Paganini and Berlioz. The guitar was loaned to Paganini by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume in 1838 and later given by Vuillaume to Berlioz, who later donated it to the Musée du Conservatoire de musique in 1866. Today the guitar is displayed at the Museum Cité de la Musique in Paris (Inventory Number E.375). Zoom imageGuitars from the Museum Cité de la Musique in Paris (which houses almost 200 classical guitars )Baroque Guitars from the Museum Cité de la Musique in Paris (which houses almost 200 classical guitars )
In general one can distinguish three main aspects of guitar making:
"Sound" feature that includes shaping the wood (vibrational aspects: densities, stiffness), wood-selection, shaping the bracing; to design; etc. The goal aim is a sound quality that helps the musician create music.[5] Guitars by different builders often reflect different sound preferences—e.g., when comparing instruments of Lacôte or Grobert, with Torres, etc. All can have high sound quality, yet many guitarists feel one may be more appropriate for particular repertoire choices, e.g., Lacôte or Grobert for "classical era repertoire" or "central European romantic repertoire"; versus Torres for "Spanish or late-romantic nationalist repertoire", etc.).
"Playability" aspects This includes the shaping of the frets,[6] string-spacing, neck-width, neck, nut and bridge height (influence on action); decisions about scale-length; etc. The aim is a guitar that is easy and comfortable to play, does not have string-buzz, and suits the requirements/desires of a particular player.
"Visual/decorative" aspects This includes the visual features of the guitar, including rosette design, inlays, ornamentation, etc. (In general these creative visual aspects should not interfere or diminish the sound features, or hinder the playability of the guitar).
Fernando Sor has written that an instrument-maker "should be an accurate draughtsman, understand the common principles of mechanics, the composition and resolution of forces, and the laws of vibrating strings and surfaces".[7]
Viva fui in sylvis, sum dura occisa securi, dum vixi, tacui, mortua dulce cano
Shaping of wood with acoustics and resonance aims
This shaping of the wood is known as "resonance plate tuning"[8] (or "plate tuning"). It refers to a comprehensive tuning of the wood and bracing (its density, thickness, tension, sound-influence) to influence the acoustic properties. It does not refer to a tuning of the guitar-body to a single "default" frequency. Instead, it is a comprehensive way of shaping the wood and its response and resonance properties to improve the guitar's sound. The "tuning" of the wood is also called "voicing" the instrument. The techniques used trace to previous centuries, especially in violin-making (example: attempt at understanding some of the tuning schemes of Italian violins: 1Archived 9 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine , 2).
Some guitarmakers believe that the actual voicing of the wood, and working with and "shaping" the wood (during and even after construction) is more important than the outer construction itself (such as chosen bracing): "As my skill and experience have grown I have come to believe that what makes a good guitar good is firstly how well fine tuned and balanced it is rather than what type of strutting system it is built with. Different strutting systems can add different flavours to the sound but is never the main factor in the Good Guitar.[9]" (Per Hallgren)
Sound characteristics (Timbre)
Spectrum
One of the important aspects that good luthiers need to understand, is that a single tone consists of the "fundamental and simultaneous overtones".[10] (Historically the scientific analysis of this discovery can be associated with Nicole Oresme,[11]Marin Mersenne and Joseph Sauveur.) The ratio of the "intensity of fundamental" and the various overtones, defines the "colour" (Frequency spectrum) of the tone. Overtones are simply frequencies that are at a multiple of the base fundamental frequency. (Overtones defining colour, do not only occur in instruments, but also in the human voice. When singing a note, there are numerous overtones present. Singers experienced in overtone singing are able to control their voice in such a way, that they can increase the intensity of any high overtone to such an extent, that it becomes clearly audible, whilst simultaneously singing the fundamental. In this way two pitches (fundamental and high-intensity overtone) can be made clearly audible while singing.[12])
Tonal colour is an important characteristic on a guitar. Usually the notes of the guitar's different registers (low bass, mid-range, high, etc.) have different colour-spectrums, i.e., differing relative intensities of fundamental to different overtones.
Various types of guitars have tone-differences in the various registers (also differences in response, action, etc.). Specific colour-spectrum characteristics of certain types of guitars can be said to form a specific "sound aesthetic"—this is like a "fingerprint" of the characteristic of that type of guitar. Other guitars have a different "sound aesthetic", i.e., a different colour-spectrum characteristic. Different historic instruments reflect various sound aesthetics.
Temporal change of spectrum (attack/onset, decay)
Important in characterizing the sound of instruments (or more precisely, notes of particular registers), is how the player initiates the sound. This is the attack or onset: a short-duration transient. This occurs at the moment when a string is plucked - the string builds up motion for some time, before it can vibrate in the normal way. The attack is nonlinear and usually has very high-pitched frequencies present. The duration of the transient (until normal string vibration continues) and frequencies occurring during the transient, are a very important factor in how we perceive the tone.
Once the string is in its normal mode of vibration, the standard colour-spectrum is present. As time progresses the amplitude of the vibrations decreases, and usually the intensities of higher pitched overtones decay at a faster rate than the intensities of fundamental and lower overtones (thus a change of colour over the vibrating-time).
In this way one can observe the acoustic "envelope": the attack, followed by the way the intensity of frequencies (fundamental and overtones) decrease with time. The "envelope" can thus be regarded as the temporal change of the spectrum of the sound. This envelope is different for notes in different registers.
Thus the tone or timbre is determined by:
Attack or onset (how long until normal vibration of the string? -> response of the guitar)
Relative intensities of frequency spectrum: fundamental to overtones (defines colour -> colour change over vibrating time, since the higher-freq overtones decay quicker)
These factors can be influenced by the shaping of the wood. A good luthier understands how to shape the wood to directly influence these acoustic properties.
Guitar players can actively vary the timbre by the way they pluck the string—by changing the nail or finger angle, the distance from the bridge, etc. A good instrument helps the musician produce widely varying timbres and have yet have good resonance. Nevertheless, a default colour and response is identifiable for notes in the different registers and define the instrument's sound.
Styles of "sound aesthetic"
As was mentioned, it is possible to group historic instruments according to the colour and response sound characteristic (present for notes in the various registers). A baroque guitar has a different "sound aesthetic" than a 19th-century guitar, i.e. a differing colour-spectrum in the various registers (low, mid, high) and a different duration of attack (response of the instrument).
The "sound aesthetic" is determined by the sound characteristic of notes in specific registers (an instrument's low notes has a different relative timbre, than its high notes).
There is a historical parallel between musical styles (baroque, classical, romantic, Spanish nationalist, flamenco, jazz) and the style of "sound aesthetic" of the musical instruments used: Robert de Visée played on a baroque guitar with a very different sound aesthetic than the guitars used by Mauro Giuliani or Luigi Legnani - they used 19th-century guitars.
Whilst the difference between baroque guitars and 19th-century guitars is large and immediately obvious, one can also identify differences in style within the 19th-century guitars themselves: They are part of the same family, but one can distinguish early Italian instruments (Fabricatore), then French instruments and Viennese instruments, etc.[13]
Guitar making in the 19th century
To get a picture some of the ideas on guitar-building from the 19th century, some newspaper reports of guitar-related patents (note that the newspaper reports given in the cross-references are only brief mentionings, with the actual patent papers providing more details and drawings etc.) and other newspaper writings are listed:
Ventura: Harp Ventura (modification of harp and guitar)[24]
There are also 19th-century mentionings of Lacôte winning a prize for the quality of his instrument - the second prize went to Laprevotte.[25] In the competition organized by Makaroff, it was the guitar of Scherzer that took first place.[26][27]
Guitars in the 19th century were initially all ladder-braced [28] and had their tonal energy spread over a lot of overtones (a desirable characteristic in instruments of the early classical and romantic era), as opposed to the more fundamental-rich guitars of Torres. Francisco Sanguino was one of the first to experiment with fan-bracing, then came Páges and Panormo—but Torres did not use it, so Panormo and Páges still had more tonal energy spread over overtones, compared to the Torres guitars, which focus tonal energy more in the fundamental (desirable in Spanish music).
Movable frets
To solve all guitar intonation problems, or help guitarists use different musical temperaments (or to play microtonal music) it is necessary for the frets on the guitar to be adjustable. Work in this field began in the 19th century, when Thomas Perronet Thompson (1783–1869) wrote a work on the Enharmonic Guitar,[29] with ideas used by Panormo.[30] Lacôte also built a "guitare enharmonique"[31] with movable frets.
The luthier Walter J. Vogt (1935–1990) developed a contemporary mechanism with movable frets,[32][33] now also used by other luthiers e.g. Herve R. Chouard.[34] Tolgahan Cogulu has also designed an "adjustable microtonal guitar"[35] in 2008, based on Vogt's design.
Other concepts for changeable frets, include removable detachable fingerboards: "switchboards".[36][37][38]
The basis of most modern classical guitar designs was developed by Spanish luthierAntonio Torres Jurado in the mid-19th century. Earlier guitars were often smaller bodied (though there are exceptions: Scherzer, Guadagnini, etc.). Torres created a Spanish design, with light materials supported by fan bracing. Torres' fan bracing was influential for modern classical guitars: it consists of wooden strips glued inside the body to provide support and particular deep resonance that is saturated in fundamental.[39] (However, a type of fan bracing was already used before, in some guitars by the Spanish builder Joseph Páges, and after him Louis Panormo used a fan bracing too in some of his guitars from 1823 to 1854; but both Páges' and Panormo's guitars have a different sound aesthetic to Torres' guitars.) Torres used a string scale-length of 650mm, which is usually the standard length for today's modern classical guitars.
The designs Torres developed were later adapted by several very influential luthiers; Manuel Ramirez (1864–1916) and his brother José Ramírez (1858–1923), Hermann Hauser, Sr. (1882–1952) and Ignacio Fleta (1897–1977). More contemporary luthiers such as Robert Bouchet and Victor Bedikian also use the ideas and designs of Torres, Hauser, and Fleta in their own guitars. Some luthiers experiment with their own bracing, and some also offer cutaway, acoustic electric and composite top models.
For years, Brazilian rosewood was the industry standard as the best wood for the backs and sides of guitars. Unfortunately, the export of Brazilian rosewood has been restricted due to the endangerment of the species. Much of the Brazilian rosewood used for guitars is of poor quality, and the inflated price of the wood has caused many luthiers to search for alternative tonewoods. There are many other good very dry woods for guitar construction. Of the surviving Torres instruments, the most common back and side wood used was maple. Many guitars made today use East Indian Rosewood because it is a close substitute for Brazilian rosewood, is readily available in high-quality, and has desirable characteristics as tonewood. There are many other woods with the characteristics to make excellent guitars and are excellent alternatives: cocobolo, maple, bubinga (African rosewood), African blackwood, Camatillo rosewood, Spanish cypress (used exclusively for flamenco guitars), granadillo, ebony, satinwood, ziricote, among others, are excellent choices for backs and sides.
Contemporary Innovations
Lattice braced guitars
The Australian guitarmaker Greg Smallman introduced guitars with an extremely thin soundboard, which is supported by bracing in the shape of a lattice. Smallman combines this with heavier, laminated back and sides with a frame. Smallman is well known for building the guitars played by John Williams. A large number of luthiers worldwide have incorporated Smallman's design innovations into their own guitars.
Double-top, sandwich-top and composite-top
The terms double-top, sandwich-top, and composite-top all refer to a relatively new way to construct the soundboard of a guitar, developed by Matthias Dammann in Germany in the late 1980s. Other luthiers such as Robert Ruck, Fritz Mueller, Jim Redgate, Michel Bruck, Boguslaw Teryks and Gernot Wagner have since adopted the method. A double top usually consists of a material called Nomex sandwiched by two thin sheets of tonewood. A flame resistant meta-aramid (a polymer used to make synthetic fiber) material, Nomex was originally designed by DuPont Chemical Co. in the 1960s as a lightweight material for use in the aviation industry. Luthiers use the honeycomb sheet (calendered paper) version of the product: the low mass, strength, and ease of shaping make it ideally suited for guitar soundboards. Though the construction of a double top significantly differs from the traditional soundboard, a double top guitar often looks just like a traditional guitar. A thin soundboard is often incorporated and used to obtain the most vibration and to allow for optimal sound.
Criticism of Lattice Bracing, Double Tops, etc.
While some people are positive towards innovations that directly affect a guitar's loudness, prefer the full round bodied tone, change in tone that can come with it (if done well),[40] and feel that the loudness of some of these guitars (in particular Smallman guitars) is a by-product of their musical qualities rather than an end in itself;[41] there are also a number of people who are generally critical of the tonal qualities of these guitars; why should guitar makers devote so much time in producing loud guitars with a thin sound, when the vast majority of guitarists do not need an exceptionally loud guitars?[42]
Side Soundport
A number of luthiers are now incorporating a soundport, an additional small soundhole on the guitar's side, usually facing the player. This is said to allow air to move more freely in and out of the body of the guitar as it is vibrating, and to have the advantage of allowing the player to better hear the sound projecting from the guitar. The only published formal research on the latter subject suggests however that players may not be able to hear any difference in a soundport equipped guitar.[43]
Finger board
Improvement of intonation and playability.
Elevated fingerboard
Some guitar makers like American Thomas Humphrey (who patented such a system in US patent 4,873,909), Italian guitarmaker Renato Barone, Frenchman Antoine Pappalardo, and the Canadian Fritz Mueller, make elevated fingerboard guitars. The primary advantage is to improve left hand playability on the upper frets, although the increased distance between the strings and the top is also advantageous for the right hand. The elevated fingerboard is visually unobtrusive from the front, and the instrument retains its traditional appearance.
Curved fingerboard
Some guitar makers like the French Antoine Pappalardo make a Curved fingerboard to improve the playability.
High frets
High frets facilitate vibrato and barreing, and generally aid in the development of a "lighter" left hand.
Multiple scale length fretboards
The 17th-century wire-strung instruments, Orpharion and Bandora are early examples of instruments featuring multiple scale fretboards.
Armrest
An armrest provides three primary benefits: it lessens damping of the top caused by the right forearm; it is potentially more comfortable for the player; and it absorbs the wear to the finish that would otherwise happen on the top, the binding, and the side. These benefits are of particular importance for ultra-thin-topped instruments, such as Smallman's, but could subtly improve any guitar, including double-tops.
The state of classical guitar making
Der Lautenmacher (The lute maker) by Jost Amman (1539–1591)
While most classical guitar makers are today mainly concerned with making modern classical guitars with their typical fan-bracing or experimenting to make the instrument louder (e.g., "thin-top lattice-braced", "double-top", with results that are not without criticism[45]); they seem to give little consideration to historical sound ideals, or to tuning and voicing of the parts of the instrument.[46]
On the other hand, there are opinions that those guitar makers who openly refer to using plate tuning, may be using it more as a marketing gimmick, than something that they truly understand; and has a marked influence on the instrument's sound.
"[...] my building technique doesn't include "component tuning." My experience of thirty five years has led me to the conclusion that "tuning" the sound of a guitar is an illusion and a chimera, and those who publicly advocate that they can accurately control the response of a guitar by responding to noises derived from tapping parts of it, are simply seducing the innocent, or at best, self-deluded." (William R. Cumpiano on "Tap Tuning"[47])
And yet: plate tuning (voicing the instrument) is a significant part of violin-making culture—recently considerable advances have been made in the voicing of violins, so that modern violins by some makers are finally beginning to compete tonally with the best violins of the past (Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati, etc.). In fact, top violinists who traditionally played Stradivari, are now slowly beginning to use modern violins (this was rather uncommon up till recently).[48][49][50] Making an exact copy does not guarantee an instrument with sound qualities identical to the original. There is, however, some evidence that violinists may be under some similar self-delusion as regards the end result of these efforts on the finished violin.[51]
Thus, while some consider that in this respect (and considerations of sound aesthetic), that guitar making today is still lagging behind professional violin-making, the scientific evidence is ambiguous, at best.
In violin culture many good old master-violins have been analyzed for their sound qualities (e.g. Stradivari, or Guarneri are favoured by many people; though some consider these instruments as too "outwardly" loud, yet lacking the "inner" tonal qualities of say Amati).
Plucked instruments from Musurgia universalis (1650) by Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680).
In guitar making, it is in many cases more difficult to find similarly idealized instruments for a number of reasons:
There are multiple guitar traditions still currently active, each with its own ideals of tone, voicing, projection, etc. The flamenco tradition, for example, favors a very different kind of instrument construction from that of the concert classical guitar. And the ideal concert instrument for concerto performance with orchestra may not be the best choice for solo or salon-ensemble playing.[53][54]
There are not many guitars still in existence, from the period that some people[who?] consider the "Golden Age of Acoustics or instrument making" (17th and 18th centuries); e.g. there are only five guitars from Stradivari still known to exist[55][56][57] and luthiers and players are unlikely to have even heard them to judge their tonal quality.
As can be seen from violin making, there was a decrease in luthiers' tonal quality in the 19th century, when compared to the "Golden Age" (some people attribute this to luthiers' greater focus on the visible aspects, as opposed to the sound itself[58]). Also, in this time, the guitar went through many different outer shapes, and luthiers also had to cater for guitar demands from many amateurs at the time;[59] so ultimately, for any given instrument from about 1800 to 1900, it could be one of high tonal quality, but might just as well be a mediocre instrument; or one with a design and tonal characteristic, that was later abandoned by the maker (though there are 19th-century guitar-makers such as Lacôte and Scherzer, who are generally considered as having built guitars with high tonal quality).
Most guitars today are still built using Spanish Torres or post-Torres fan-bracing. This has become the de facto classical guitar instrument today, but while being suitable for most modern Spanish repertoire, it is rather unsuitable for much of the earlier repertoire from the baroque, classical and romantic era. Neither guitarists, nor luthiers have a lot of knowledge on earlier design idioms, or sound aesthetics; though this is improving with an increasing interest in historically informed performance; and luthiers who do not only limit themselves and their interests to guitars (but also consider violin-making culture, lute-making culture (ladder-bracing!) and draw parallels).
The de facto standard classical guitar today is the Spanish guitar: usually fan-braced and strong in fundamental. While fan-braced Spanish (Torres, post-Torres style) instruments coexisted with traditional central European ladder-braced (19th-century style) guitars at the beginning of the 20th century, the central European guitars eventually fell away. Some[who?] attribute this to the popularity of Segovia, considering him "the catalyst for change toward the Spanish design and the so-called 'modern' school in the 1920s and beyond".[60] The styles of music performed on ladder-braced guitars, were becoming more and more unfashionable; and e.g. in Germany musicians were in part turning towards folk-style music (Schrammel-music and the Contraguitar), which only remained localized in Germany, etc. On the other hand, Segovia was concertizing around the world popularizing his Spanish guitar, as well as a new style of music in the 1920s: Spanish romantic-modern style, with guitar works by Moreno Torroba, de Falla, etc.
In fact, Segovia's Santos Hernandez (Ramirez) guitar from 1912, has a slightly different sound aesthetic, than the earlier Torres design.[61] While the Torres is a guitar[61] that some consider more appropriate to the salon style music of Tarrega, Arcas or Llobet (or arrangements of Granados, Albeniz), the later romantic-modern style of Moreno Torroba (whom Segovia met in 1918), Castelnuovo-Tedesco (whom Segovia met in 1932), etc.—combined with requirements of performing in large concert halls—was uniquely suited to Segovia's performance on the Santos Hernandez and later on the numerous Hauser guitars (1929, 1931, 1937, etc.)[62] that he owned.
Yet "Andrés Segovia presented the Spanish guitar as a versatile model for all playing styles",[60] to the extent that still today, "many guitarists have tunnel-vision to the world of guitar, coming from the modern Segovia tradition of revisionism".[63] Torres and post-Torres style modern guitars with their fan-bracing, have a thick and strong tone: but they are considered too saturated in fundamental for earlier repertoire (Classical/Romantic: Carulli, Sor, Giuliani, Mertz, ...; Baroque: de Visee, ...; etc.).
Cover art of L'art du Luthier by Auguste Tolbecque (1830–1919)
Torres and post-Torres guitars have a strong thick sound (not to be confused with rich overtones, since these guitars are rather saturated in fundamental).
"With the change of music a stronger fundamental was demanded and the fan bracing system was approached. [...] the guitar tone has been changed from a transparent tone, rich in higher partials to a more "broad" tone with a strong fundamental."[64]
The sound aesthetic of early romantic guitars (such as Lacôte) on the other hand, has stronger overtones (yet without being starved in fundamental—which would again be undesirable). This stronger overtone presence is due to the ladder-bracing and soundboard design, and the particular voicing of the instrument. A comparison with lutes (ladder bracing) can be made, which also have strong overtones, which gives these instruments (lutes, early romantic guitars) a type of "inner" vulnerability, lacking in the modern guitars.[citation needed] (In fact there are people[who?] who claim that a performer's interpretational style is psychologically related to the instrument's aesthetic; and that this can even be observed in contemporary recordings, e.g., Bach's lute works as performed on lute[65](with convincing expressive phrasing), versus the markedly different interpretations of these works on the modern classical guitar.[66] Alternately, the Spanish repertoire such as Moreno Torroba, would be completely unfitting, for a lute or early-guitar sound aesthetic.)
Even amongst parlor guitar players, there are some that consider ladder bracing necessary, for achieving the desired "old-time sound".[67]
With an increase in interest in historically informed interpretation, there are more and more luthiers that are beginning to look at traditions of guitar building.[citation needed]
Some contemporary luthiers suggest building historic instruments based not only on outer visual details, but based on acoustic principles from master luthiers of the 17th and 18th centuries, leaning towards and learning from the great makers (Stradivari, Amati, Ruckers, etc.).[68] Drawing a parallel to violin-making culture, and lutherie as a broader art, it might be interesting[according to whom?] to deriving indications for the possible aims and ideals of "sound aesthetic in guitars" from other instruments (e.g., of the "Golden Age of Acoustics"), which would open up the possibility of tonally competing[49][69] with luthiers from earlier periods, instead of only visually imitating and copying them.[70]
The steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar that descends from the gut-strung Romantic guitar, but is strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound. Like the modern classical guitar, it is often referred to simply as an acoustic guitar, or sometimes as a folk guitar.
The classical guitar, also called Spanish guitar, is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor of the modern steel-string acoustic and electric guitars, both of which use metal strings. Classical guitars derive from the Spanish vihuela and gittern of the 15th and 16th century. Those instruments evolved into the 17th and 18th-century baroque guitar—and by the mid-19th century, early forms of the modern classical guitar. Today's modern classical guitar was established by the late designs of the 19th-century Spanish luthier, Antonio Torres Jurado.
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument, that is usually fretted and typically has six or twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A guitar pick may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant hollow chamber on the guitar, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier.
A mandolin is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin. Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass.
The violin, colloquially known as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, and commonly has four strings, usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings. It can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.
In physics, acoustics, and telecommunications, a harmonic is a sinusoidal wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the fundamental frequency of a periodic signal. The fundamental frequency is also called the 1st harmonic; the other harmonics are known as higher harmonics. As all harmonics are periodic at the fundamental frequency, the sum of harmonics is also periodic at that frequency. The set of harmonics forms a harmonic series.
An overtone is any resonant frequency above the fundamental frequency of a sound. In other words, overtones are all pitches higher than the lowest pitch within an individual sound; the fundamental is the lowest pitch. While the fundamental is usually heard most prominently, overtones are actually present in any pitch except a true sine wave. The relative volume or amplitude of various overtone partials is one of the key identifying features of timbre, or the individual characteristic of a sound.
In musical instrument classification, string instruments or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
A luthier is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word luthier is originally French and comes from the French word for "lute". The term was originally used for makers of lutes, but it came to be used in French for makers of most bowed and plucked stringed instruments such as members of the violin family and guitars. Luthiers, however, do not make harps or pianos; these require different skills and construction methods because their strings are secured to a frame.
A string is the vibrating element of chordophones such as the guitar, harp, piano, and the violin family, that produces sound. Strings are lengths of a flexible material that a musical instrument holds under tension so that they can vibrate freely, but with control. There are two main kinds of strings; plain and wound. "Plain" strings are simply one piece of cylindrical material, while "wound" strings have a central core, plus another material which is tightly wound around the string. This is to make the string vibrate at the desired pitch, while maintaining a low profile and sufficient flexibility to play in action.
Ramírez Guitars is a Spanish manufacturer of professional, concert-quality classical and flamenco guitars. Five generations of the Ramírez family have produced Ramirez guitars.
A violin consists of a body or corpus, a neck, a finger board, a bridge, a soundpost, four strings, and various fittings. The fittings are the tuning pegs, tailpiece and tailgut, endpin, possibly one or more fine tuners on the tailpiece, and in the modern style of playing, usually a chinrest, either attached with the cup directly over the tailpiece or to the left of it. There are many variations of chinrests: center-mount types such as Flesch or Guarneri, clamped to the body on both sides of the tailpiece, and side-mount types clamped to the lower bout to the left of the tailpiece.
The violin, viola and cello were first built in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, though Ferrari's instruments had only three strings. The Académie musicale, a treatise written in 1556 by Philibert Jambe de Fer, gives a clear description of the violin family much as we know it today.
A flamenco guitar is a guitar similar to a classical guitar, but with thinner tops and less internal bracing. It usually has nylon strings, like the classical guitar, but it generally possesses a livelier, more gritty sound compared to the classical guitar. It is used in toque, the guitar-playing part of the art of flamenco.
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked, its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, resonating through the air in the body, and producing sound from the sound hole. While the original, general term for this stringed instrument is guitar, the retronym 'acoustic guitar' – often used incorrectly to indicate the steel stringed model – distinguishes it from an electric guitar, which relies on electronic amplification. Typically, a guitar's body is a sound box, of which the top side serves as a sound board that enhances the vibration sounds of the strings. In standard tuning the guitar's six strings are tuned (low to high) E2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4.
Tonewood refers to specific wood varieties used for woodwind or acoustic stringed instruments. The word implies that certain species exhibit qualities that enhance acoustic properties of the instruments, but other properties of the wood such as esthetics and availability have always been considered in the selection of wood for musical instruments. According to Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms, tonewood is:
Wood that is used to make stringed musical instruments. The term is often used to indicate wood species that are suitable for stringed musical instruments and, by exclusion, those that are not. But the list of species generally considered to be tonewoods changes constantly and has changed constantly throughout history.
The 3rd bridge is an extended playing technique used on the electric guitar and other string instruments that allows a musician to produce distinctive timbres and overtones that are unavailable on a conventional string instrument with two bridges. The timbre created with this technique is close to that of gamelan instruments like the bonang and similar Indonesian types of pitched gongs.
A third bridge can be devised by inserting a rigid preparation object between the strings and the body or neck of the instrument, effectively dividing the string into distinct vibrating segments.
A bridge is a device that supports the strings on a stringed musical instrument and transmits the vibration of those strings to another structural component of the instrument—typically a soundboard, such as the top of a guitar or violin—which transfers the sound to the surrounding air. Depending on the instrument, the bridge may be made of carved wood, metal or other materials. The bridge supports the strings and holds them over the body of the instrument under tension.
Guitar bracing refers to the system of wooden struts which internally support and reinforce the soundboard and back of acoustic guitars.
Jeffrey Yong is a Malaysian Luthier best known for his use of local Malaysian wood, such as monkeypod, rengas, mango, rambutan, and Malaysian blackwood. The use of non-traditional wood to build musical instruments has not only placed Jeffrey Yong guitars in international markets but also made him considered one of the top luthiers in the world. Yong has gained international recognition and has been invited to exhibit his instruments at several international conventions.
↑ As an example: Viennese guitars usually have more fundamental in the tone (but less, than with Torres fan-bracing), while the earlier French models have more overtones
↑ Example: José Romanillos (although he acknowledges that plate tuning may provide benefits: "a field to think about") looks upon plate tuning rather critically and—as can be seen from a video—he neither understands it (this can be deduced from his rather confused presentation, and strong difference when compared with Somogyi's presentation), nor does he use plate tuning in his own guitars.
↑ Fernando Sor notes: "This skillfull artist [Lacote] is very frequently obliged to satisfy those who consider the instrument otherwise than I do, and make guitars on which it is impossible to play my music or any other that has the base and other parts of the harmony always proceeding correctly; but let a good instrument be ordered of him, leaving him at liberty to make it as he pleases, he will make one for me [...]" (Fernando Sor. "Méthode pour la Guitare"Archived 7 April 2010 at the Wayback Machine . Tecla.)
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