Posted on January 6, 2010May 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Guitar and Vihuela: An Annotated Bibliography by Meredith Alice McCutcheon Review: Guitar and Vihuela: An Annotated Bibliography by Meredith Alice McCutcheon Reviewed by Joseph R. Johnson Originally published in American Lutherie #9, 1987 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Guitar and Vihuela: An Annotated Bibliography Meredith Alice McCutcheon Pendragon Press, 1985 $64 from amazon.com In 1978 David B. Lyons published his book, Lute, Vihuela, Guitar to 1800: A Bibliography (Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography, 1978). Although the vihuela and guitar were included, the bulk of his information concerned the lute. There was not enough material in the book to satisfy the ever-growing need for information about the early guitar and vihuela. In 1980 James Tyler’s book, The Early Guitar: A History and Handbook, (London: Oxford University Press, 1980), was published, and it too only partially satisfied the need. What was needed was a bibliography that dealt specifically with the guitar and the vihuela. Ms. McCutcheon’s annotated bibliography is an attempt to fill that need. In her words, the bibliography “is intended to fill the need for an annotated reference tool for the study of the guitar and vihuela. It contains literature on composers, performers, theorists, music and analysis, iconography, and design and construction in both an historical context and in a technical one.” Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 6, 2010May 16, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: The Modern Classical Guitar For Friend or Builder by Donald M. Sprenger Review: The Modern Classical Guitar For Friend or Builder by Donald M. Sprenger Reviewed by C.F. Casey Originally published in American Lutherie #27, 1991 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 The Modern Classical Guitar For Friend or Builder Donald M. Sprenger Taylor Publishing Co., 121 pp. ISBN 0-9617445-0-2 First, let it be said that I have very little knowledge about the Kasha system of guitar design. So when I saw this book advertised as using this system, I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn something. On leafing through the book, the first thing that struck me was that the drawings were rather crudely done. Let me rephrase that: very crudely done. Now, I’m no whiz at draftsmanship myself; but it seems to me that if you’re going to the trouble of writing and publishing a book, it would be nice to go that little bit further and either do decent drawings or get someone to do them for you. But then I thought, “Maybe the man is a master luthier who just can’t be bothered with such petty details; maybe the text will make up for it.” Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 6, 2010May 19, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: The Flamenco Guitar by David George Review: The Flamenco Guitar by David George Reviewed by David Macias Originally published in American Lutherie #12, 1987 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 The Flamenco Guitar David George Society of Spanish Studies Madrid, Spain, 1969 Out of print (1999) Do not let the title of this book fool you. Although it is being reviewed in American Lutherie, this is not a “how-to-build” book. The making of a flamenco guitar, from the tree to the French polishing, is very well described by Manuel Reyes of Cordoba, but in very general terms. Particularly enjoyable to the flamenco enthusiast is a short history of the elusive and mysterious music of the Gypsies of Southern Spain, called flamenco. This book will also be interesting to some classical guitarists who at one time or another have had the urge to try a bit of flamenco, and perhaps it will help to clarify a few mysteries about what flamenco is or is not. To the nonflamenco guitarist, all flamenco guitarists seem to be part of a cult. Perhaps this is because of all the Gypsy lore and legends and the way of life associated with the art of flamenco. Personally, the only way I can explain this cult thing is that because of flamenco’s East Indian, Middle Eastern, and North African origin, it is immediately different to Western ears. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 5, 2010May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Guitar Voicing Class with Ervin Somogyi Review: Guitar Voicing Class with Ervin Somogyi Reviewed by Joe Herrick Originally published in American Lutherie #95, 2008 I’m a hobby builder making two or three guitars a year. I learned to make guitars six years ago by taking a two-week, one-on-one course with an experienced luthier. I went on to make seven more guitars exactly the way I was taught, just following the numbers for top thickness, brace height, brace profile, and so on. I didn’t want to make changes, only to have the guitars not be as good as I knew they would be if I just followed the “recipe.” They sounded good, but I was missing out on how much better they could be. I learned the mechanics of how to build a guitar from my first teacher. Ervin Somogyi’s class taught me the why and encouraged me to grow. Ervin gives you a starting point, and then the knowledge and the challenge to move beyond that starting point with your soundboards. Ervin is a fun, patient, and exceptional teacher, passionate about guitars and life. He enjoys being challenged and everything is fair game for further discussion. He does not come across as a know-it-all with canned responses for each question. He would often ask what we thought and then built on that with his own knowledge and experience. And he was not above saying, “I don’t know.” The class has a 4" binder of handouts. Ervin follows a syllabus that builds methodically from the ground up, but we tweaked the syllabus as we went along to delve into areas that we, as a class, wanted to pursue. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 5, 2010May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Classical Guitar Making, A Modern Approach to Traditional Design by John S. Bogdanovich Review: Classical Guitar Making, A Modern Approach to Traditional Design by John S. Bogdanovich Reviewed by John Mello Originally published in American Lutherie #95, 2008 Classical Guitar Making, A Modern Approach to Traditional John S. Bogdanovich ISBN (hardcover): 9781402720604 Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2007, $29.95 Classical Guitar Making, A Modern Approach To Traditional Design by John S. Bogdanovich is a hardbound 310-page volume filled with beautifully clear photography that amply illustrates the detailed text. While the back cover proclaims that the author will “help you develop all the necessary skills, even if you’ve never made anything more complicated than a school woodworking project,” a fairly high degree of proficiency in both hand and power tools is assumed, particularly regarding the use of hand planes. You’ll have to bring your own chops and/or be willing to develop them on the fly. The tone throughout is personal, almost conversational, and we are presented with a lot of biographical material and philosophical ruminations that may seem extraneous to the physical task at hand, but for someone considering a long term engagement with the craft rather than a one-off build, it’s one of the book’s strengths. As a novice, I would have loved to know how a working professional got started, influences shaping their sonic and aesthetic choices, and the many facets of the mysterious lifelong refining of one’s craft. “Part One — Preparation” includes discussions of guitar anatomy with an emphasis on the interrelatedness of the parts, wood types and selection, and shop requirements, including brief descriptions and photos of recommended vises, benches, and generic and specialty power and hand tools. There are clear, dimensioned plans for making a number of specialty jigs, bench tools, and specialty items such as shop-made calipers and sanding disks. One small problem arises in the author’s discussion of the need for concave sanding disks of 15' and 25'. Fabricating these is discussed only perfunctorily, with uncharacteristically no illustrations, and no indication of how to obtain or make the illustrated radius sticks. If we take the author’s suggestion and simply purchase the disks we can certainly make our sticks from them, but the degree of back and top arch is an important, alterable variable, and knowing how to generate alternative radii, short of getting a 25' board, a pencil, and a big room, would be useful. This may be a little beyond the scope of an introductory tutorial, but the growing current reliance on commercial concave disks of limited selection to set the back, while a facile solution to a process Irving Sloane once described as “exacting and tedious,” may lose sight of the fact that many of the great historic and contemporary classical guitar makers did and do not set the back in a uniform dome with its attendant reduction of side depth at the tail block. End of rant. Sorry. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
