The Socratic Method consists of eliciting answers to questions to which the answers aren’t exactly secrets. They’re things that everyone knows just because they’ve been alive and living on this planet for a few years . . . and that are easy to think about — and yet that most people have never stopped to think about. In other words: most people know these things without knowing that they know them. Or at the very least they may know those things, but have never connected any of them to others. They can be dots on a piece of paper . . . that are unconnected. Yeah: the Socratic method is about connecting drop-dead simple things, and coming up with something interesting that one hadn’t thought of before. And I think that this way of learning/teaching is well worth a few pages of text. In terms of teaching and learning, these are the most important pages in this book.
The Socratic Method is slower than delivering the facts to the listener by lecturing or pointing something out (or having a one-sided discussion, which is the same thing), but it’s more effective toward one’s retention of information. And that’s not because someone delivered the information to you in the usual way; it’s because you helped dig it out for yourself. As I said, you already know lots of the answers . . . without knowing that you do. You know them because you’ve lived in the world and are already familiar with things like weight, resistance, pull, solidity, flimsiness, air, softness, and so on. It’s not exactly rocket surgery. A conversation concerning the guitar might start with something basic and simple:
Q: What’s a guitar? What’s it for, really? What does it do?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) It’s to make music.
Q: Well, yes; that’s not wrong. But that’s not the most basic thing that the guitar does. What is the most drop-dead basic thing that a guitar actually does?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Uh . . . it makes sound.
Q: Right. It makes sound. Not just “any old noise” sound, like the sound of a car crash, or a bull stampede, or breaking glass. It makes sounds that are consistent with what we recognize as musical notes. And if the instrument is made correctly, and one knows something about how tune it and use it, it will make musical sound – which is a specific form of organized sound (or organized noise). Does that make sense to you?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: Well then, I’d want to ask you this: how does the guitar make a sound, whether it’s musical or not?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Ah . . . the top vibrates. You might knock it over and it hits the floor loudly.
Q: Uh-huh. Don’t be a wiseass. How does the top’s vibrating make sound?
A: Well, the moving top excites the nearby air, and excited air becomes sound.
Q: Yes. And how does the top get to vibrate?
A: Well, the strings vibrate. And they jiggle the top into also vibrating. They’re connected to each other.
Q: So, why would the strings be vibrating?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Well, the player is strumming them.
Q: Yes. And does strumming make sound?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Not exactly. Rather, not directly. Strumming sets the string into motion, and the strings excite the top. And as the top begins to vibrate, it makes the sound.
Q: Ah-Hah. Now we’re getting somewhere. Tell me more about how the top makes sound.
A: Sound is excited air molecules. The tops’ vibrations excite the air (the air molecules) around it. That’s what sound is: excited air molecules that hit our eardrums. The top can excite a lot more air molecules than a thin little string can.
Q: Yes. If we’re going to be talking about vibrational energies and excitation of a vibrating membrane, I’d think of this bundle/amount of energy (that the strings pour into the guitar soundbox so that it can make sound) cold be called “the energy budget”? Does that phrase work for you?
A: I’ve not heard it called that, but it’s a good description (pause . . . )
Q: Uh-huh. The energy budget is the invisible thing that creates the sounds we hear. How big might the energy budget for a guitar be? And would it always be the same size?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Well, it would depend on how heavy the strings were and how vigorously the player is exciting/ driving them.
Q: I would think so too. But you could have a louder or quieter guitar depending on how vigorously the player plays?
A: Yes.
Q: Hmmmm.Supposing you had a guitar, and you strummed, and its sound would be louder the more energetically you strummed it . . . but it reached a point where it didn’t get louder as you strummed it with more energy. Its voice didn’t get as loud as you’d wanted it to get. What would you think would be going on?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Well . . . the energy budget would be within the normal/average/do-able range. But the top wouldn’t be keeping up. I’d be wanting the guitar top to be exciting even more air molecules.
Q: I’d think so. What do you make of guitar, or energy budget, that doesn’t deliver as much bang for the buck as you want?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Well, we have normal string energy being transferred into a top, and that top is not using all of it. Or is resisting it. Or, at least, not using as much of it or as well as we’d expect or want.
Q: . . . And? Anything else? How and why would something like that happen?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Ummm . . . the top might not be using all the incoming string energy.
Q: Right. Where might the unused energy go?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Uh . . . no, that’s not right. It can only go into the soundbox. There’s nowhere else for it to go. It’s more likely that the energy is meeting a barrier that keeps it from getting in. Or maybe only a little bit of it is going in . . . so there wasn’t enough energy getting through as was needed. Or the top is too stiff and heavy and difficult to move. Maybe all three.
Q: Interesting. The “energy budget” is usually enough to produce the amount of sound that we have learned to expect. No? But what’s going on in this instance?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) It seems like there’s a mismatch.
Q: I does seem so. If you play a guitar more energetically and don’t get an anticipated increase in volume, or if you play as you always play and get less sound than you’re used to getting . . . what do you think might account for that?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Ah . . . I’d think that there’d be something that’s keeping the top from moving more fully!
Q: Like what?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Well, it might be the character of the wood that the top is made of. If the top were made of sponge, or Styrofoam, or rubber, or lead sheathing, or something like that, those materials would suck the energy out of the strings and that would kill off the sound. But if it’s not the wood itself, it’s likely to be the amount of it. It takes more energy to move a greater mass than it does a smaller one.
Q: And . . . ?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) So the top might be too heavy. Or too thick. Or ovebraced. If any of these obstacles to top vibration were absent, or minimized, there’d be more sound.
Q: Yes. And? . . .
A: Hmmm. If any of those inhibiting factors are in operation then the top’s ability to make sound is limited. (pause for more thinking . . . ) Energies can induce vibrations in wooden plates (guitar tops). Different topwoods can look the same and be the same size, but they’ll differ in stiffness, thickness, hardness, and mass – not to mention the bracing. Some of those factors will put up more of a fight, as it were.
Q: Yes. Can you say a bit more about that? . . .
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Well . . . it can explain why guitars that look the same sometimes don’t sound the same. That is, everything looks the same on them, but they emit different volumes and qualities of sound as their internal structures try to deal with the incoming energy budgets. Some matches are better, and some are not so good. You can see shape and size, but you can’t see stiffness or mass. Like if you play five “brand X” guitars, made by the same people on the same day, they won’t all sound the same. They’d all sound a bit different. And you’ll like some of the sounds better than the others’.
Q: Quite right. What do you think can be done to improve such a guitar?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) As it concerns mass and stiffness, it would help to make the top thinner.
Q: And anything else?
A: Well, the bracing mass might be reduced. That would help.
Q: Do you mean by removing braces? (pause . . . )
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) I don’t mean removing any braces. If you made the braces thinner and less high it would mean that you’d lessen the amount of wood, as well as plate stiffness, for the strings to push around. Less wood = more movement. And also: less stiff wood = more movement.
Q: Is that idea surprising?
A: Well, not really. Everybody knows that kind of thing already.
Q: Really? What do you think everybody knows? How thick to make their guitar tops? Well, how thick is the ordinary steel string guitar top?
A: (a long pause while this question is researched) Steel string guitar tops are commonly in the more-or-less 2.5 to 3.2mm (or .100” to .125”) range of thickness. Within certain limits, they all sound . . . well . . . pretty good for most uses. Occasionally one turns up that perks our ears up.
Q: What do you think would happen if you made the top thinner, and the braces less heavy?
A: As per our present discussion, we’d get a louder guitar.
Q: And what would happen if you made the top even thinner (including the bracing)?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) I expect the guitar would get yet louder.
Q: I think so too. And what would happen if you made the top lighter still?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) I guess the guitar would get even louder.
Q: How far do you think you could push this thinning/ lightening work?
A: Well, there would need to be a limit.
Q: Yes, there would. What do imagine that limit might be?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) I guess you could make the top more and more fragile until it couldn’t hold up to the pull of the strings, and something would break. That would be a limit for sure.
Q: Do you think that maybe the sound of the guitar would get better and better, until the next increment of thinning/lightening would allow the guitar to get damaged?
A: (a pause for thinking . . .) Maybe. But I’d think that it could be possible for the guitar’s sound to get better and better up to a point that’s nowhere near breaking, but that beyond that would make the sound unpleasing. Too sharp? Shrill? Thin? Papery? Maybe a point where it’s not the top resisting the strings, but the strings overpowering the top?
Q: That’s a really good question to think about. What might you think about a top that’s so thin that you can see the imprint of [at least some of] the braces inside the guitar?
A: Well, that top might look a bit skinny and rickety. But until there is any kind of outright damage to it, and the top is holding together, it might well sound pretty good. I mean, we are discussing the systematic lightening up the physical structure of the top and the release of more and more sound from that soundbox.
Q: Yes. How close to that limit do you think your own guitar tops are, or might be?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) Well, I’m making them the way pretty much everyone else is making them. I guess I could thin and lighten them up some. I guess I would take me making a bunch of guitars over time and I could track that . . . but I wouldn’t want to do all that work on any guitar and have the top break if I go too far. That would be a good reason to lighten the stiffness and mass of the top a little bit at a time.
Q: Bingo! So . . . making the guitar top lighter in construction is the way to go? But not so unreasonably thin and light that it couldn’t hold up in the long term?
A: (pause for thinking . . . ) I guess so. But if I wanted loudness I could always play into a microphone or a pickup and hook them up to a speaker! The top and its bracing would be irrelevant.
Q: Get the fuck outta here!
So: the idea behind the Socratic Method is to elicit the information that the student is asked about and that he already knows, but usually without having put the bits and pieces together in one pile, so the student doesn’t know that he knows anything. But he does. And as I said, it’s not exactly rocket surgery.