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Acoustic Soundboard: Flattop Fajitas, Curry, and Cordon Bleu

Acoustic Soundboard: Flattop Fajitas, Curry, and Cordon Bleu
Prompted by his 5-year-old son, the authorā€”shown here at ā€œthe officeā€ā€”contemplates the essential ingredients for creating the distinctive sounds made by various guitars.

Like a chef, a guitar builder strives to create a palate-pleasing balance of ingredients.

Our kindergarten-age son recently asked what makes guitars sound different from each other. In an instant, I felt the history of guitars flash through my mind as I pondered the lowest common-denominator answer.

I love to celebrate the diversity of guitars. Big guitars, parlor guitars, ladder-brace, or X-brace: The hours spent studying and obsessively analyzing the minutiae of instruments by the guitar makers and players of the world have reached the clouds. Of course, none of that matters to a 5-year-old. So here it is: The two real factors are the design of the guitar and the materials the guitar is made from. There are other distinctions that push guitars in different directions, but in basic terms, there is the recipe and there are the ingredients.

In its essential form, a guitar is what people in lab coats call a coupled resonator. Strings vibrate. Those strings are attached to another object that is set in motion by the vibrating strings. Every guitar falls into this camp. With purely acoustic instruments, we can narrow in on the top as a significant point of contact. The initial distinction between types of guitar is whether the strings are anchored to the top and pull on it, or they are anchored elsewhere and merely push on the top: flattop or archtop, respectively.

The next distinction is how the string vibration is amplified to an audible level. For us to hear the sounds played, the sound waves must be loud enough to reach our ears and set our eardrums in motion. This requires displacement of air. And because strings donā€™t displace much air, we either rely on pickups driving a speaker or on an amplifying chamber (a.k.a. the guitarā€™s body). Subtleties in the design elements of this amplifier, or air pump, are what give rise to the vast trove of makes, models, and construction styles available.

Letā€™s consider sound generated by a string. If we pretend the string isnā€™t affected by what itā€™s attached to, we find it produces not only the note we played but a series of mathematically related sub-vibrations called harmonics. These harmonics tend to be weaker the higher they are in pitch.

There can be a nearly infinite number of guitar sounds based on the guitarā€™s design alone.

The particulars of a guitarā€™s design will be more receptive to some of these harmonics more than others. Quite simply, this selective reception alone will make a guitar of one design sound different than another. A layer of complexity is introduced when we understand that rather than vibration originating strictly from the string and transferring to the guitar, the vibrating guitar also influences how the string attached to the guitar moves. Effectively, once a player hits the string, he or she sets up a feedback cycle.

The selective reception of vibration that gives an instrument a unique sonic fingerprint can be altered in different ways. The exact size and shape of the guitar, the shape and placement of structural parts like braces, the glues that adhere them to each other, the finish that covers the guitar, and the relationship between parts all contribute to an instrumentā€™s exact personality. Inasmuch as there are practically infinite possibilities, there can be a nearly infinite number of guitar sounds based on the guitarā€™s design alone.

Switching from the recipe aspect of the guitar to the ingredients introduces more options. Each material used in an instrumentā€”most often woodā€”has its own tendency to accept or reject certain frequencies. Makers select specific materials for various components of a design based on how well their properties match the function of the part. For an acoustic guitar top, for example, makers will usually select a wood that is both lightweight and strong. This enables it to be set in motion easily, yet withstand the pulling of tight strings. A hard and dense wood makes a poor top, as it tends to absorb most of the energy produced by the strings before vibrating enough to produce volume.

One way to look at the relationship between the design and materials of a guitar is to draw a comparison to food. Start with a basic ingredient such as chicken. The recipe used to prepare it results in radically different outcomes. In India, it might be transformed into a curry. In Mexico, it might be turned into fajitas. In France, perhaps cordon bleu. The construction of these dishes is very different, with naturally different outcomes. So it is with guitars. Guitars sound different simply because the people who make them design them in different ways. The builders make some big choices early on, and allow their sensibilities to further guide their construction, leaving the door wide open for musicians to discover unlimited variety.

The Spirit Fall trio: drummer Brian Blade (right) and saxophonist Chris Potter (center) joined Patitucci (left) for a single day at The Bunker. ā€œThose guys are scary. It almost puts pressure on me, how good they are, because they get it really fast,ā€ says Patitucci.

Photo by Sachi Sato

Legendary bassist John Patitucci continues to explore the sound of a chord-less trio that balances melodicism with boundless harmonic freedomā€”and shares lessons he learned from his mentors Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter.

In 1959, Miles Davisā€™ Kind of Blue and John Coltraneā€™s Giant Stepsā€”two of the most influential albums in jazz historyā€”were recorded. Itā€™s somewhat poetic that four-time Grammy-winning jazz bass icon John Patitucci was born that same year. In addition to a storied career as a bandleader, Patitucci cemented his legacy through his lengthy association with two giants of jazz: keyboardist Chick Corea, with whom Patitucci enjoyed a 10-year tenure as an original member of his Elektric and Akoustic bands, and saxophonist Wayne Shorterā€™s quartet, of which he was a core member for 20 years. Patitucci has also worked with a whoā€™s who of jazz elites like Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Dizzy Gillespie, and Michael Brecker.

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The National New Yorker lived at the forefront of the emerging electric guitar industry, and in Memphis Minnieā€™s hands, it came alive.

This National electric is just the tip of the iceberg of electric guitar history.

On a summer day in 1897, a girl named Lizzie Douglas was born on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, the first of 13 siblings. When she was seven, her family moved closer to Memphis, Tennessee, and little Lizzie took up the banjo. Banjo led to guitar, guitar led to gigs, and gigs led to dreams. She was a prodigious talent, and ā€œKidā€ Douglas ran away from home to play for tips on Beale Street when she was just a teenager. She began touring around the South, adopted the moniker Memphis Minnie, and eventually joined the circus for a few years.

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In our third installment with Santa Cruz Guitar Company founder Richard Hoover, the master luthier shows PG's John Bohlinger how his team of builders assemble and construct guitars like a chef preparing food pairings. Hoover explains that the finer details like binding, headstock size and shape, internal bracing, and adhesives are critical players in shaping an instrument's sound. Finally, Richard explains how SCGC uses every inch of wood for making acoustic guitars or outside ventures like surfboards and art.

We know Horsegirl as a band of musicians, but their friendships will always come before the music. From left to right: Nora Cheng, drummer Gigi Reece, and Penelope Lowenstein.

Photo by Ruby Faye

The Chicago-via-New York trio of best friends reinterpret the best bits of college-rock and ā€™90s indie on their new record, Phonetics On and On.

Horsegirl guitarists Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein are back in their hometown of Chicago during winter break from New York University, where they share an apartment with drummer Gigi Reece. Theyā€™re both in the middle of writing papers. Cheng is working on one about Buckminster Fuller for a city planning class, and Lowenstein is untangling Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmannā€™s short story, ā€œThree Paths to the Lake.ā€

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