Manuel Rodriguez the Art and Craft of Making Classical Guitars Scribd

Sr

Affiliate ane

The Guitar: Musical and Artistic Instrument. Its Art and Development.

La guitarra

hace llorar a los sueños.

El sollozo de las almas

perdidas,

se escapa por su boca

redonda.

Ycomo la tarántula

teje una gran estrella

para cazar suspiros,

que flotan en su negro

aljibe de madera.

FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA

A musical instrument is, without doubtfulness, one of the most ingenious inventions of man. Have the violin, for example. What a marvellous and flawless creation! There is zero, with the exception of the scroll, that is ornamental in the violin. Everything—absolutely everything—in this instrument is conceived to perform a specific purpose. In spite of its functionality, we behold it as an instrument of boggling elegance. One cannot imagine all the thousand and 1 changes this musical instrument has undergone throughout the ages before it finally got to what it is now. Only the great masters of Cremona—Stradivari and Guarneri—were able to create, cheers to their common sense, logical minds, and much inspiration, this unsurpassable work of art. At every stage of history, luthiers accept striven and endeavoured, through their creativeness, to construct a beautifully sounding musical instrument that gives satisfaction to the ears and whose shape is a delight to the eyes. Zippo evokes sound equally vividly every bit its outward design and advent; and this precisely explains why an musical instrument made to produce music is an fine art slice.

Guitar making is therefore more of an art than craftsmanship. An explanation is needed here. Experts hold the theory that what really makes art is the fact that the artistic object is unrepeatable. Well, a guitar can never exist repeated. No guitar sounds exactly the same as another, no matter how hard its maker tries to make it do so. This is because a lot of factors intervene in its cosmos: from the selection of wood and its use in making whatever given guitar, which may be number X of your production, to thinking of the end user, a item guitarist, a country, the flavor of the yr, and the atmospheric conditions under which the instrument is created; fifty-fifty the maker's ain moods, have a bearing on the guitar.

In the 1960s. together with my friends in Los Angeles (Us), nosotros came up with a program to seek grants from the Ford Foundation to, through research, develop the guitar scientifically. We consulted with a group of eminent engineers who, well-versed in acoustics, had helped in the designing of the Los Angeles Music Centre. Afterward a serial of talks and explanations to familiarize them with the principal features of guitar construction, they came to the conclusion that the construction of this instrument involves many imponderable (that which cannot exist weighed, measured, or adamant with precision; defying any forecast) aspects.

Once you go the wood, you have to call up that each piece, fifty-fifty though it may come from the same board and the aforementioned cutting, is different—different as to its homogeneity with the whole slice, every bit to the measurement of the bracings, cross bars; in brusk, dissimilar equally to its soundboard. Drawing an analogy with human beings, we could well say that though daughters of the same mother, every sis is dissimilar. Besides, every guitar, even though coming from the same wood, is unlike in its interior structure. The stop effect is therefore unpredictable, seeing that one of the unforeseeable factors is the construction process itself.

Another attribute, which defies any forecast in each guitar, is the pressure of the sides and the issue of gluing them to the soundboard.This technique is pure and unproblematic. It is a skill caused from long experience and devotion, with the result that every guitar, made from high-quality woods, plus the experience of a bully luthier and the highest instinct and nobility, is different. Thus, if that which cannot exist repeated is art, so, my respectable colleagues, in my modest view, our guitar is besides an creative instrument. It is fifty-fifty more and then if each artist constructs his guitar past working an exclusive ornament, on the precious and unique woods, a mosaic which distinguishes the soundhole from all the soundholes of his or her other guitars (Torres never fabricated the aforementioned soundhole design twice). Information technology is like a feather, a purfling that will never be repeated as far as colour thickness and gustation are concerned. Nosotros are therefore talking virtually an fine art piece that has a life of its ain, produces sound, and provides the guitarist with his own instrument to express his musical skill and harmonic knowledge, held in the easily and close to the body; an art piece or pieces of precious wood put together to the luthier's taste and woodworking skills; your merchandise, personality, and nobility in doing a skilful chore. The guitarist plays the guitar, which is either a superlative-quality musical instrument or an art piece, which the guitar maker tin never repeat.

The artistic luthier, who in the by constructed guitars with great artistic skill, simply today neglects innovation or has simply lost the skill, will observe it quite incommunicable to make a value judgement, or to feel that the musical instrument synthetic on their bounds is an art piece—this in spite of their knowledge of pictorial art and their awareness that duplication is common.

Whereas the former creates a musical instrument of art, the latter makes duplicate instruments from an archetype called a guitar. Although, in all fairness, it must be said that never in the history of guitar lutherie accept guitars been reproduced with such high quality. The guitar that is mass-produced (that is, the guitar equally an object) can—thanks to smart and special tools, a practiced selection of wood, and proper drying process—currently come across quality standards and provide musicians with a perfect instrument as far equally cost, presentation, sound quality, and user-friendliness are concerned. Until now, such has been quite unthinkable. This actually makes it easier for whatsoever guitarist to lay easily on a plumbing fixtures instrument that suits their taste and falls within their musical requirements, functioning needs and economic range. And in some cases, the guitar falls inside the range of good quality and good forest structure.

The luthier—non the manufacturer of objects—manages to brand an instrument that produces an attractive sound, has a fantastic outward appearance and is faithful to the handcrafted guitar. The luthier—that is, the artist of a renowned musical tradition who makes an instrument, cheers to long experience acquired in years of practice—is obliged to turn the instrument that he constructs into an unrepeatable art piece. The woods used in its creation must be unique, and with them the luthier must create a unique ornamental design for the guitar in question. With these exclusive woods he must manage to produce an musical instrument of sustainable, top-quality sound, an equilibrium in tone through the fingerboard, treble, and powerful singing. Moreover, he must make this instrument easy to play and craft it and then as to provide everything the guitarist expects from a guitar.

Given this opportunity, the luthier is chosen upon to create for posterity an musical instrument that will serve as living proof of his artistic skills in the trade of woodcraft. For instance, I have right before my optics this magnificent book Musical Instruments by A. Brüchner. We can observe in its pages a 16th-century soprano lute with marvellous bone incrustation and marquetry on the top, body, neck, fingerboard, and headstock. To be sure, the luthier who created it believed he was creating an art piece, and perchance even more so did the person who was to ain information technology, G. Sellas (Venice, 1750). What wonderful incrustations on the soundhole, purfling, fingerboard, headstock! What a delightful sight if you stop a moment to accept a expect at the filigree on the back, side, and the neck! These instruments were very impressive for their epoch, and information technology was delightful to listen to their music. The player needed the same things that today's guitarist needs: articulate sound, power in all the registers, harmony, and tuning. In curt, they needed and used their musical instruments. And more than than that, they turned them into works of art whose ornamentation, delicacy, and design are a delight for us today. Harp makers worked in a similar manner. Fifty-fifty today, art harps are still being created; and the violin luthier is ever on the lookout for the dazzler of line, incrustations, and wood of the violin, viola, and violoncello. The satisfaction of a perfect design harmony of the instrument delights the violinist's sight and sense of taste.

If art is human being's chapters to create dazzler, then there should be no doubt in anybody's listen that musical instruments, in general, and the guitar, in particular are beautiful.

In Europe, during the 16th and 17th centuries, magnificent guitars were made. And with the opportunity provided through the construction of this musical musical instrument, pure art was at piece of work in its etching, headstock, excroups, bridges, and buttons; not to mention the marquetry, mother-of-pearl incrustations, ivory and ebony forest and other precious materials. Well, they took great pleasance in their love for the musical instrument.

1.one. The Guitar: Stringed Musical Instrument. Its Birth.

As we have already said, many are the imponderables of this music-making instrument. But the wood solitary—the most important ingredient of all—accumulates a whole serial of complexities in its density, hardness, and elasticity. Without any dubiety, the guitar that we luthiers build is the instrument with the most pieces of all stringed instruments (for personally, I do non consider the piano to be a stringed instrument, but rather 1 that has strings).

Let usa retrace its origin, shall we? Man, out of need for subsistence, invented the bow and pointer equally an indispensable hunting weapon. This was possibly how the commencement stringed musical instrument came into being, equally a sound was surely fabricated as the bow was pulled to shoot the pointer. A similar thing must have happened with the seashell as a string slid over it. This discovery was, certainly, the appreciation past humans that by good handling they could create so many unlike resonances: from a string stretched past a pikestaff, to canes forming all kinds of squarish shapes that held several strings, to a turtle shell and strings. And so this was how, thanks to the imagination and creativity that man started developing, audio- and noise-making objects were built-in. The Samarian Lute (2400 BC), the Indian Ravawastron (thou BC), the Turkestan Capuz (500 BC), the Chinese Tuen-Kin (300 BC), or the moon-shaped guitar are some of their precursors. The whole of mankind had the aforementioned curiosity.

Ancestors of our stringed instruments:

1) Prototype of theoretical harp. with tortise vanquish soundboards.

2) Thought of a lyre with a shell soundboard.

3) Long-necked instruments from the Hittite Kingdom. 1900 years before the Christian era. Possibly the offset idea of a guitars shape.

4& 5) Other guitar shapes plant in Arab republic of egypt at the Coptic monastery.

To reach the human ideal of sound product became an objective that injected more impetus in its evolution. What began as the production of noises and rudimentary sounds evolved to incorporate volume and other sound features.

However, their different designs and appearances are also noteworthy.The lyre, made from an animal shell, or the instrument created from half an earthenware pot, on whose circumference two circular horn-shaped sticks rest (the v strings making up the set end up together at the back of the pot), are some examples. It is also worth mentioning the Egyptian Turkestan Dutar (300 BC), a sort of musical instrument with a long neck, a string, and its respective button. The string is stretched over a round torso with a flat top—possibly made of animal skin—that ends up at the back of the box.

All these instruments flourished; and throughout the Mediterranean, music was created with them. In oriental countries, even today, people are still composing with these instruments or others derived from them.

What magnificent literature and historical and artistic data we possess on the curiosity, inventiveness, and in many cases, the instinctive yearning of the homo to make instruments that produce music.

As history unfolded and time went by, an infinity of stringed objects were created, through whose melodies people expressed their joys and sorrows. The sole aim of these early instruments was to create the best sound-producing object possible. The Ravanastron (1000 BC, Bharat) the unlike kinds of lute ( 1400–300 BC), or the tanbur from the Egyptian civilisation (prodigious in stringed instruments) are merely a few of the virtually prolific examples of the homo interest in, and invention of, beautiful instruments with which to express feelings.

The first thought of what was to become the guitar of our days can be traced back to the Coptic lute. This instrument, found in a Coptic monastery in Egypt in 300 AD, consists of a long neck fixed to a square box on the upper part. As it got to the eye of the piece it formed a chugalug, which rounded the lower function.

13th Century Spanish Guitars The guitarra morisca and the guitarra latina from the Cántigas de Santa Maria de Alfonso el Sabio.

Yet it was in the confluence betwixt Asia and Europe that the diverse versions of lutes thrived: the Mizhar-Barbat, the rebab, and the oud. Aesthetically, their shapes were that of a pear; a peculiarity that served to identify stringed instruments among the Arab, Asian, and European peoples.

This same shape characterized our lute, banduria, and mandolin which, together with the guitar, gave rise to the flourishing of the numerous groups of serenaders or pluck and plectrum instrument groups—a natural name for these musical groups.

Originating from villages and little towns, these groups were mainly formed by self-taught musicians who generated the pop and folk music that form part of the musical civilisation of Spain today

Getting back to the Spanish historical and musical by, nosotros must put a special emphasis on the Arab domination from North Africa. Later winning the battle of Jerez in 711 AD, they settled with their civilization and developed it in Espana for a lengthy period of fourth dimension. Already in the eighth and 9th centuries, various forms of the lute were in utilise.

Hence the importance of the Cantigas de Santa María (medieval poems set up to music) by Alfonso X the Wise, preserved in the El Escorial Monastery library (Madrid). In these marvellous and richly decorated pages yous tin discover reproductions of drawings of the dissimilar forms of stringed musical instruments that existed in Kingdom of spain between 1257 and 1275. From the vignettes we tin see how they are played with the fingers, equally well as with a bow. From these works of fine art we are given insight into the great discovery—possibly scientific—of these types of instruments; precursors of the present twenty-four hours ones, and the fruit of the intuition and imagination of someone with unbounded eagerness for getting more sound from a string. What this someone could never accept imagined was the grandeur of the bow, which gave ascent to the instruments of the violin family, and paved the mode for the fantastic luthier craftsmen—the same craftsmen who, in the medieval period, created violins that have never been surpassed. They used but two kinds of wood: the pino and the maple, which, upon scientif analysis of today, plough out to exist the two woods that best transmit vibrations.

If we consider the nature and transmission of sound, and compare the boilerplate speed and the meters reached per second, we obtain the following table:

What can we say almost the use of such specific and unique woods in the construction of these instruments? A scientific discovery or a luthier'south intuition?

If intuition is the intellectual human activity that garners knowledge near things through perception alone without reasoning, then you tin can draw your ain conclusions.

Non only were these two types of wood used to create these wonderful stringed instruments, simply they also made fine-tuning and harmonic perfection possible. The bully human imagination only had to alloy the greatness of these sounds with those of other instruments. Well, this then is a elementary definition of what we today call an orchestra, the delight of mankind.

Merely the most evident thing of all is that, in the course of their construction, the exquisiteness of the sound of these music-making instruments produces the emotion of being and creating art. There are plenty of books illustrated with images of the skill and fine art of those maestros who, in their eagerness for aesthetic comeback, the enhancement of the sound, and in their attempt to brand them like shooting fish in a barrel to play, were more concerned about this attribute. The reader should consider the bizarre lutes, the harps, the violas, and the violins as proof of this fact.

1 Vihuela, c. 1500. Espana Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.

A common feeling shared by every luthier, from medieval times

pateruitheroming.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.scribd.com/book/401397902/The-Art-and-Craft-of-Making-Classical-Guitars

Share this post