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 rented room at 1738 Grove Street in Berkeley — 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 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 known as 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 instruments such as the lute, the vihuela, the gittern, which evolved into the Renaissance guitar and into the 17th and 18th-century baroque 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.
Michael Alden Hedges was an American acoustic guitarist and songwriter. He was known as a virtuoso who used unorthodox playing techniques, and much of his output was classified as new age music. Hedges died in an auto accident, and won a posthumous Grammy Award for his album Oracle.
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.
The seven-string guitar adds one additional string to the more common six-string guitar, commonly used to extend the bass range or also to extend the treble range.
A multi-scale fingerboard is an instrument fretboard which incorporates multiple scale lengths. This allows each of the strings to have a different string tension and thus, balanced tonal characteristics.
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.
In music, strings are long flexible structures on string instruments that produce sound through vibration. Strings are held under tension so that they can vibrate freely. The pitch (frequency) at which a string will vibrate is primarily related to its vibrating length, its tension, and its mass per unit of length. A vibrating string produces very little sound by itself. Therefore, most string instruments have a soundboard to amplify the sound.
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.
A person who is specialized in the making of stringed instruments such as guitars, lutes and violins is called a luthier.
Robbie Basho was an American acoustic guitarist, pianist and singer.
Daniel Hecht is an American author, environmentalist, and nonprofit development consultant. He has written eight novels which have been published in 13 languages and over 100 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.
Guitar bracing refers to the system of wooden struts which internally support and reinforce the soundboard and back of acoustic guitars.
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.
Jeffrey Yong is a Malaysian luthier noted for using local Malaysian wood in his instruments and for his innovative designs. Yong has exhibited at conventions in the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and China. He founded the Guitar Institute of Malaysia.
George Philip Peacock was an American luthier best known for building flamenco guitars and as the owner of Peacock Music, which served the stringed instrument community of San Francisco for four decades and was, until its closure after his death, the oldest instrument shop in the city. Peacock was a member of the Guild of American Luthiers and St. Philip's Choir, and was the last luthier in San Francisco upon his death in 2011.
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