Ervin V. Somogyi (born 1944) is a maker of high-end steel string guitars. He is known for his craftsmanship, and places particular emphasis on the voicing of his instruments' soundboards. [1] He is also an influential teacher. [2]
Ervin V. Somogyi (born 1944) is a maker of high-end steel string guitars. He is known for his craftsmanship, and places particular emphasis on the voicing of his instruments' soundboards. [1] He is also an influential teacher. [2]
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Ervin Somogyi fled Europe with his family during World War II. After living in Austria, England, Cuba and Mexico, he eventually moved to the United States at age 15. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in English, he joined the Peace Corps, worked in a mental hospital, attended graduate school and supported himself as a flamenco guitarist, but he eventually gravitated back to the East Bay, which has been his home base since about 1972, he says. [3]
Building guitars started out as a hobby. At first, Somogyi had little hope of making a living at it, he says. With few how-to books available or schools where he could take classes, he learned primarily by getting his hands on some well-made instruments and studying them. "It was a very oddball activity," he says. Now, as one of the "grand old men" of American lutherie, Somogyi is often invited to lecture at guitar shows and exhibitions. [3]
Building primarily high-end steel-string guitars that sell for over $30,000 each, Somogyi cultivates a clientele of serious musicians—such as the late John Denver and Michael Hedges, and fingerstyle master Alex de Grassi—as well as collectors who buy his instruments as investments. [3] Recording artists such as Daniel Hecht [4] and George Winston list Somogyi as the builder of their guitars for several past and present albums. [5]
Working in his Temescal district shop, he creates exactly one handmade, steel-string acoustic guitar per month, twelve annually (he doesn't take vacations), [more than] 456 since he started in the early 1970s. [6]
He has written two volumes on lutherie, "The Responsive Guitar" and "Making the Responsive Guitar", as well as "Voicing the Guitar", a DVD produced at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival in 2009. [7]
In 1970, he came upon the book Classical Guitar Construction by Irving Sloane, one of the clearest guides to guitar-making, which was published in 1966. [6] Before Sloane, wrote Barbara Stewart in The New York Times, "Anyone interested in guitar construction had to find a luthier [an expert craftsman of stringed instruments] — usually in Spain, Germany or Belgium — and try to become his apprentice." [8]
Somogyi read Sloane's book and said he thought to himself, "I can make a guitar!" He liked guitar music (he was, and is, an accomplished player), he liked working with his hands, and he had plenty of free time. "And," he added, "there was no one to stop me." He bought tools at flea markets and labored with great deliberation for one year in his apartment in Oakland — sawing, gluing, clamping, bending, filing, sanding, shaping, worrying, exulting. When the instrument was finished in 1971, he played a rousing flamenco number and started on his second guitar. He sold the first one for $200. [6]
His first few guitars were nylon-stringed instruments for classical players. He soon found himself drawn to the construction of steel-string guitars, a descendant of the classical guitar, but used by a wide range of artists in folk and rock, and finger-picking virtuosos such as Alex De Grassi and Leo Kottke. The steel-string crowd — players and builders — was "more easy-going than the classical people. Not as uptight," Somogyi said. [6]
Somogyi's big break came when he established a relationship with artists on the record label Windham Hill, founded in 1976 in Palo Alto, a pioneer in making high-quality recordings of solo, instrumental guitar music. Somogyi's work with Windham Hill was part of a revolution in guitar construction that is still unfolding today. [6]
Somogyi makes six main models of acoustic steel string guitars: jumbo, dreadnought, "modified dreadnought" or Mod-D, OM, OOO and OO models. He can make any of these models in a 12-Fret version . [9]
Somogyi guitars are frequently played and recorded with by world-class performing artists. To date some of the recording projects have been:
Shun Komatsubara, "Dear", Abend Compact Disc; "Naturally", "Scene", "Crayons", Clip Records [10]
Masaaki Kishibe, "Secret"
Maurizio Angeletti, "Go Fly a Kite", Moondance Records
Pat Donohue, "Manhattan to Memphis", Red House Records; "Life Stories", "Back Roads", Blue Sky Records
Steve Erquiaga, "Erkiology", Windham Hill Records; "Cafe Paradiso", Imaginary Road Records
Edward Gerhard, "Night Birds", Reckless Records; "Luna" and "Christmas", Virtue Records
Mark O"Connor, "Live with Stephane Grapelli and David Grisman", "False Dawn" and "Stone From Which the Arch Was Made", Warner Bros. Records
Brother Andrew, "Flying Guitars", AMB Productions
Alex de Grassi, "Southern Exposure", "Slow Circle"; Windham Hill Records
Will Ackerman, "Past Light", Windham Hill Records
Greg Gumbel, "California Republic", Meticulous Records, Inc.
Steve Hancoff, "Steel String Guitar", "New Orleans Guitar Solos", "Duke Ellington for Solo Guitar", Out of Time . . . Music Co.
Daniel Hecht, "Willow", Windham Hill Records
Maggie Sansone, "Dulcimer and Guitar"
Alan Tower, "The Understory - Messages of Intimacy From the Thinking Earth", Geomantic Music
Michael Hedges, "Breakfast In The Field", Windham Hill Records
8th Avenue String Band, "On Stage", 8th Ave. String Band Music
The Natives, "East of the Equator", Meticulous Records, Inc.
The California Guitar Trio, "Pathways", "Rocks the West", Discipline (GM);
Isato Nakagawa, "Wind From the Sun", Naniwa Records; "It’s Time For Tea", Sony Music
Peta, "Majin No Mizuumi", "Powder Snow", Sailing Ice Music
Somogyi's woodworking designs arise out of stringed instrument building tradition and aesthetic. They are fashioned out of thin sheets of musical grade tone woods which have been bookmatched, edge joined, and planed thin. The mosaic inlay patterns come out of guitarmaking design: guitars have open soundholes bordered with inlaid patterns of dyed pieces of wood. These inlaid mosaic patterns are a form of fret ornamentation, an effect made by laying pieces of material of the same size next to one another and thereby producing a design. In guitars these are called rosettes. While historical rosette design originated from Arabian, Celtic and European Renaissance influences, it is expanded in Ervin Somogyi's work to also embrace Japanese, Russian, African, primitive, abstract and modern design. [11]
Somogyi has participated in many guitar exhibitions, conventions, and symposia in the USA, Canada, and Japan over the last forty-plus years. [12]
In 2006 Somogyi curated the first public exhibition of contemporary lutherie arts anywhere, for the Arts Commission of the City of Berkeley, California. The show detailed various stages of guitar and ukulele construction as practiced by working luthiers. The display was connected by a well-organized narrative signage that made otherwise dry woodworking processes intelligible and interesting to the public. An animated diorama of this special exhibit can be seen on Somogyi’s website. [13] In 2009 Somogyi helped curate an exhibition of California guitar makers for the Oakland Museum, for display at the Oakland International Airport.
The classical 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 acoustic and electric guitars, both of which use metal strings. Classical guitars derive from the Spanish vihuela and gittern of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Those instruments evolved into the seventeenth and eighteenth-century baroque guitar—and by the mid-nineteenth century, early forms of the modern classical guitar.
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is 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 plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier.
A fret is a space between two fretbars on the neck of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On most modern western fretted instruments, frets are the spaces between the metal strips (fretbars) that are inserted into the fingerboard. On some historical instruments and non-European instruments, frets are made of pieces of string tied around the neck.
Michael Alden Hedges was an American acoustic guitarist and songwriter.
A sound board, or soundboard, is the surface of a string instrument that the strings vibrate against, usually via some sort of bridge. Pianos, guitars, banjos, and many other stringed instruments incorporate soundboards. The resonant properties of the sound board and the interior of the instrument greatly increase the loudness of the vibrating strings. "The soundboard is probably the most important element of a guitar in terms of its influence on the quality of the instrument's tone [timbre]."
When the [guitar] top vibrates, it generates sound waves, much like a loudspeaker. As the soundboard moves forward, the air that is in front of it is compressed and it moves away from the guitar. As the soundboard moves back, the pressure on the air in front of the guitar is reduced. This is called a "rarefaction," and air rushes in to fill the rarefied region. Through this process, an alternating series of compression and rarefaction pulses travel away from the soundboard, creating sound waves.
The fingerboard is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The strings run over the fingerboard, between the nut and bridge. To play the instrument, a musician presses strings down to the fingerboard to change the vibrating length, changing the pitch. This is called stopping the strings. Depending on the instrument and the style of music, the musician may pluck, strum or bow one or more strings with the hand that is not fretting the notes. On some instruments, notes can be sounded by the fretting hand alone, such as with hammer ons, an electric guitar technique.
Michael Manring is an American bass guitarist from the San Francisco Bay Area.
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 already 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.
B.C. Rich is an American brand of acoustic and electric guitars and bass guitars founded by Bernardo Chavez Rico in 1969.
The Russian guitar (sometimes referred to as a "Gypsy guitar") is an acoustic seven-string guitar that was developed in Russia toward the end of the 18th century: it shares most of its organological features with the Spanish guitar, although some historians insist on English guitar descent. It is known in Russian as the semistrunnaya gitara (семиструнная гитара), or affectionately as the semistrunka (семиструнка), which translates to "seven-stringer". These guitars are most commonly tuned to an open G chord as follows: D2 G2 B2 D3 G3 B3 D4. In classical literature, the lowest string (D) occasionally is tuned down to the C.
A tailpiece is a component on many stringed musical instruments that anchors one end of the strings, usually opposite the end with the tuning mechanism.
William Ackerman is an American guitarist and record producer who founded Windham Hill Records.
The neck is the part of certain string instruments that projects from the main body and is the base of the fingerboard, where the fingers are placed to stop the strings at different pitches. Guitars, banjos, ukuleles, lutes, the violin family, and the mandolin family are examples of instruments which have necks. Necks are also an integral part of certain woodwind instruments, like for instance the saxophone.
A person who is specialized in the making of stringed instruments such as guitars, lutes and violins is called a luthier.
Shadowfax is the second album by Shadowfax, and the band's first for Windham Hill Records. Saxophonist Chuck Greenberg was introduced to Windham Hill CEO Will Ackerman by Ackerman's cousin Alex de Grassi. The band was signed to a record deal in early 1982.
Robbie Basho was an American acoustic guitarist, pianist and singer.
Daniel Hecht is an American author and environmentalist. He has written seven novels which have been published in 12 languages and 75 editions throughout the world, including best-sellers in the United States, England, Holland, and Israel.
Breakfast in the Field is the debut recording by guitarist Michael Hedges released on the Windham Hill label in 1981. It was recorded live to 2-track, with no overdubs.
David Balakrishnan is the founder of the Turtle Island Quartet.
Windham Hill Records was an independent record label that specialized in instrumental acoustic music. It was founded by guitarist William Ackerman and Anne Robinson in 1976 and was popular in the 1980s and 1990s.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
