esomogyi – Page 5 – Ervin Somogyi

Whence the Steel String Guitar? – 1/2

PART 1 OF 2

by Ervin Somogyi

Although guitar-like stringed instruments have been identified in tomb paintings from as long ago as biblical Egypt, guitars themselves only emerged as instruments with their own identity in sixteenth century Europe — and what we think of as the modern guitar didn’t exist before about 1850. As its “invention” by Antonio de Torres — who is considered to be the father of the modern guitar — preceded both nylon and metal string-making technologies these, and earlier, guitars were all (like violins) gut-strung.

THE GUITAR IN AMERICA

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of stringed musical instruments in nineteenth century American popular culture. The guitar, the mandolin, the fiddle, the banjo, etc. were all very user-friendly; they were portable, they were affordable, and one could learn to play recognizable music on them fairly easily. They were, along with song, the solvent for any social activity; they were how people entertained themselves, acculturated themselves, met one another, and simply passed time when they weren’t at work. Music societies and clubs, reams of printed music of simple and romantic ballads, guitar and mandolin bands and orchestras, music methods and instruction of every type, dances and musical social events, formal and informal parlor get-togethers, outdoors festive entertainment, traveling musical shows, etc. were a mainstay of social life in the days before there were movies, radio, television, theatre, widespread literacy, organized sports, the vast modern array of self-improvement activities, or easy means of traveling (and destinations to travel to) in one’s leisure time. People simply occupied themselves with music a lot 1. And what an immense musical market this was for those on the supply end! This is where factories such as Gibson, Washburn, Epiphone, Harmony and Martin come into the picture.

For all these reasons that existed within the context of the American musical, social and cultural market, the steel string guitar as we have known it has not been associated with the genius of any individual luthiers — certainly not in the way the pioneers of the Spanish guitar are thought of. The pioneer American makers whose names we associate with the guitar today, such as Martin, Washburn and Gibson, aimed at and achieved production, not lutherie. In contrast with the trained-craftsman inception of the classical guitar, the steel string guitar has been a creature of the factory. Those pioneers who survived and thrived at guitar making did it in a thoroughly businesslike way through establishment of production facilities, organized advertising campaigns, systematic catalog sales, targeting of the greater instrument-teaching community, widespread marketing of a multiplicity of features/options/designs [exactly like we sell cars today], large-scale subcontracting of assembly operations, importing and, finally, hard-working distribution, sales and shipping networks. There were scores of small and independent makers in and near the big cities all throughout the 1800s and later, to be sure, but they were serving a mass market of enormous size, and their individual identities became entirely subordinated to it 2. In consequence, the small-scale American makers — whether they made a product under someone else’s brand name or their own — are all forgotten. The single exception to this is the Larson brothers (see below), who, from the 1890s to the 1930s, made pioneering contributions and significant innovations to steel string instrument-making. Yet, even their work was largely lost to memory and would now be forgotten had it not been rediscovered in the folk music culture of the 1960s. The steel string guitar has never been the Star in the same sense that the classical guitar has been the Prima Donna in much of the music played on it: it’s been far too populist and popular an instrument 3.

THE IMPACT OF METAL STRINGS

The overwhelming majority of guitars of the mid-to-late 1800s were gut-strung. Gut strings were expensive: a single one could cost as much as a working man’s weekly disposable income; therefore the guitar tended to be owned by middle class people who could afford to feed it.

But metallurgy and wire-making technology was making great strides in the early and mid 1800s, driven largely by the huge migration of settlers moving Westward; they needed wire for fencing with which to mark their homesteads, farms, ranches, and fields. Untold thousands of miles of wire for fencing were thus made . . . and in the process some of the wire was adapted to the needs of musical instruments. When metal strings became available they were quickly found to be one-fifth the price of gut strings, and longer lasting, and louder — which of course made them doubly appealing to a growing mass market.

However, the quest for louder guitars came up against the laws of physics and most of the first guitars strung with steel strings didn’t last long: they commonly developed bent necks, warped faces, pulled-off bridges, and suffered various other failures 4. Starting in the late 1800s, brothers Carl and August Larson made the first durable steel string flat-top guitars in response to these circumstances. The success of their designs were based in two things: first, excellent workmanship; and second, the intelligent application of engineering-sense to flat-top instrument making. In fact, their seminal contributions are recognized today largely because their instruments have survived — when most of their predecessors’ and contemporaries’ have not. This is yet more remarkable in light of the fact that the Larson brothers’ overall production was minuscule in quantity compared with factories that were turning out thousands of instruments yearly 5..

At about the same time as the Larson brothers were inventing the durable flat-top steel string guitar, Orville Gibson was solving the same structural problems by making his steel-strung guitars arch-topped; while that design/technique is the subject of a separate article, it should be pointed out that here also, as far as the emergence of any individual American craftsmen whose names might be associated with improvements in the steel string guitar is concerned, only that of one other — Lloyd Loar — has come down to us.

Once the Larsons and Orville Gibson had created durable versions of the steel string guitar, it participated in all the musical fads and ferment that came and went in the late 1800s; but it didn’t become an instrument made in large numbers or with a principal identity of its own until the 1920s — surprisingly late in its history. There simply wasn’t sufficient critical mass of interest in its sound until then, and the factories had not seen it as a moneymaker. Gibson made the first factory-made steel string guitar produced in quantity — the archtop jazz L5 — in 1922. Martin & Co. switched to making mostly flat-top steel string guitars only in 1929, after almost a hundred years of having made everything else. And the rest, as they say, is history.

COMING INTO ITS OWN

While the flat-top steel string guitar became accepted into the popular musical mainstream in the 1930s, it only began to be taken as a serious instrument in the 1950s. Before then the steel string guitar was, musically — at least in white society — something fairly tame and sedate; it had found its place mostly as a parlor instrument or as a rhythm, accompanying or orchestral instrument and, as mentioned above, as an instrument of broad and frequently informal social entertainment. With the exception of the archtop guitar’s extensive use in jazz by prominent players such as Django Reinhardt, there was no solo guitar to speak of until the 1950s. There wasn’t even any serious or challenging body of music for the steel string guitar until recently and, outside of jazz and blues, most songs played or accompanied were folk melodies, simple ditties, classical transcriptions, fiddle tunes adapted to the guitar, or orchestral arrangements.

The folk music culture of the nineteen sixties brought into mainstream consciousness the Mississippi Delta blues stylists and singers who would otherwise now be forgotten but who have influenced a new generation of blues players and singers. Individuals like Hank Snow and Merle Travis pioneered the playing of actual melodies on the guitar. Doc Watson, within our lifetime, became the first serious steel string guitarist the world knew, and remained the only one for about ten years. He was eventually joined by players like Clarence White and Dan Crary, who became seminal influences in opening up the musical possibilities of flatpicked steel string guitar — and John Fahey and Leo Kottke, who are the initiators of the continually growing fingerpicking idiom which now includes players such as Alex de Grassi, Chris Proctor, Peppino D’Agostino, Duck Baker, Stefan Grossman, Peter Finger, Ed Gerhard, Tim Sparks, Martin Simpson, Pat Donohue, Doyle Dykes, Michael Hedges, Jacques Stotzem, Pierre Bensusan, John Renbourn, Lawrence Juber, Shun Komatsubara, and many, many others. This music is enriched by its receptivity to and inclusion of elements of folk, ethnic, ragtime, Celtic-Irish, jazz, blues, Latin, Caribbean, African, and classical music — and those instrumentalists such as Dale Miller and Steve Hancoff who are transcribing from such influences for the guitar must also be acknowledged. Then, one mustn’t forget to include mention of the re-popularization of Hawaiian slack-key music through the efforts of musicians such as Keola Beamer. Finally, no list is complete without mentioning Chet Atkins, whose influence and work with the guitar is impossible to overstate and requires a book all its own. obtainable. The list of individuals who have been prominent in the various types of its played music is long and includes prominent players of bluegrass, blues, folk, country, jazz, fingerpicking, ethnic, balladeering, fusion, new age, and just about every other idiom. Nonetheless it is most important to note, with regard to the history of the modern steel string guitar, that it is so new that many of the very important people in its musical development are still alive, and their music freely obtainable 6.

If the Spanish guitar was established as a serious instrument within the timeline starting with Torres and ending with Segovia, then one could equally maintain that this — now — is the golden age of the steel string guitar. Within the past fifty years it has gone from being a mostly unknown backwater to the point that it has worked itself into all music, especially ethnic music, worldwide — and is now being used to play music that is serious, complex and challenging.

In the second installment of this article we’ll continue to examine the cultural and economic forces that gave birth to the steel string guitar, although from not so Macro a point of view. We’ll also examine the main structural/tonal element that is the signature difference between the steel string guitar and its Spanish sibling — namely, the “X” brace — and how it came into being.

1. Actually, people in those days threw themselves into musical fads with an energy and on a scale that is hard for modern folks to appreciate: the mandolin craze dominated popular music for about ten years — during which guitar music took a back seat; jazz became its own craze — but not initially for mainstream white people; banjo music was extraordinarily popular for some years, during which sales of other instruments leveled off. Steel strings themselves got a major boost in 1915, when bands playing at the San Francisco Pan-Pacific Exposition ignited a serious craze for the whiny steel-string sound of Hawaiian music which had, until then, been middlingly in vogue. Hawaiian music became the style of the day and pianists, guitarists, mandolinists, etc. fell in love with and played endless Hawaiian rhythms and melodies; in fact, so huge was this new interest that for several years after the Exposition companies such as Martin were making and selling more Hawaiian guitars and ukuleles than anything else. But somehow, through all these musical fads, influences and cycles, the guitar seems to have had greater staying power than its companions the mandolin, banjo, and the ukulele.

2. Consider, also, that there were no prominent solo guitarists such as the Spanish guitar makers had already begun to make individual and personal instruments for — and would continue to make them without competition, until steel string guitar players first began to become soloists in the 1950s.

The earliest Spanish guitarists were stars such as Sor, Pujol, Tarrega, Llobet, etc., whose names we remember today. But even before these came to the fore, the Cremonese (and other) European violin makers had since the 1600s been making instruments for the likes of Sarasate, Paganini, and countless other prominent individual, court and concert violinists, etc.

By way of contrast, the earliest Heroes of the Guitar that American culture produced were the Depression-era folk singers like Woody Guthrie and the singing-cowboy heroes that were simultaneously manufactured in large numbers by 1930s Hollywood.

3. This is quite literally true. Musical culture in which individual personalities became societally prominent had its genesis in the courts and wealthy patrons of European capitals. This became fully as true for performers and for composers as for instrument makers. Socio-economically, this has always been a package-deal kind of thing.

4. Mandolins, etc, could hold up because they had shorter necks and their faces were arched to hold the bridge tensions. But guitars had no such protection: their faces were bigger but flat, their necks were long and unreinforced, and their bridges were small with inadequate gluing surfaces. Consequently, the necks warped, the bridges pulled off and the faces caved in. Furthermore, the same guitars would often be marketed with both metal and gut strings, without any structural provision being made for the increased tension other than a retrofit tailpiece.

Or, people would put the cheaper metal strings on whatever guitar they had simply because they were affordable. A steel string guitar’s high “e” cost about ten cents; a gut one about fifty cents: that was a week’s disposable money for a lot of people. And if one wanted to pick their music in vigorous Nick Lucas style rather than to pluck in the gentler, more romantic parlor-balladeering style, then one could fray one’s way through a whole set of expensive gut strings in a single evening.

5. Today there’s an appeal to the small-scale business or operator. But in the early days of rapid American economic expansion, when large immigrant populations struggled to establish themselves in the ferment of its commercial culture and plunged into business possibilities which all seemed wide open, “big” was admired and “small” was not. It’s sometimes difficult to evaluate just how large a factory or the scale of operation might actually have been, because businessmen learned quickly to aim high and to exaggerate in order to project success. Photographs of otherwise modest production facilities were sometimes doctored to make them look like sizeable industrial complexes; in musical instrument production figures were inflated, sometimes by the direct method and sometimes by including imported instruments as well as made ones, etc. The Washburn Company — which was in reality a very large complex of subcontractors, factories and importers — in 1900 alone claimed production of 100,000 instruments. If this is accurate, then it very likely included instruments imported from Europe. But it is a nice, big, round number which is remembered more than a hundred years after the fact.

6. My thanks to Dan Crary and Muriel Anderson for these perspectives.

Why Are There Differently Constructed Classical Guitars?

by Ervin Somogyi

I was recently asked the following question about classical guitars:

How is it that some of these guitars are very solidly made (they feel like they have a lot of wood in them, and their tap tones suggest a sturdy construction), while other guitars are quite evidently more lightly constructed and give off much more open tap tones? I know that some of these will have five fan braces, and some have seven, and some have nine, and so on . . . but outside of that shouldn’t these guitars all more or less be the same, as far as the basic structure of the soundbox goes?

This is not a bad question: having a multiplicity of fundamental constructions is confusing.

I have several answers. The first one is that the question itself comes out of an idea that “the classical guitar” is one kind of thing and one kind of thing only . . . more or less like the suggestion that “chocolate cake” is one thing only. There are in fact many recipes for, and versions of, a good chocolate cake, just as there are for classical guitars; the fact that one maker (or cook) is well known for producing one version of this or that does not mean that others cannot make perfectly good versions of their own.

People seem to have the idea that classical guitar music is . . . well . . . always pretty much the same classical guitar music. Well, no; let me offer a perspective on flamenco music by way of illustration of how every music changes. There is now “authentic” flamenco and “modern” flamenco, and “flamenco jazz”, and “fusion” flamenco, etc. But even in earlier and simpler days, when there was only “authentic” flamenco (that was more simply structured than the zippy and jazzed up modern versions, in which playing techniques were rudimentary, and in which the spellbinding riffs and fingerings that are taught today didn’t exist), it was not the monolithic thing that such a label suggests. For one thing, one couldn’t really make a living at it; most of the players had day jobs and they couldn’t practice eight hours a day. And they consequently stayed put wherever they lived and worked. And for that compelling reason, even at its earliest and simplest, flamenco was considerably varied in its local musical sensibility, emphasis, and detail. There was Jerez-flavored flamenco, Sevilla-flavored flamenco, Moron-flavored flamenco, Cordoba-flavored flamenco, Huelva-flavored flamenco, Malaga-flavored flamenco, Cadiz-flavored flamenco, etc., as well as the more rudimentary flamenco played in the smaller towns and villages. Remember: this was at a time when one’s life was town, family, and neighborhood based; electricity and entertainments that you didn’t produce for yourself were scarce, and travel and communication outside most communities were limited. Those who did travel and were more widely familiar with the music could distinguish one “version” from another. Finally, those performers who toured, and/or were more talented, and/or were in the right place at the right time, and who consequently became better known to the public, became de facto representatives of “real” flamenco. In reality, however, regardless of whether it was well known, or slightly known, or obscure, it was actually all perfectly good flamenco.

One could undoubtedly say the same things about jazz as one also could about chocolate cake, onion soup, and classical guitars. There is no way for any of these to have ever been of one type only. As far as consistency of form goes, consider that the only music that is known to always be homogeneous and consistent, from place to place and time to time, is army marching band music; and we all know how wonderful that is.

Getting back to the classical guitar: it is a creature of its time, just like anything else is, and one can gain a better understanding of it by paying attention to the relationship between this instrument, the music of its time, and the musical uses and repertoire that it has been expected to direct itself to. The modern guitar itself was first invented as an accompanying instrument for the human voice. As such, its sonorities, volume, and registers worked best when they were well adapted that most elemental of musical instruments, the human voice. For this reason the first Spanish guitar was (mostly) the folk guitar: the instrument used by ordinary people who sang everyday songs at weekend events, and which eventually evolved into the modern flamenco guitar as the accompanying instrument of choice for that music.

Of course, the same Spanish guitar* was soon put to use in “serious” musical performances that showed off the musical voice of the guitar itself. For such musical entertainments the best guitars were those with the greatest tone coloration and dynamic range (rather than any primary quality of just being bright and loud enough to be heard alongside and above the singing). And of course guitars would have been built with these “more serious” tonal qualities in mind.

[* NOTE: this was before the musical musical categories of flamenco, folk, or classical existed. Spanish guitar makers themselves, as late as the 1950s, didn’t make a distinction between “classical” or “flamenco” guitars. They made “guitars” at different price levels, using more or less expensive woods and features, etc. But the uses these instruments were put to were the owner’s affair. It should surprise no one that the middle class customers, who liked more formal music, could afford the more expensive rosewood instruments. After a critical mass was reached these dark wood guitars became associated with “serious” music, and came to be regarded as the “classical” guitar. The everyday folk, who were going to use their guitars to entertain themselves with, bought the cheaper guitars made with the local and light-colored Spanish cypress: these eventually became the flamenco guitar, by default. But even as late as the 1950s, a hundred years after the modern guitar’s size and shape were formalized, Spanish luthiers made only “white” and “black” guitars (guitarras blancas y negras), referring to the respective colors of the most common woods of choice for the backs and sides and not the musical use to which the guitar was going to be put.]

Once guitars with “more serious” tonal qualities appeared, and the Western musical repertoire became further enriched, there came further forks in the road for the guitar to negotiate. The music of the Romantic period needed to have a “romantic” voice that was rich in overtones, warmth, and nuance. Music of the Baroque repertoire is more lush and requires rich sustain and musical coloration. Music of the classical repertoire requires good separation of tone, evenness of response on all strings as well as all the way up and down the fingerboard, and also brilliant trebles. Players of the more modern atonal repertoire are happiest with guitars that have sharpness/crispness of tone, less sustain, fewer overtones, and better definition of notes. Now, the modern guitar was invented after some of these musical periods, so it could not have participated directly in those musics in their time: other musical instruments would have been in use. But, in due time, these qualities of tone were increasingly in evidence as the guitar emerged as a solo instrument and was adapted to play transcriptions of music with these varied and particular sensibilities.

On a more contemporary timeline, concert performers require projection, even if it obtainable at the cost of musical beauty; they need to be heard in the back row. For such uses, one needs a “far field” guitar — such as the Smallman lattice-braced guitars and the Dammann and Wagner double-top guitars. In these instruments and others like them, the quest for sheer volume at the expense of other qualities has come center-stage.

On the other hand chamber performers require much less projection and instead need guitars with close-up tonal warmth, interest, and complexity; the back row isn’t all that far away. For such uses one needs a “near field” guitar. Neither “far field” or “near field” guitars are better; they are simply different. One can get a sense of their musical personalities by simply listening to the quality of the notes one hears in guitar recordings; the notes played by contemporary players will have a spare sound compared to the lush warmth heard in Segovia’s older recordings.

For the player as well as the maker, today’s guitar is rather like standing in a buffet line: you can have some of this and some of that, but you can’t have some of everything. At least, not in one guitar. On the other hand you can go through the buffet line again and have more than one guitar. That’s perfectly o.k.

THE DUMPSTER DRUM

I receive email from all over, on many topics. I received one from a friend (who is an amateur luthier and repairman) that was completely charming, and that made a point about how guitars function. I thought it would be fun to include it as I received it, without changes or editing:

Dear Erv,

I had a wonderful a-hah! moment, and it startled me greatly. I was so enthralled at the time, I didn’t think to take pictures, so I hope my words will be enough to convince you, or, at least give you enough clues to make up your own mind.

We went with friends to the new strip-mall built outside of town. I went scavenging around the back, being that kind of dude that is always looking for treasures left behind, like some cargo-cult islander, a stranger in a strange land. Near the little tin hut that houses cardboard, later to be crushed and bundled was a strange box, so I opened it to look. Inside was something I had never seen before: a plastic brown disposable keg, made like a big coke bottle, but much larger, about 4-5 gallons, with a heavy-duty cap & a siphon to the bottom. In volume, it was about the same as a dreadnaught acoustic. It had a very thin skin, but the cap was industrial.

Of course I didn’t know anything about it, & was frustrated like a chimp because I could not unscrew the cap. I knew that if I took it back to my wife & the friends that were eating & schmoozing, they would not want me to keep it.

I started to finger-drum it like a drum. It had the most amazing acoustic response. I just could not believe my ears & hands because it literally bounced with my fingers & made the loudest sound I ever got from any plastic bottle of any size. It was a wonderful drum. Because it was so wonderful I was determined to keep this strong drum.

So, I had my pocketknife, & I began to dis-assemble the cap guards so that it would be able to be all mine, minus the siphon. As I began to cut the locks on the cap, a tremendous amount of CO2 gas began leaking — not for just a few seconds, but for a long long time. This plastic bottle was under such great pressure, I got surprised. I had to cut about 9 plastic safety locks, & even though I had done 2/3 of them, & the cap got looser, more gas kept on coming out.

It was under a lot of pressure, & that kept the skin of the plastic alive & responsive. As soon as all the gas came out, & I removed the siphon, it was all as loose as a… as an old man’s scrotum after 3 hours in a steam room. In polite terms, as loose as a big balloon that had once been tight, but had all the helium taken out… or even air, if you will. At that moment, I was sad that I had lost my drum, but happy to just discard the now flaccid jug in the garbage, where it now belonged.

Which led me to fantasize that perhaps, in an analogous way, the braced system of a guitar gives the skin a similar “personality” —as if it were (in its own way) “pressurized.” Perhaps there is a better word, but for an example of the difference between responsive & non-responsive, I could not imagine better.

Thinking of You. Enjoying your books, of course. Someday I will do things. Progress is my most important product, elusive as it may be.

Your garbage-bandit friend,

Alan

Alan is right about pressure, tightness, and tympanicity (tympanic means being bell-like and/or resonant, particularly as a capacity of a stretched membrane). I’d interpret the “personality of the skin” thing a bit differently, though. A guitar, like the dumpster-drum he describes, functions in the most lively way when the “skin” is taut and tight. Ideally, the skin is pushed to the breaking point. That brings us to the traditional Spanish-guitar making adage that the best guitars are built “on the cusp of disaster” (i.e., just strong enough to hold together).

Alan is essentially describing a guitar with a thin top that is held taut by the pull of the strings; that’s what gives the skin its tympanicity – i.e., its resonance or capacity for resonance. The braces are there to keep the thing from falling apart or exploding, and to give an organized shape to its vibrating actions. Once the tightness is gone, so is the tympanicity.

Overbuilt guitars don’t have tight tops. They have overstrong and overstiff tops that easily resist the pull of the strings. The top isn’t… uh… pulled tight and struggling. In fact, it’s the other way around: the top is unyielding and the strings are struggling to move it.

STEEL STRING GUITAR BASICS

Almost everybody knows that a steel string guitar has metal strings, as opposed to classical guitars, which are strung with nylon. But many people don’t know anything else about the steel string guitar’s construction, its parts, its materials, or its origins — other than that they know and associate the name Martin with such guitars. This is intended to be a beginner’s level introduction to this versatile and interesting stringed instrument.

Why are there six strings?

Seventeenth and eighteenth century guitars had five strings, or sometimes five pairs of strings. These were used to play music which was fairly simple in structure in that much of it comprised of single note melody runs and chords made up of only a few notes. These instruments all replaced earlier, four-string ones which played even simpler monophonic music.

In due time it was found that the addition of a sixth, lower, string made the guitar a much more satisfyingly expressive instrument. It could then play a wider and more complex range of music, and also, by virtue of the addition to the bass register, the music sounded richer. Today, with the exception of a few guitars which have eight or ten strings and are used to play extended-range music, all guitars have six (or six pairs of) strings. It is, in fact, the arrangement that works best to express almost all music, as humans like it, today: if the guitar had fewer or more strings it would be limited in that it would not express some music very well, or it would become a specialist toward expressing some other kinds of music very well indeed. Six is, in effect, the most workable compromise yet found for guitars.

Lutes, interestingly, had a very similar history. The first lutes had six courses (five doubles and a single high string), or eleven strings. As lute music and technique changed, and as audiences grew larger and created a need for louder and louder lutes, luthiers kept on enlarging the beast until in the Baroque era — in which both music and decorative art were over the top in lushness and complexity — the lute had twenty-eight strings. No single one of these models of the lute ever dominated, by the way; they just kept on growing until they couldn’t grow any more. Today, lovers of early music have generally preferred the eight-course lute (seven doubles and one single) . . . as the best compromise instrument that allows them to play both the simpler early music and also the more lush Baroque repertoire. In exactly the same way — except for the fact that it is dominant — the six string guitar is a compromise that has defined what the guitar ought to be.

Were there always metal string guitars?

No. The technology for making metal strings developed late. The first guitars were strung with gut, as had been violins and early bowed and plucked instruments. The early gut was problematic: it was usually uneven, and it didn’t last very long. The ability to produce thin, strong and evenly thicknessed gut strings was made possible by adapting rope-making technology — the twisting together of a few thin strands of material into something even and strong — which had been used ever since there were sailing ships for which to make ropes.

This technology itself got a mighty boost when European nations from the fifteenth century onwards found themselves competing in the building of navies and oceangoing vessels of commerce, conquest and exploration. There was a rather sudden demand for large quantities of strong, reliable, and durable rope; and so braided rope came into being. This technology was adapted, in due time, to the smaller-scale ‘ropes’ of musical instrument string making. The first instruments that we would recognize as the modern guitar had six strings that were made of gut that was twisted and braided together just as rope was. This early (gut-strung) Spanish guitar eventually led to the birth of the steel string guitar.

Parenthetically, the ropes and rigging on large ships allowed the sailors to climb high up and do the balancing acts and high-wire maneuvering necessary to work the sails. This was delicate work, and one needed the agility of a cat up there. These ropes came to be called ‘catlines’ (pronounced ‘catlins’) — the root of which later gave us catwalk, a maneuverable path high up off the ground in theatres and other large buildings). Later, as musical instrument’s strings were produced in the same way as ‘catlines’ were — although on a smaller scale — these came to be called ‘catgut’ in spite of the fact that they were in reality made from strips of sheep’s intestines instead of fiber, cotton, or hemp.

How did the steel string guitar originate?

The steel string guitar, as we know it, developed within a few decades of the Spanish guitar. It did not come out of any of the European guitarmaking centers of Spain, Germany, France or Italy, but rather developed in the United States. It did so in response to the growing musical needs of a rapidly expanding and mobile population, and a steadily increasing popular culture. This growth was key, because it created a huge demand. And it coincided with the time when technology made possible, for the fist time, the availability of plentiful and cheap wire strings instead of the tempermental and expensive gut ones.

Wiremaking technology was itself a late development of the industrial revolution. It occurred hand in hand with the astonishingly fast conquest and subdivision of the American landmass by hordes of settlers who needed wire fencing to mark the boundaries of their land and keep their cattle from wandering off into their neighbors’. Thus, wire was produced in huge quantities. And as wire for fences was produced, so could wire strings be made cheaply for guitars. Wire strings had been made previously, but before the industrial revolution these were laborious to produce. But now, as I said, there was an exponentially growing market for musical instruments within a migrating and expanding population.

Those early metal-string guitars were made quickly, cheaply and in large quantities in the factories and production shops of the day. It was an advantage that one could learn to strum on a guitar more easily than learning to play a violin or a piano; it made chord harmonies that were pleasant to listen to; and it could accompany singing, which made it a social instrument. Moreover, metal strings would last a long time — whether you stayed put or moved around, and in all weathers. Gut strings, which had been the only choice until then, were expensive (a single string could cost a week’s disposable income for the average workingman!), were affected by weather so as to change their tuning, and frayed and wore out easily. With the advent of metal strings, the guitar became an accessible, affordable, and popular folk instrument that didn’t need to be re-tuned every time you picked it up. I should add that guitars had all been made exactly the same way up until then, and were geared to the (lesser) pull of nylon strings; the first of these guitars to have metal strings put on them didn’t last. But that problem was quickly overcome by making guitars meant for steel strings sturdier.

Nylon guitar strings were developed in the 1940s as an outgrowth of the search for uses for a new kind of stretchy fluorocarbon polymer substance that had been discovered by accident in the DuPont laboratories in 1930. Some practical uses turned out to be in nylon stockings (silk ran too easily) and nylon monofilament for fishing lines. In fact, the first musicians to put nylon monofilament on their guitars — in lieu of gut strings — were the fishermen-musicians of the Spanish Mediterranean seaports. Incidentally, as Southern Spain is the cradle of flamenco those fishermen would have been playing flamenco when they partied; thus we are all indebted to the flamenco community for helping to discover that nylon could do for the classical and flamenco guitars what metal strings did for the steel string folk guitar. Albert Augustine, in collaboration with Andres Segovia, manufactured the first successful nylon guitar strings in 1948 — thus allowing the classical guitar to be played and enjoyed by millions of people.

What is the importance of the Martin brand?

One of the first of the steel string guitar makers to establish themselves in the United States was a transplanted German woodworker, C.F. Martin, whose great-grandson now presides over the Martin factories. While there have been many steel string guitarmakers and many steel string guitars, it has been the Martin brand more than any other — and especially the Martin dreadnought guitar — which really put steel strings on the map, just as as Henry Ford put the early automobile on the map. The Martin dreadnought is the most common, popular and familiar steel string guitar on the planet today. Everyone recognizes it. Everyone copies it. Historically, it has been the example and model for modern steel string guitars in general, and the Martin guitar in particular has been the standard against which other steel string guitars have been judged.

Besides the strings, what is the difference between a Martin and a Spanish guitar?

The difference in stringing is obvious, but this is only a superficial difference. The most meaningful differences are internal and structural, and have to do with the fact that the steel string guitar must be built to withstand relatively great string tension, compared to the nylon or gut strung guitar. Being built differently, they produce tone differently. And being driven by metallic and polymer strings, respectively, they also will produce different tones and tonalities. From an engineering standpoint, these are different instruments that share the same name. The principal elements unique to the steel string guitar are its smaller neck size, shorter strings, the X-bracing under the face, and the design of the bridge.

How are steel string guitar necks different from Spanish guitar necks?

There are three main differences. First, given the constant pull from metal strings, a reinforcing element is needed to protect an otherwise relatively thin and flimsy neck from warping or bowing. Formerly, non-adjustable hardwood or metal rods were commonly used. Today, virtually all steel string guitars have adjustable tensioning rods with access ports either behind the nut or through the soundhole. Spanish guitar necks are under much less of a load and have not needed reinforcing rods.

The second difference is in the shape of the neck, which serves a particular playing style. Spanish guitars were developed primarily for that style of playing in which the thumb is anchored behind the neck, allowing the wrist to bend and extend the fingers of the left hand over the fretboard while the fingers of the right hand pluck the strings. Accordingly, this neck is wide and the back of it is a somewhat flattened, gentle curve. The steel string guitar was developed originally for a playing style in which the thumb of the left hand wraps itself around the neck and the right hand plays the strings with a plectrum. Therefore, the steel string guitar neck is narrow with closer string spacing. It also has a somewhat Vee-shaped cross-section with a softly rounded peak in the back. This feature optimizes the ability of the player to wrap his hand around the neck, and its “v” shape fits into the valley between the thumb and the other fingers. It’s quite an efficient design.

The third thing is that steel string guitar fingerboards are crowned or curved, whereas Spanish guitar fingerboards are usually flat. There are several reasons for this. First, it’s easier for a left hand to bar over the stiffer metal strings on a slightly curved surface. Second, a slightly arched plane of strings (as the violin’s strings are arched over the fingerboard) makes it slightly easier for a player to play the strings with a plectrum.

Why is the steel string guitar bridge different from the Spanish?

Spanish guitar bridges are designed so the strings can tie onto them directly. This design works well within the holding power of the glue joint that attaches the bridge onto the guitar face. With the advent of metal strings, however, it was found that the forces acting on the bridge were so great that such bridges could, in time, become unglued. A better solution was to anchor the strings to the underside of the face itself, and bypassing the possibility of glue failure at the bridge. Thus, in steel string guitars, the strings pass through the bridge into the guitar’s body cavity.

There’s an equally important second difference in that the Spanish guitar saddle — the bone (or plastic) piece in the bridge on which the strings rest — is perpendicular to the strings, while the steel string saddle is at an angle. This is necessary because the mass and stiffness of metal strings affects their vibrational activity and creates out-of-tuneness. The rate of change in these factors increases with the diameter of the strings: with equal-length strings the out-of-tuneness would increase with the diameter of the string. Accordingly the heavier, stiffer strings are compensated for this function by being made longer, and the slanted saddle is called a compensated saddle.

How is bracing important?

All guitars have internal bracing, whose acoustic functions far outweigh its structural ones in that the manner of bracing shapes the possibilities for sound. Spanish and steel string guitars have different, characteristic bracing because they need to accomplish different tonal tasks.

The Spanish guitar, being subject to the lesser pull of nylon strings, has been found to function very well with thin braces which run parallel or almost parallel to the grain of the top wood. Steel string guitars are under significantly more driving load and consequently need more substantial bracing bars to withstand the resultant pull and torque. It’s these deformational pressures which have brought about the use of the “X” brace, which is the standard internal support for steel string guitar faces. An important function of the “X” brace is to support the part of the guitar face in front of the bridge from sagging downwards, as it would otherwise do.

Why not use one kind of bracing on all guitars, but sized to the structural pull of the string tensions, and the music to be played?

The fan-braced guitar is a European invention and the “X” braced guitar is an American one; they were invented virtually simultaneously and very likely independently on one another. The first “X” braced guitars were of course made with and for gut strings, as were the Spanish ones; but both of these were descended from earlier versions of guitars that had ladder (three or four parallel braces that went across the grain) bracing.

Consider the fact that the modern Spanish guitar was first made in Seville, and the first modern American guitars were made in New York.

The Spanish guitar makers made guitars within a climate that was reasonably consistent. The American guitar was born in the large Eastern population centers, and then traveled West into all climates, humidities, and altitudes. The seasons on the Eastern seabord are notoriously extreme . . . and guitars are made of wood, which reacts to weather. It was discovered that guitars could survive the seasonal expansion and shrinkage of their materials (in those environments) better if their braces went across the grain and locked its fibers into place against movement. The “X” brace accomplished exactly that; fan braces didn’t really need that kind of protection.

Why are there so many sizes and shapes of steel string guitars to choose from, while classic guitars are all very nearly the same size and shape?

The answer has to do with the culture of the guitar and its music. The classical guitar is considered almost perfect by its adherents, and significant innovations are not encouraged. Builders are largely of a mindset to refine the established design elements, but not to alter them. The steel string guitar world, however, is not bound by such thinking and is consequently free to invent new versions and features as long as someone will buy them. Much of this impetus comes from the commercial industry’s need to constantly develop new products — much as the automobile industry has the same need. In both, consequently, models are sometimes released which are actually worse than previous ones. If a famous classic guitar maker were to ever develop a new model of guitar which sounded worse but was instead marketed for some saleable and innovative feature of design, his professional reputation would take decades to recover. But in the world of the steel string guitar, especially on the factory level, no one thinks twice about such excursions into commercialism.

Another and more interesting reason is that steel string guitar music and its playing techniques are changing. Change creates new needs, and these call forth new design efforts. In the classical guitar world these factors are moving ahead comparatively slowly as technique, repertoire, and acceptability of design are comparatively frozen. Moreover, one of the principal changes affecting the steel string guitar is that whereas it has for most of its existence been principally an accompanying and backup instrument (for voice and/or other instruments), it has strongly grown into a new identity within the past forty years as a solo instrument. In 1950 there were no steel string guitar soloists, interpreters, arrangers or composers; today there are many, and some of them are astonishingly good. As musicians have begun to explore and discover new tonal, dynamic and compositional possibilities, the steel string guitar has for the first time experienced demands on it whereby it is expected to function at higher levels of responsiveness to technique, liveness, expressiveness in tonal coloration, texture and subtlety, dynamic range in volume as well as sound quality, evenness, projection, sustain, playability, fidelity of intonation all the way up and down the neck, and, finally, ease of amplification and recordability. And this instrument is expected to do these things on sound stages, in recording studios, concert halls, auditoriums and in small rooms, as well as outdoors. This is a very exciting time for the steel string guitar and no one is aware of any reason to think these factors will not continue to grow for decades to come.

Thoughts About Creativity, Technical Work, and the Brain – [2/2]

Speaking of the internal cues that signal “it’s all right; it’s done and you can stop now”, I am reminded once again to Donald Trump. He has a big mouth and constantly demonstrates that he lacks any sense of propriety or boundaries – even a sense that things might be precariously out of balance and dangerous. And he cannot stop himself; not now… or ever. He’s missing any sense of “it’s done; you can stop now” — which is, in everyday life, a person’s ordinary and necessary sense of closure and satisfaction in things large and small. Trump doesn’t have that self-regulating function.

Living life like that, carrying a nameless discomfort around day and night, year after year, without it ever reaching orgasm (release or closure), must be a living hell. It does go a long way toward explaining Trump’s chronic insomnia. And maybe his compulsive licentiousness. He lacks the capacity to feel satisfied, even with his own prior decisions— although they are decisions in only the most primitive and unreliable sense of that word. Clearly, when one gives such people power they become dangerous. And one wonders why that person’s supporters have allowed that to happen, and for what reasons.

On the other side of the divide, people who are technicians (as opposed to those who rely heavily on internal cues) use precisely those left-brain tools: they stop when they have met the explicit requirements of their job assignment or task. Are they “right” or “wrong” to do this? Neither. They’re just following a different brain-map and a more or less mechanical set of “assembly instructions”. If we were looking at two guitar makers operating out of these different mindsets then we could say that one would essentially be making a sculpture and would stop “when it was done”, while the other would be using the Numbered Instructions Model, and would stop when the instructions ended. If these individuals were painters then one would essentially be painting from a live model and the other would be painting by numbers — much like Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara had been doing when he was managing the Viet-Nam war; he’d been head of General Motors before then and his idea of running the war was to run it exactly like he’d run General Motors.

In the half-brain version of the previously given example of Engaging With An Enemy, the resolutions to such a task are unsatisfactory indeed. If you needed to engage with the enemy and had only a calculating brain, you’d very probably make up your mind that only one result was acceptable and go for it without flexibility, re-evaluation, or room for new input. Ecce Robert MacNamara – as well as General William Westmoreland and, later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. If you had a Trumplike brain you would be announcing a new goal for the challenge every week and the troops in the field would be spinning their wheels until at the next election. The ineptness shown in these examples is breathtaking.

If these are silly examples they are also tragic ones, but they go to something that is equally basic to a certain kind of guitar making. For instance, my students have had a few breakthrough experiences in exploring this in their own guitar work. They’d ask me for an opinion of a bridge or rosette that they’d made… and perhaps be surprised that I was sort of lukewarm in my reception of it. We’d then sit down and discuss what I was seeing vs. what they were seeing — and what that was all about.

Those sessions never fail to be interesting: these individuals will have never yet been asked to sit down and simply look at something— and I do mean simply look at the thing, and think about it exactly as it is in the moment in and of and by itself, and how its various parts fit together, and how it fits into its own greater context, and certainly without anyone telling them what they should think about it.

They may have read books on how-to, or heard lectures about aesthetics, history of design, or concern with market value or the luthier who made a particular guitar, or had been made aware of other people’s pre-judgments and aesthetics (and unconsciously making these individuals into points of reference for how they should think about their own work)… but they had never been asked to think for themselves and have a sense of what they themselves really thought. I ask that one just look at something and get a sense of what it really is, and what one likes about it or dislikes about it, as it is at that moment… without me suggesting to them what they should think… and then talk to me about it.

About the political thing: it is clear to me that in that realm, too, people have never been allowed nor encouraged… to… uh… simply… think… for… themselves. But that is a great way to get in touch with a sense of whether “it’s done, I can relax now” or not.

Anyway, who knew that guitar making and politics were so intimately connected?

Thoughts About Creativity, Technical Work, and the Brain – [1/2]

I’ve been writing about the creative process, which is a significant part of my own work. Although I don’t have formal certification or credentials in this area, I consider myself to be knowledgeable in matters of creativity and the workings of the human brain; I may not be an “expert” but I am certainly a well informed amateur. Part of my education in these matters is that I notice things in the world around me; and I do a lot of writing. Writing helps me to sort out the things I’ve noticed and make sense of them. It helps me to discover things I didn’t know that I knew, or connections that were there to be made but that I hadn’t made yet. I think you might enjoy some of my mental meanderings as regards creativity.

We can start with the fact that I am a guitar maker. And, as a guitar maker, I want my instruments to “look right”.

“Well, of course,” one can say. “Who doesn’t? But what does that actually mean?” Well, it means one of two things. Either someone is completing a project whose parameters and details have been decided from the outset, or one is doing something personal and winging it on a creative impulse. In the first case the project is “done” when the recipe has been fulfilled; the thing “looks right” because that means the same thing as having followed the recipe. Alternately, when one is approaching a “creative” project in a mechanical way, and the project has to be delivered by a certain deadline, the place to stop is when the time allotted has expired; the project is done, by definition. In the second case there is no recipe or fixed deadline to rely on; the project is “completed” and the thing looks “right” when it “feels” right and one “knows” that nothing else remains to be done. Thus, the right look actually has two distinct meanings. To illustrate them one can imagine a project that entails engaging with an enemy. When the project is done in the army way it is completed when the enemy is dead. When the project is done in the creative or personal way, it may be completed when one has won the enemy over and befriended him, or negotiated a peace with him.

One interesting way to get a handle on these distinct aspects of “the right look” has been through studies of the brain – about which some interesting research has been done lately. Some of this research has focused on certain unfortunate individuals who had, for one medical reason or another, needed to have the entire right or left lobe of their brains surgically removed. This horrible circumstance presented a unique opportunity for studying such subjects after they returned to “normal post-surgical life”. Except that their lives were not “normal” any longer.

The Right half of the brain, the scientists have told us, is responsible for imagination, emotion, lateral thinking, creativity, intuitive connectivity, and capacity to appreciate beauty. The Left half is the critical mind: it carries out the functions of linear thinking, logic, assessment, planning, and calculation. And the surgical recoverees were observed to have new deficits in their mental lives that were, unsurprisingly, a direct function of which half of their brains they’d lost.

[EDITORIAL NOTE: the concept of strict division of right-brain/left-brain functions has taken some hits lately as the scientific community has published studies on the plasticity of the brain and how one half of it can learn to take over some of the functions of the other half. Still, if one really only has one half of a brain, I think we can be given a bit of slack in being categorical about how the brain works; if there is only one half a brain, there is no other half to share plasticity with. Also, even though having only half a brain is an extreme circumstance, it can be useful to push something to an extreme in order to make a point about, or to get insights into, that thing. Extreme doesn’t necessarily invalidate.]

Individuals who lost the emotional part of their brains were found to retain memory as well as verbal, computational, and mechanical skills. But they lost the ability to make personal on-the-spot decisions based in personal preference — such as we all make a thousand times a day without even stopping to think about it. Such people would be completely stymied, for example, in trying to figure out where to go for the weekend, or even which breakfast cereal they’d most enjoy eating — without making long lists of these choices’ various pros and cons. If Mr. Spock had lost his right brain just before the Klingons attacked the Enterprise then he’d have to make lists of every possible scenario involved in responding to the attack, and they would have taken over the Enterprise before he got halfway through with that list.

On the other hand, individuals who’d lost the left halves of their brains couldn’t plan their way out of a paper bag. They couldn’t hold thoughts together. Their lives were dominated by impulse. They’d lost the ability to engage in calculation and goal-oriented, systematic (first-this-then-that), exploratory (what if), critical (i.e., if-this-then-that type), or even ordinary sorting-this-out-from-that thinking. Most terribly, they had lost the capacity to feel personally invested in anything, in the moment – which has everything to do with getting the normal internal cues to any sense of “rightness” or “wrongness” of anything. These people became incapable of making assessments. Their “thinking” also lacked any sense of complexity, comparative significance, consequences, depth, flexibility, or carry-over. They really were stuck in the realm of impulse. And, needless to say, they were as incapable of meaningful personal attachments as they were unable to engage in disciplined behavior.

Ecce Donald Trump who, as I write this in 2017, gives every sign of being genuinely brain damaged in this way. He seems equally upset by being given a bad tweet by a nine-year-old as he is by a criticism from a head of state. He has no sense of proportion or carry-over; he doesn’t remember what he said last week; he spends time insisting that Mexico to pay for a wall instead of appointing the ambassadors, officials, and functionaries who would be making the government function. With Trump the dial is always set at the same number and the oven is always set at the same temperature regardless of what’s being baked. Please, re-read the previous paragraph.

An ability to sense the “rightness” or “wrongness” of things, just mentioned above, brings us to the doorstep of art and design — in which the dominant mindset is the striving to arrive at the internal cues that signal “it’s right and it’s done and I can stop now.” The striving can be endlessly modified by training and experience all life long; but the artist (or cook, athlete, gardener, fisherman, etc.) stops only when he knows it’s time to stop; short of that, he keeps on working, expressing, and seeking. There is otherwise no calculation, statistic, timer, rule book, syllabus, recipe, blueprint, or deadline to otherwise tell him that his task is complete. Those are all left-brain tools. The artist simply stops when he “knows” that it’s time to stop.

What I’ve Been Up To, September 2017

These “what I’ve been up to” letters each take me several days to write. I keep on adding and changing things, and deciding what to include and what not to mention. I don’t really know whether this kind of material is interesting to general readers, or T.M.I., or refreshingly candid, or embarrassingly personal. Well, I figure that people can simply stop reading if this stuff doesn’t float their boat. As for me, this is simply what is going on… and it is what it is. I’ve also sent these letters out to people I actually know, because I thought they’d be interested. But, as I said, if this is T.M.I. for any of you, then by all means go watch the televised national poker championships.

In any event, I’m doing fine after I got my pacemaker installed. I took three weeks off from work and I’m back at it and getting things done — although at a less-than-frenetic schedule. And I’m in a rather interesting mental space these days, pursuant to my cardiac… ah… adventures.

I mentioned in my first letter than I had realized, to my great surprise, that I might easily have died had the heart/fainting thing gone down in any slightly different way. I could have easily been driving, for instance, and killed myself and/or someone else. Or I could have cracked my head open when I fell. Or I could have been operating a power tool and done great injury. But I didn’t die. I did suddenly feel that I could see things more with fresh eyes, and regard as a gift every day and every thing I do, every meal I eat, and every conversation I have… including writing this letter to you.

That feeling is an awesome gift, the more so because this is the first time I’d ever experienced it. I still feel it a month later, if not quite so intensely.

Also, three new things have surfaced in the past few weeks that I want to tell you about. And… it’ll take another few pages to do so. I’m sorry if I’ll seem to be going on and on… but I can’t do this in a sound-byte.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The first new thing is that I seem to have lost my desire to eat compulsively. For the first time since I-don’t-know-when, I’m not stuffing my face. Somehow, I am losing weight without a diet, a regimen, a plan, or anything else that I can put my finger on. It’s just happening… and I’m feeling very comfortable with that. Popular thinking about compulsive eating is that it is emotionally rooted and that overeaters are in fact seeking comfort and safety that they otherwise don’t feel. I’m sure this is largely true. But, somehow, I seem to have not been feeling off-balance enough that I need to shovel in comfort food. I’ll have something more to say about this further on.

I remember that when I fainted last month I simply blacked out, with no warning. I just keeled over and, as I said, I didn’t break my head open. I woke up a minute later (they told me I was out for about a minute)… and then fell over again about ten minutes later. Ditto about the head cracking open. But something shifted in me in those episodes, and I am slowly finding that I’m now not quite the same person as the one that collapsed (even though that person and I would be superficially indistinguishable, as in in a police lineup or beauty contest).

One of the differences between the old me and the new me is that I have, for the first time, a pretty real sense that, well, yes, I was lucky in that I didn’t die… but… I will die. It has certainly made me pause.

I will die. I’m 73 years old and this circumstance is, as the saying goes, right in front of me. I’m not being morbid, by the way; I’m being candid. Do you know the feeling you had when you were in school and your teacher gave you a lesson that you learned by rote… or one of your friends told you something that you thought you understood… and then at some point it all clicked and you really understood it!? It’s like that with me. It’s as though I’ve woken up in a place where everything looks the same, but everything also looks different than it looked before. It feels weird, and it also feels completely natural.

Sorry if this is T.M.I. If it is, please stop reading and go do something else. Anyway, I repeat: I’m not being morbid. I’m calling it as I see it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Another thing that I’m aware of is that I have lost my impetus to work, work, work, work, and work as I’ve always done. It is at this point surprisingly effortless for me to slow down… or perhaps stop entirely… and just think. And maybe smell the flowers. I’ve ALWAYS worked six days a week and now, for the first time, I don’t want to work six days a week. I want to take time for myself. As I said, it’s just a bit new and strange. The oddest thing is that this brush with mortality hasn’t frightening me; it’s managed to make me feel appreciative and, well, liberated… in a way that I have not experience before.

Who knew about this kind of thing? And why wasn’t I informed sooner?

Well, I’m rambling. But I do think this all goes some distance in explaining my loss of interest in compulsive eating. I somehow don’t need to hide behind food. Or deaden myself with it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

There’s something else, too: I took three weeks off from work after I got back home from the hospital. Part of that had to do with the fact that I was sore from the incisions they made. And I was tired, a lot; it took my body some time to adjust to the pacemaker. I also was feeling lightheaded whenever I stood up (the medicos call this an orthostatic episode, when blood supply to the brain is momentarily reduced), and I was nervous about falling over again. That lightheadedness has mostly gone away and I feel that I can sit down and stand like I’ve always done. [NOTE: it helps to keep well hydrated.]

Most importantly, though, I used the time to reorganize my very cluttered room, which has long served as a combination storage room and office. I got rid of a lot of stuff (astonishingly easy once I got over my initial resistance!), made space, and converted the former office into a combination den and man-cave. I bought an EXPENSIVE easy chair that is VERY comfortable (I’ve never had anything like that before), got a flat-screen t.v., and cleaned the place up so that it has become something much more inviting than it ever was before. All of this was a high time a-comin’.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

One thing that has to be mentioned, I think as background to all this, is that for a long time I have felt tired. Even drained. I think I have been approaching burnout. I haven’t taken any time off for a long time, but/and I couldn’t back away sufficiently from my life to get this feeling in focus. It is coming into focus better now, though. I think my body and soul have really needed me to get off the merry-go-round and these events have conspired to get me to do that.

It’s not easy to explain, but, mainly, I have been feeling (to me) astonishingly calm in the aftermath of all this. I mean, nothing external has really changed in my life: I still have bills to pay; Berkeley/Oakland hasn’t changed; traffic certainly hasn’t changed; I haven’t gained 30 I.Q. points or gotten plastic surgery; I still have work and chores to do… but, strange though it feels to say it and strange it may be to hear it, knowing that I’m going to die feels liberating. Who knew?

I have nothing to compare any of this with. It’s new for me. I have never even had a conversation with anyone about this kind of thing. Ever. One might say that I just seem to be o.k. living with no map, or perhaps having only a very fuzzy one. At least, for now. I might also say the same thing using different words: it’s as though I’ve been traveling on a long road and all of a sudden come to a section where the road has washed away by a flood or landslide or something like that. At present, I’m standing at the end of the old road and looking to muddle through this featureless new territory until I can find my road again on the other side. It’s interesting. And, largely, it’s free of a sense of… I don’t know… heaviness, urgency, and needing to accomplish things that I’ve been feeling for such a long time that it’s felt absolutely normal to me.

I certainly don’t know what it all means, yet. I am back at work, but at a slower pace. I have been slowing down the past few years anyway simply because I’m getting older, and as I mentioned I really have been feeling used up for a long time… but without really paying attention to it. I mean, see here now: I’ve been busy, dude! I’ve had work deadlines to attend to and responsibilities to discharge, you know?! I say again: I’m not being morbid in any of this. Rather, to put it in a yet different way, it’s sort of like getting lost on the way to work and winding up in some unknown place, and discovering a half-buried lost city. I want to tell people about it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The feeling of liberation seems real to me. When I fainted I remember that I suddenly felt very dizzy and just collapsed. It took literally two seconds. I realized, after I came to, that I had heard a sound of a thud at the time of my fainting. That, it turned out, was my head hitting the floor. It’s strange hearing something when I’m 95% unconscious; but it really was lights out, period. That might just have been the whole ball game, right then and there. There was no pain.

There was no light at the end of a tunnel either; everything just went black. But then again I’m a Taurus and Tauruses don’t do lights at the ends of dark tunnels.

So, anyway, right now I’m not particularly fearful of life. Or losing it. I’m accepting it as something I have not much control over. I would be disappointed if I died right now, because I wouldn’t have gotten to do all the things I would have wanted to do (such as using up all my wood stash in the making of lovely guitars) before checking out.

I’m still working all this out. More later.

Love, Ervin

What I’ve Been Up To, August 2017

I’ve been feeling angina for a few weeks now, and also feeling very tired. You probably know that angina is discomfort in the chest, normally attributed to blood flow that is insufficient to the needs of the body’s muscles; the heart is straining. I’d also been experiencing some dizzy spells. So I made an appointment to see my cardiologist in early August.

On the very next day I had two fainting spells: I just keeled over with no warning. Fortunately, I didn’t hit my head hard or break any teeth out or anything like that. I was lucky in that. 911 was called and I was taken by ambulance to the emergency room at local Summit hospital, to be checked out for what was going on with me. It speaks to my childishness that I felt embarrassed for inconveniencing the ambulance crew in this way.

Speaking of angina, by the way, you should know that there is no truth to the story that when a staffer told then-president George Bush that Dick Cheney had “acute angina”, he said that that was silly: men don’t have anginas.

In any event, to make a long story short, I spent five days in the hospital. I just got out a few days ago. I had a bunch of tests and procedures done on me while I was there. Fainting can be brought on by a number of things, but one of the things they worry about most is heart problems… which I have; you may already know that I had heart bypass surgery in 2004.

It turns out that the heart can have three main kinds of possible problems: (1) something wrong mechanically (with the heart muscle and valves), or (2) something wrong with the plumbing – that is, obstructions to blood flow — or (3) something wrong with the electrical impulses that regulate the heart’s beating. Remarkably, the heart has a different system that’s in charge of each of these different functions; knowing this makes me understand a bit better what a miraculous piece of engineering the heart is. Not only that, it is the only muscle in the body that never, ever rests. It can go on beating for a hundred years. That’s pretty impressive, really.

Parenthetically, I am impressed with how complicated it is to run a hospital. When someone like me comes in with an immediate problem the doctors have to scramble to diagnose and deal with what’s going on. They have to book access to various rooms and equipment, consult with various specialists, and to assemble the teams that will run the equipment and do the procedures – and interpret the results. Not least, someone has to schedule and coordinate all this in the face of the fact that the needed facility or equipment will likely already have been booked to deal with someone else’s not-so-urgent problems that will no doubt have been scheduled weeks previously. So between this and that and the other thing, it took three days before they were in a position to take a close diagnostic look at just what was going on with me. Until then they drew blood, took X-rays and gave me a CT scan, looked at my vitals, took bets on how long I’d last, etc.

Before I could be given either of the catheterization procedures they had planned for me, however, my heart stopped spontaneously… for 4.2 seconds. The nursing staff noted this because I was hooked up to all kinds of telemetry. I must say that doctors were grateful to me for having been helpful enough to provide them with such a major diagnostic clue; the electronic telemetry of the event solved a lot of the mystery for them. I think I heard champagne corks popping down the hall.

They rushed to bring in an E.I. specialist (that’s cardiac-electrical stuff) and gave me an electrocatheterization procedure (it’s called something else in hospitalese, but never mind that). This is when they open up a vein in the groin and insert a loooong thin wire that they snake into the heart. That wire is used to test various electrical nodes in the heart. They were able to induce another heart stoppage in a bundle of cells called the Bundle of His (named after Swiss doctor Wilhelm His who first identified it and its functions; it acts sort of like a spark plug). The reason for my fainting, it seems, was that I was experiencing episodes of my heartbeat stopping. The official medical term for this is syncope; it’s not exactly the same as a heart attack, but it’s a bad thing anyway. With no blood pumping, and the brain receiving no oxygen, one begins to function like our current president.

There are, I learned, specific “bundles” of specialized cells in the heart, that have different functions. There’s one that’s called the Widowmaker, because if it misfunctions then it’s game over; the others, they can do something about them if caught in time. They checked out my own Widowmaker and it seems to be doing well. With a name like that I expect it to hit men more than it hits women, but I’m sure it’s equally a Widowermaker. For more information on any of this, I refer you to Wikipedia.

I now have a pacemaker installed. Its function is to jump-start the heart in case it wants to take another coffee break during working hours. It is installed under my left clavicle, and that part of my body is a bit sore. The pacemaker is not large; it’s about the size of two fifty-cent pieces; and some wires go from it into both of my heart’s atria (the upper chambers). They had a representative from the company that produces these show up the next day to check that the placement, circuitry, and wiring were correctly done and that the wires were working as they should. These things can be programmed to function in various ways, to work at different speeds and settings, depending on just what kind of spark might be called for. It’s interesting to know this. And I’m instructed to not move my left arm very much, or lift it above shoulder height, for six weeks in order for the newly installed wires can… uh… blend into the flesh they’ve been inserted into. I’m not much motivated to move my arm: the incision site is quite sore. So, anyway: no more weightlifting or tennis or calisthenics for a while. I also have two newly made incisions in my groin to recover from… which is also sore.

Interestingly, I’m told that the pacemaker’s job is actually to just step in when it senses any irregularity in my heart’s electrical impulses; otherwise, if the electrical impulses are working, the pacemaker backs off and stays quiet. So, according to what they told me, the average pacemaker is inactive most of the time.

I was also given an angiogram the day after I got the catheterization; this is where they insert another catheter into the heart — once again starting at the groin — to take a look at whether there are any blockages to blood flow in the heart. If any blockages are found then a stent is introduced, to open them up (that is, if the blockages are not impossible to reach without risk of damaging something). Mainly, the doctors needed to determine whether I also had a problem (besides the electrical one) because of narrowed or blocked cardiac arteries. These can cause the electrical problems that I’d been having.

Apparently, and happily, I have no arterial blockages in my heart. That’s good news. And, according to the arcane medical taxonomy that is brought to these matters, I did not have a heart attack. I had Syncope. I think the difference is that with the latter the heart simply stops; with the former there is trauma and damage to the heart muscle. At least, potentially… depending on how quickly an intervention might occur. But there are so many other words for heart problems: ischemia, angina, fibrillation, infarct, stenosis, romantic breakups, etc. Will Shortz could probably come up with a crossword puzzle made up of only these kinds of words. But, well… none of them are exactly good news.

I might mention that my doctor was quite pleased to report that my bypass grafts, installed in 2004, were clear and unobstructed. He said that half of these things clog up again within ten or fifteen years! Wow; no one had told me that before. Well, it’s been 13 years for me and I seem to be all clear in that regard. Now, I’m simply going to be setting off airport security alarms. I hope my heart can stand the excitement.

I got home last Saturday and I’m very tired as I write this. I’ll recuperate and be back to normal, more or less, in four to six weeks. But I also am amazed at the luck that was with me in how this all came down. As I said, I fainted twice at home… and didn’t hit my head on cement; I hit it on carpeted wood flooring instead. The fainting came on without warning and without time to react. I simply collapsed. It was most fortunate that I wasn’t driving. Or crossing the street. Or up on a stepstool or ladder. Or leaning over my table saw. I could easily have killed myself and/or someone else. Things could have been so much worse.

I have to also say that I am grateful for the way the hospital nursing staff took care of me. They were kind, competent, professional, hard working, and without exception pleasant and friendly. On a chatting level, almost all the ones I met are multicultural and multilingual, and bring with them a wi i i i i i ide range of interesting life experiences. One of them, I found out by just talking with him, speaks seven languages! What an amazing bunch! If I were running the hospital I’d be giving them stock options.

Finally, having a pacemaker will add $300 to the cost of any future cremation that I might be subject to; it costs that much to remove it. If it is not removed then the oven blows up. Perhaps a burial at sea (you know; a sack and some rocks?) would be the way to go?

In any event, I intend to take it easy and recuperate for a while now. I am tired.

-Ervin

A CHRISTMAS STORY

[November, 2016]

There’s a story that I’ve loved ever since I first heard it. It comes courtesy of Alexander Woolcott, whom you may have heard of. Mr. Woolcott was the Dean of American Letters in the 1930s and 1940s. He knew everyone who was anyone and was the most respected single voice in the world of American arts and literature. His opinion of who was who, and what was good or not good – in both literature and the theatre — carried great weight.

Woolcott lived in the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan. Because of Woolcott’s reputation and activities, the Algonquin management was good enough to set aside one of its rooms as a meeting place for anyone and everyone who was in town and desired stimulating and pleasurable conversation. The centerpiece of the room was a large round table — the fabled Algonquin Round Table. And around it sat many of the most significant thinkers of the day in the fields of literature, the arts, science, business, sociology, the theatre, psychology, film, economics, books, culture in general and even politics — all in free exchange of their beliefs, ideas, and knowledge.

The Algonquin round table ran from 1919 to 1929, in open discussion, and without any particular agenda other than to cast light on things and brainstorm. As I said, anyone who was in town and cared to have serious conversation about past, current, and future events – or just otherwise participate — was welcome to do so. Our phrase ‘round table discussion’ originated there. That cultural Mecca was the epicenter for one of the most significant outpouring of intellectual, artistic, economic, and creative thought and stimulation the modern world has known — and it was Mr. Woolcott’s invention and gift. You can learn more about it through Wikipedia.

Woolcott was a writer as well as an opinion maker, and he penned the following Christmas story that has long been dear to my heart. I’ll try to tell it as well as he did. I like the story because it seems to recognize the good in people that often goes unrecognized. It is, in its own way, a story about me, and you, and our neighbors.

I hope this doesn’t come off as too preachy and treacly. But it’s a story that has always brought a lump to my throat, when I think of it.

The story begins on a cold, bleak Christmas Eve. It’s Winter; the day has worn away, and it’s getting dark. An icy, cutting wind is blowing through the town’s empty streets. These are completely deserted. The townspeople are at home, in front of their fires with their families, with festive Christmas dinners soon to be had. All is quiet and still except for the whistle of the wind, and the incessant blowing of the sleety wind. There is an unexpected movement in the stillness, however. It’s an old beggar, poorly clothed and huddled in a doorway, trying to escape the freezing shafts of the wind. The poor man looks like he’s seen much better days. He moves along the street from doorway to doorway, slowly, trying to huddle out of the wind, and driven by the freezing cold. He seems to have no destination other than any little shelter he can find. After a while he reaches the town’s church, whose doorway is deeper and offers some greater degree of protection from the chill; he retreats into it as far as he can. And, pressing his back against the door, he is surprised to find it yielding. It has been left unlocked. He pushes it open and, cautiously, goes into the church.

The building is empty. All is quiet. The lights of many candles illuminate the space with a warm and intimate glow. And in the front, at the altar, a Christmas feast has been laid out. There are also festively wrapped packages and presents in a pile on the floor; the congregation has made lavish gifts to the Christ Child to celebrate his birth. Among the offerings and fineries there are bolts of expensive, colorful cloth. And in the center of it all is a table laden with delicacies that will be consumed in a short while, when the church members come in for that night’s special Christmas service.

The old beggar looks at this display hungrily. He hasn’t eaten in days. Cautiously, he approaches the table, drawn to its odors and promise of plenty, looking about to see if anyone is going to raise an alarm. But no: he is alone. He takes a little food . . . and then some more food. He eats, ravenously and gratefully, until he is satisfied. It’s not cold in the church, but with his tummy full now, and his blood going to it, he feels the cold. He wraps some of the cloths around himself to warm himself. The fabrics are of bright, vibrant hues.

Being wrapped in such festive colors, and being surrounded by the churchly shine and glitter, the beggar remembers that many years ago, when he was a young man, he worked in a circus. He was a juggler, and did his work in brightly colored clothing. The colors, lights, and sparkle have reminded him of that circus life left behind long, long ago, and that he hadn’t thought about in many years.

He has not done any juggling since he left the circus; and it occurs to him to wonder if he can still do it. So he goes to a large fruit bowl in the middle of the table and takes some apples from it, and begins to juggle a few of them. He can still do it! Slowly, revived by the food he’s just eaten, and being warmed up by his wrappings, and also loosening up the muscles of his arms and hands with the exercise of juggling, he gradually juggles faster. His coordination starts to come back to him. And he takes more apples from the bowl, and juggles them! Pretty soon, he’s juggling more things than he’s ever juggled before. He’s never juggled this well! He’s inspired! It is a magical, private moment.

But it is only a moment, and after a while the impulse and inspiration pass. It’s time for him to go; people will soon be arriving. The beggar puts the apples back into the bowl. He removes his warming fabrics, re-folds them, and goes out, back into the cold dark night. The church is silent.

Unbeknownst to the beggar, two priests have been watching him from an alcove behind a curtain. After he has left, one of the priests turns to the other and says, “Did you see that? Did you see what that filthy old beggar did? He touched our Christ’s gifts. He ate his food. He played with it! What a sacrilege! What a desecration!”

His companion, who is the older and wiser of the two, slowly turns to him and says, “oh . . . is that how you saw it? I saw it differently. You know, our congregants are prosperous people. Yes, they have bought many fine gifts for our Christ and our church. But they lead comfortable lives and these things are easy for them to buy and give. This old man, he gave a gift too. But . . . he gave of his ability. He gave of his skill. He gave of himself. Truly, he gave the finest gift of all”.

That, my friends, is a generous insight. And at times I think that this is us, the artists and guitar makers and musicians . . . and parents and homemakers . . . and healers and teachers . . . and anyone else like us who do the best we can in spite of hardships . . . of which there are plenty all around us.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

And, speaking of the finest gift of all, this brings me to someone who has made no discernible gifts to anyone, ever: the new prez, Mr. Trump; he never seems to have had a generous impulse or warm thought. As I write this, the 2016 elections are three days behind me and I feel ill.

What I’ve Been Up To These Days

August, 2016

I celebrated my 72nd birthday last May. Wow. I remember that, in college, I imagined 45 as being old. Wow again. I am doing o.k. these days, although tangibly slowing down. I have more things to be thankful for than I do things to moan and groan about (the complete list is of the latter is available on demand, though), and more work than I can handle. Also, aside from making guitars, training apprentices, writing, and having a home life, I am spending some time thinking about end-of-life issues. I am entirely a part of nature’s cycles of life, right up there with trees, jackrabbits, octopuses, and spiders… and I am 72 years old. I think about retirement, but I doubt that I will; when people ask me about that I tell them that if I ever do retire, I’m thinking of getting Michelins.

In thinking about retirement-type matters, the one about whatever legacy I can and will leave behind comes up. That likely legacy comes in several packages. The most visible one is my professional achievements, reputation, work, and all that. The second is to watch my daughter make her way through the world; she’s a lawyer, and a competent one, and is very happy at this point in her life. Then, there are my writings and publications. And then there is my place in the world, as a human being, in real terms. Well, as a friend of mine recently quipped, he started out with nothing, and after all these years he still has most of it. One of the things I haven’t had a lot of in the past, but that I’m earnestly working on having a better grip on, is the ability to say no to others, in favor of carving some time out for myself and my personal happiness. You know… as opposed to working on other people’s projects and catering to their needs all the time. Saying “no” in the proper way is a respectable skill set that I’m only slowly and lately acquiring.

MY WORK LOAD

I mentioned that I have more than enough work to do. The main reason that I am so busy is that, as my friend quipped, I really did start with nothing and worked without ever advertising myself commercially, and then managed to have myself be “discovered” by the larger public, all within the past few years. This has happened very largely through the internet, YouTube, magazines (I seem to be interview-worthy now; where were these people earlier on when I needed them?), social media etc.

The upshot is that is now not possible for me to continue to be the semi-anonymous little old guitar maker whom only other guitar makers as well as the more discerning members of the public have heard about. I am now a point of reference for people from places all over the world, with all the correspondence, multi-tasking, and administering that entails. It’s quite a load, especially at a time in life when everyone else normally goes out and buys Michelins. Otherwise I am greying, aging, sagging, and wrinkling with world-class grace.

On the “training” front I’ve recently taken on an 18-year old intern. He’s a friend of a friend of the family and he’s taking a gap year between high school and college, with the intent of seeing something of the real world and broadening his mind. He does not intend to become a guitar maker. Otherwise, he’s a young genius, a young science-whiz who is much brighter than I am, and he’ll be a millionaire when he’s an adult. No, I am not kidding. It is an interesting experience.

AN INTERESTING PROJECT

As an example of the work that I have been doing lately, I completed an interesting guitar-making commission for a client last year… that was unique enough to make us think about filming a ten-minute long YouTube clip. The initial commission was for three guitars that were identical in every way except for the choice of topwoods – which were to be European spruce, Sitka spruce, and cedar, respectively. The project soon morphed into a something more seriously academic: a methodical exploration that was intended to pin down and document the specific tonal differences that these woods carry.

Guitarist Michael Chapdelaine was brought on board to play, and record, and be filmed, playing these guitars. He edited our initially conceived short YouTube film and released it; you can view it here. Next, the videographer we hired wanted to expand the project and is presently applying for grants funds to finance a more ambitious documentary, for public television. This may or may not happen; we’ll see. In the meantime Michael Chapdelaine, on his own initiative, put out a CD featuring these three guitars. It is titled “The Somogyi Incident” and shows off the sounds of these three woods very nicely – particularly if played through a good quality sound system. Michael plays on each of the three guitars, and identifies which guitar is used for which track, and at the end plays the same song three times over, each with one of the guitars. It’s a brilliantly thought out production that highlights the tonal possibilities of these different woods – and the do produce audible differences. I recommend it to your attention.

I am now writing the whole experience and up as a report and an analysis of the relationship between specific wood species and their tonal possibilities. I also pause and reflect that, formerly, I would have simply made the guitar (or guitars), delivered it (or them), and that would have been it. But this new kind of thing has take time, planning, coordination, and effort… and this particular project is still not completed. It may take another year.

OTHER PROJECTS IN MY BUSY LIFE

I’m also writing my next book; actually, it’s likely to be a two-volume set just like my first one. That first set was published in 2009 and was well received; it has generated an enormous quantity of correspondence, requests, calling things to my attention and giving me information that I didn’t have before, telephone calls, corrections of typos — all in response to something that I said or didn’t say or didn’t say clearly enough. So much thinking and writing and new information have come out of these discussions that I noticed that I have enough material for another book project. All in all I am beginning to feel a little bit like a celebrity. . . but without the paparazzi, the notoriety, the autograph seekers, the toned body and suntan, and certainly without the money. Maybe a couple of racy centerfolds might help. (I might mention that one of my guitar-making colleagues had the idea of a nude guitarmakers’ calendar a few years ago, and put out the word for submissions. He failed to get twelve (my own submission was unfortunately wasted), so the project was abandoned. I think it was a silly idea, right up there with, say, calendars of nude photos of politicians, defense department subcontractors, therapists, jazz musicians, podiatrists, or city councilmembers.) I might also add that writing a book — any book — is endlessly time-consuming in its own right; my first books took me 8 years to write.

The main thing I am doing these days, besides teaching and making “Somogyi guitars” as people have gotten to know them, is making guitars that carry some rather extravagant ornamentation. I seem to be attracting clients who are older, more discerning and mature, and who have some money to spend, and who want something unique that they will leave to their children… rather than to go around buying and selling and swapping guitars as is often the case. This phenomenon did not exist when I began doing this work: handmade guitars have only relatively recently become “collectable”. Also, making unusual guitars is fun.

There are no limits to the kinds of inlays and ornamentation that one can put on or into a guitar. Art is forever and infinite, and many luthiers are doing artistic work of one kind or another. Rather few are copying my own artistic style, mostly because it’s so painstakingly time-consuming. I’m including three jpegs to give you an idea of some of my new projects. They are all hand-done wood inlay and wood carving: no paint, no decals, no laser work, no shortcuts.