Posted on December 16, 2019June 11, 2025 by Dale Phillips Dissolving the Mysteries Dissolving the Mysteries by Graham Caldersmith previously published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly Volume 10, #4, 1982 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2001 We live in confusing times where progress in understanding the natural world, and in manipulating nature to our advantage has spawned an ever-changing technological environment that seems beyond our own control, and even beyond our comprehension in its scale and complexity. We are beginning to see organized reaction against technological excess, and movements towards simpler ways of living. Most luthiers are aware that the practical and traditional practice of lutherie is being analyzed and even supplemented by scientific methods, and some feel that the dignity and integrity of the traditions are therefore threatened as we redefine and dissolve the mysteries of lutherie. I would argue that the greatest system of lutherie to date, the Renaissance-Baroque school of violin making emerged in times of devastating plague and recurring war, when the orthodoxy of creation and nature was being challenged by Galileo and Copernicus in centers not far from Brescia, Cremona, and southern Germany. In fact we know that because the centers of Baroque violin making lay on the trade routes through which the latest news in science, art, and technology flowed with trade merchandise. The great masters of lutherie would have been exposed to new concepts in vibration, pitch, and wave motion which they would find difficult to ignore in their experience of wood vibration at the workbench. How they dealt with it is not recorded, but that they produced unsurpassed masterpieces in bowed instruments is undisputed. Contemporary luthiers live in times of social upheaval, war, and pollution, but also with a growing body of knowledge about the function of the instruments they make. It remains to be seen how we will react to this environment, but already we have seen a variety of new designs for the guitar, and the vital interaction of luthiers with pioneering guitarists. 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 November 13, 2019May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Controlling Strings, Wood, and Air Controlling Strings, Wood, and Air from her 1979 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly Volume 8, #3, 1980 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume 1, 2000 I’d like to take a minute to tell you a story. Imagine the scent in front of a cave some 20,000 years ago. A family has just killed a bear and is skinning it and preparing the meat for food. They’ve given some of the rawhide to their young son who has made some strips to string his first hunting bow. He and his sister are sitting out in front of the cave trying to tie some of the slippery strips to the bow-stick. As they do this the boy puts one end of the stick in his mouth to hold it steady as he tightens and ties the slippery stuff. As he plucks the rawhide to check the pull he suddenly realizes he can get different sounds depending on how he bites the stick and shapes his lips and cheeks around it. This could have been the origin of the musical bow. When I told this story in Ames, Iowa, a few years ago it created quite a lot of interest. After the lecture they produced a record of someone playing the mouth bow. I now have a mouth bow that a young man made for me which is quite a challenge to try to play. Actually, we are working with the same three elements that the young cave boy had under his control: strings, wood, and air. He could vary all three of these quite easily to a certain extent. In our modern bowed and plucked strings, however, the wood and the air resonances are more or less set when the instruments are made. For years I have worked to test the effects of variations in the wood and air resonances, but it means taking the instruments apart to thin the plates or slice down the height of the ribs (on expendable instruments, of course!) 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 November 1, 2019May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips The Truth about Temperaments The Truth about Temperaments by Edward Kottick originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly Volume 12, #2, 1984 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume #1, 2000 There is a good deal of misinformation in print about consonance, dissonance, scales, harmonics, intervals, tuning, and temperaments. Even textbooks and scientific journals have gotten these subjects wrong, and I hope to correct the situation. Let us begin with the terms “consonance” and “dissonance.” These words have two separate sets of meanings, one musical and psychological, the other acoustical and physical; and they are often confused. From the musical point of view a dissonance is a combination of tones which, dictated by usage, projects a quality of restlessness, motion, direction, or instability. Dissonances want to go somewhere; that is, they want to resolve to consonances, which have, of course, the opposite effect. Consonances are combinations of tones to which we ascribe the qualities of restfulness, stability, and a feeling of arrival. Note that I have described the character of these terms as something dictated by usage, rather than as qualities inherent in the combination of tones. Since around 1450 (the beginning of the Renaissance) major and minor thirds and sixths, perfect fourths, fifths, and octaves have been considered consonances, although a distinction is made between perfect consonances (fourths, fifths, and octaves) and the others, which are imperfect consonances. Every other combination of tones is considered dissonant, including the fourth if it appears above the lowest sounding note. Music needs both consonance and dissonance. Without the latter it would be bland, dull, and lacking in direction. Although we may not think of composers such as Palestrina, Bach, and Chopin (to pull some names out of the air) as dissonant composers, there is an enormous amount of dissonance, as we just defined it, in their music. Furthermore, a dissonance is a dissonance only if we all say so. In the music of John Phillip Sousa a major chord with an added sixth (which makes a dissonant second to the fifth) is a dissonance; but in a jazz style that same combination of tones is treated as a consonance and is perceived in that way. In polyphonic music (music of more than one part) of the Middle Ages the third was considered dissonant, but around 1450 it began to be perceived as a consonance. This is an apparent contradiction only if the interval itself is considered in vacuo; but in the context of the music, medieval composers treated thirds and sixths as unstable combinations that needed to be resolved to perfect consonances, while Renaissance composers, and all those who followed up to the 20th century, considered thirds and sixths consonant and the building blocks of music. 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 September 6, 2019May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Norman Pickering Meet the Maker: Norman Pickering by N.P., with Barbara Goldowsky previously published in American Lutherie #95, 2008 Norman Pickering does not understand the concept of retirement. He celebrated his ninety-second birthday on July 9, 2008, and he is still immersed in studying the properties of violin, viola, and cello bows. This is a logical follow-up to his lifelong study of the acoustics of bowed instruments, as a player, maker, and scientist. Though musical acoustics is his overriding passion, there have been lengthy, but fascinating detours along the way into fields as various as medical ultrasound, aircraft instrument design, and his most famous invention, the Pickering phonograph tonearm and cartridge. Rather than trying to condense his multiple careers and achievements into a question-and-answer interview, Norman agreed to share his life story — so far — in an essay he wrote after moving to our current home in East Hampton. I think AL readers will enjoy it. With characteristic modesty, he calls it simply “Biography.” — Barbara Goldowsky I was born in 1916 in a small fishing and farming town where both sides of my family had lived for at least three generations. Just at that time it was on the way to being submerged in the borough of Brooklyn by development and road building. By the time I was seven years old it was no longer the integrated semi-isolated village my parents and grandparents had known. My mother’s family were farmers and my father and his father were engineers. My future education was decreed almost from birth: I would follow my father’s plan for me. And so I did; after a happy and successful time in grammar and high school, I entered Newark College of Engineering and finished in 1936, a few weeks before my twentieth birthday. I enjoyed engineering, but found that my interest in music was much too strong to be ignored. 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 August 23, 2019May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Intonation in the Real World Intonation in the Real World by Mike Doolin from his 2006 GAL Convention lecture previously published in American Lutherie #92, 2007 Getting guitars to play in tune has been a major topic of interest for many years, both for guitar players and guitar makers, and it has been a major source of frustration as well. During our current “Golden Age of Lutherie” the bar has been raised for standards of craft, playability, and tonal quality, as players have become more sophisticated in their expectations and builders have become better educated and more demanding of their own work. Expectations for accurate intonation have come along with all that: it’s no longer acceptable for a guitar to only play in tune for the first five frets, or in a few keys. Modern players are using the whole neck, exploring extended harmonies, and playing in ensembles with other instruments. They are looking for instruments that play in tune with themselves and with the rest of the musical world. It turns out that guitar intonation is a huge can of worms, because it is really two topics: ▶ What does it mean to be “in tune?” ▶ How do I make a guitar do that? 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.
