I’ve been doing this work for more than 50 years now. I’m well-known for it, am good at it, and have been approached over the years by people who wanted guidance in guitar making, at several levels. As a result I’ve learned to do the teaching in several ways – sometimes by teaching a class, or by providing individual guidance in some aspect of, or all of, the work. In the case of the latter I prefer face-to-face time . . . but it’s usually supplemented by emails and/or telephone conversations.
My way of teaching is a mixture of demonstrating, explaining, and using Socratic dialogue. As much of it as I can manage to do is hands-on. I’ve found that lecturing facts to people doesn’t help them to stick in the brain; but wrestling with a question does a better job. And Socratic dialogue is the asking of questions about a matter that the questionee already knows something about but doesn’t yet know that he knows.
I’ve had three concentrated teaching/consultation gigs of this one-on-one kind recently. In each of them my students were men who were retired, or looking forward to retiring, and who were looking for challenging work . . . which would be a serious, interesting, and relaxing hobby for them — or maybe even a part-time source of income and interest after they retired. But whatever their thinking, they wanted to do this work well, and to know how to make better-than-average guitars.
I’ll admit that in offering consultations I initially expected to be approached by young aspiring guitar makers who wanted to bypass years of learning on their own and wanted to talk with someone who already knew the work. I was surprised at the number of inquiries I’ve had by older aspiring hobbyists/guitar makers. These have been retirees or almost-retirees who had done some kind of “normal” work over their lifetimes, and wanted to have an activity to pursue that was interesting, challenging, satisfying, that could be carried out at one’s own pace — certainly not having to be done and handed in by, say, ten a.m. the next day – and on which they didn’t have to depend on for income. They’d already lived with those pressures long enough, and they didn’t have years in which to master the fine points. Working with me one-on-one would save them lots of time. I already have a reputation as a teacher from having published two books about guitar making, and also from having trained a cadre of apprentices who have gone on to become well-regarded luthiers in their own right. I’m a good teacher.
So, these gentlemen approached me because they were genuine in their interest – and they didn’t have two years to commit to being an apprentice to learn the work in detail and in depth. These consultees needed a shorter and more intensely focused consultation with me. One of them stayed at my shop for one week, another stayed in a motel room for a week, and the third commuted an hour by car each way, to get together.
During our face-to-face time we’d sit and discuss, and look at, his work, and talk about it in depth. And two important components in that were something that no one else ever mentions. First: how to listen to a guitar and what to listen for in its sound. The second component has to do with the thinning of two vibrating plates to an optimal acoustically active thickness/stiffness – and then using one on their guitar and keeping the other as a library of hands-on reference materials to refer to when they made another guitar. If they made any changes to their vibrating plates they’d make an extra one to put into their reference library, to refer to . . . because it’s difficult to try to remember what a piece of wood looked like and felt like and sounded like, months afterwards. And, once one had a library of two or three or four “duplicates” one could track their progress, and the direction of that progress. In the case of one of these fellows, he consulted with me through the making of two separate guitars and not just one.
I’ve also been approached by young luthiers who’ve recently come back from one of the guitar shows (that are a main way for some people to get their guitars known about) – at which they were less successful than they thought they’d be, and they didn’t know why that turned out like that. They came to me to learn why. I spent an afternoon with them, discussing the guitars they’d displayed (and of which they brought one to be examined), and I assessed them. I must say that they were not pleased to hear my reports, which were candid and truthful, and not sugar-coated. I charged $300 for these sessions. They came back to me after their next shows and happily let me know that they’d listened to my remarks and had done much better at these shows.
I like doing these kinds of things. They’re interesting. There are different tasks and problems to work on every day. And it’s not the same old same old making-a-guitar steps that I’ve followed for 54 years now. And I’d like to do more of them. So I’m looking for a way to let people know of this service. I don’t have a better idea now than to add this “of classes and private consultation” to my website. If there’s anyone who’s out there who would like a short and intense tutorial in guitar making (and the problem-solving that goes with it), I can help.
I might add that these consultations are custom-shaped to attend to a client’s individual needs, and they’re not cheap. I’ve charged between $9,000 and $20,000 for my consultation intensives, depending on what was involved – and they’ve lasted from one continuous week, followed by after-class emails, phone calls, and further consultations, to a series of weekly appointments, each lasting several hours, that have gone on for some months. And I’m open to yet other variations in the future.
The guidance is excellent and includes a lot of direct hands-on experience as well as essential proprietary information about how to make a better-than average guitar, based in the physics and engineering that make such wooden boxes work. That being the case, I ask that anyone who signs up for anything like this project agree that the information stays between us, and that they will not reveal the proprietary information to friends and colleagues. They will, after all, have worked and paid for it.
So, feel free to get in touch with me if anything like this interests you. And if you are wanting to know something about Socratic Dialogue, do please look up my essay on it in my “articles” section.