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Voicing The Guitar - The 2009 Healdsburg Lecture
The DVD by Ervin Somogyi



This is a great time that we are living in to be guitar builders in as much as a number of new Lutherie offerings have been recently released. Ervin Somogyi's books became available this summer and in the opinion of this reviewer are a must read for anyone serious about understanding how guitars work and learning the concepts necessary to help you improve your work and Lutherie thought processes.

In addition Ervin's DVD “Voicing The Guitar” which was professionally filmed at the 2009 Healdsburg Guitar Festival is now available from Luthier's Mercantile International.

I am one of several people that Ervin asked to write a review of his DVD and he generously provided me with a copy at no charge. Now that this is out of the way my obligation here in my own mind is to anyone and everyone who may read my review. As such I will endeavor to be as honest as possible.

First it's important for me since I have been exposed to and participated in the discourse on a number of guitar building forums to indicate that this DVD is not a “how to” or build-by-numbers guide for building a guitar. Instead it is a high level discussion with master Luthier Ervin Somogyi in which Ervin skillfully relates his thoughts and shares his decades of experience with the audience and viewers.

Logically organized Ervin takes us though a discussion that I personally found very interesting and informative. Although and again you are not going to learn how to build a guitar from this DVD you will learn the concepts of voicing a guitar, how a guitar works, and the engineering and science that contribute to the art and science of voicing a guitar.

You will learn why a guitar can be compared to an air pump, what monocoque engineering is, the importance of materials selection and much more.

The various vibrational modes are defined and discussed in some detail and importantly how various styles of bracing will impact these modes. If you ever wanted an explanation for monopole, cross dipole, and the long dipole that you can actually remember Ervin describes these concepts very well.

Learn why steel string and classical guitars need to do different things AND why it is important to us as builders.

Most importantly the foundations of the concepts that any and every builder needs to understand in order to communicate to others in Lutherie what your thoughts are are systematically addressed and well defined.

Learn about the cube rule, X bracing and fan bracing and what they do well and what they do not do well.

The fixtures that Ervin uses to build his own guitars are described and examples are on stage for all to see and learn how they work.

The guitar back is just not another pretty piece of wood according to Ervin - learn how the back of a guitar can work in harmony with the top of the guitar and what the heart and lungs of a guitar actually are.

All of this is discussed in the DVD and much more including some very clever and unique examples of what a guitar is as represented by common household objects.

Learn what the very most important little scrap of wood on a guitar is and why it's important to you AND your customers…..

Ervin is focused, understandable, logical, and funny at times too when he wishes to be so.





After the lecture Ervin opens up the discussion for questions and I found great value in the questions and answers as well. During the Q&A what a flywheel has to do with a guitar is described, the importance of the different types of spruce is discussed, and subjects as timely as sound ports and Ervin's impressions of sound ports are revealed.

Clearly this viewer/listener/writer was very impressed with Ervin's lecture and Q&A DVD from HGF last summer. As such I am very pleased to recommend this DVD to anyone with an interest in how a guitar actually works and/or an interest in building great guitars.

I believe that I have read or viewed most if not all of the guitar building materials available today and in my opinion this DVD is a must have for all serious builders and I also believe that this information would translate well providing value for serious players too. Building a great guitar is certainly the goal for many of us but being able to select a great guitar would be very valuable to serious players as well.

Be warned however that after viewing the DVD you just may want to pickup a set of Ervin's two volume books and peel back the onion even further.

Voicing the Guitar by Ervin Somogyi - highly recommended!

Hesh Breakstone
January 2010

This was true in my case. I really enjoyed the DVD but think it would be better marketed as a DVD on the guitar's mechanics. The material provides you with a great foundation in that sense. However, I didn't come away with anything that will guide me in voicing my guitars in the sense of the finished instrument leaning more in this direction than that. There's definitely a schema to build on that wasn't there before, and I found the spring models to be fascinating.

Hi hesh,
how does the ervin video compare to those hosted here, as I've seen them, even put them on a DVD I also have Ervins books, so a loathed so spend out on more stuff if it's a repeat of material I already have or so similar as at the moment tools and jig building taking most of my time and money

_________________
Formerly JJH

I learn more from my mistakes than my successes

Hi Hesh, thanks for the review. As a first time builder, I'm absolutely thrilled with the learning I've gotten from Erwin's books. My question is, will I get anything more out of the DVD, or does it pretty much cover the same territory?

Thanks in advance

Steve

It'll be repeat material, but it's always beneficial for me to see rather than read. 80% of us are visual learners.

I wasn't happy with the way I communicated my thoughts last night, but this morning there was an ah ha!

I think the video is a great resource, but I think it's an incomplete resource which isn't necessarily bad if it's part of a system (which I think it may have been intended to be). You come away with key understandings, but not with any key actions. This isn't the same thing as the DVD not being a "how to". I understand what an efficient guitar behaves like, but I don't know what it sounds like and I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what the back's supposed to be like in any sense, I just know it's supposed to interact somehow. The back was only mentioned with glancing comments with most of the attention going to the top's movement.

The DVD was like an introduction to the CAGED system. You learn that the fretboard's set up to be very efficient and that any chord shape or scale is available to you anywhere at anytime on it, but you don't learn the chord family's to help you manipulate that and make use of it. And with that said, I'd rather be there than knowing a pentatonic or two. At least I have more foundation to build on.

Steve my friend if you have the books the DVD will not take you anyplace that is not available in far more detail in the books.

However... if you are a fan of Ervin and I am it was great to see him present his own thoughts and there is a dynamic in the video that is not available in the books because of Ervin's presentation style. Is it worth $50? For me it would have been if I had paid for the DVD and I already have Ervin's books.

You know Steve you are actually in a far better position than the rest of us to relate your experiences as a first time builder and being exposed to Ervin's books. If you would care to do so please in this thread it would be much appreciated? Many thanks in advance!

John buddy there is no comparison to the video's that were hosted here at one time and the professionally filmed and produced DVD that Ervin has released. The audio and video are excellent and if you recall that was not the case on the previous videos which had to be greatly reduced in video quality in order to stream over the Internet. The material is the same but much more concise and compact unlike the earlier videos that seemed to drag on a bit....

I'm not sure that I would recommend the video to you since you have the books but if you ever get to meet Ervin you might want to have a copy of all of his offerings.

My position is that the DVD serves 3 purposes and serves them very well.

First Ervin is offering an overview of his approach to voicing a guitar with the emphasis on science, physics, and theory in as much as there is no hands-on or doing in this DVD.

Second the DVD does promote Ervin's books very well. Although Ervin is not a professionally, classically trained sales person that is something that I know something about and the old bring the virgin to the brink selling strategy is somewhat present in Ervin's approach. The information provided in the DVD is SO very interesting that you do want to learn more. To learn more you can purchase his books. There is nothing wrong with selling anything provided that you offer real value and there is no question that Ervin offers real value and then some....

Third there is the course, voicing course that Ervin teaches and it is mentioned in the DVD. Again this is yet another way to drill down and learn more about Ervin's approach.

Hi Hesh, I'm happy to share some thoughts, just so long as it's understood that if ignorance is , then I'm pretty much orgasmic

I think I had mentioned before that if you wanted to use a scale of 100 (100 being a very good guitar builder), then I was probably at about 5. I'd read Cumpiano and Kinkead, and was using them as manuals for my first build. Reading Somogyi, I think, has rocketed me up to 20

I thought I'd shown remarkable self-restraint in reading The Responsive Guitar first, given that I was in the middle of 1st-build frenzy, but as it turned out, that was the right thing to do. I now not only have a much better understanding of what makes a guitar actually work, but I've also got a much better start on a foundation for building. By that I mean that I've discovered the importance of recording what I do. Bracing, stiffness, thickness-all those things that, 10 instruments down the road, might start to fall into place and help me develop a better understanding of what I'm doing.

Making the Responsive Guitar is, really, more of the same, with some building specifics included. I don't mean that as a negative, but if you're looking for a manual, you're better off with Cumpiano. Much of Somogyi's building is done with his custom jigs, and as such, isn't really transferable to someone new to the process. Having said that, I still picked up valuable advice and tips, and will continue to re-read it as I develop as a builder.

To be honest, there were elements of both books that I didn't understand, probably because of my lack of experience and the appropriate vocabulary. But again, I'm pretty sure ongoing re-reading will allow me to understand more.

A couple of broad strokes comments that will apply to anyone, not just newbies. Somogyi is an excellent writer. He has an extremely inquiring mind and can write engagingly on even the most arcane subjects (I say this as someone who's been a professional copywriter for over 25 years). He has a sly sense of humour that sneaks out every now and then, as though he can't resist.

His end notes are often just as illuminating as the main body of the text. Ignoring them would be a real mistake.

I'd recommend both books to anyone who is seriously interested in building guitars. They're illuminating, insightful, and a pleasure to read. He obviously cares immensely about what he does and that's evident on every page. His passion is contagious, and prods me to start saving up for one of his classes every time I open up one of the books.

Thanks for that Steve bro - an excellent review of Ervin's new books!

I find it interesting that even as a new builder you received value to the degree that you indicated. That's great!

Thanks again!

I have the books, and heard Ervin in person at Healdsburg. As an engineer, I really enjoyed his explanations
of how a guitar works. I know all the beam stiffness equations, etc, but his explanations, especially coupled
with his illustrative mechanical models, really helped me see how it all tied together. He covers the material
more thoroughly in the books, but he's a very interesting lecturer, so if you can afford it, I'd recommend
getting the DVD. Or find somebody who has it, and borrow it long enough to see it.

_________________
Gene

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason- Mark Twain

IMHO, his lecture (DVD) brought out a very good point that the books could not.....that relates to his demonstration of spring models of different bracing patterns and their interaction with the soundboard....a picture is worth a thousand words....

p.s.-FWIW, I'm very much a 'book' person and rarely watch DVD's for informative purposes.....but the above-mentioned demonstration could not have been well explained in words or mathematical equations.....

books are an xlnt resource, BTW.

Hi, Hesh:

Thank you your various perceptive comments about my DVD release; your commentary is fair and balanced. My DVD is a new product and most people don’t know about it yet, so I expect that there’ll be more viewings, opinions, questions, comments, grumblings, raves. etc. as time passes. That’s as it should be . . .

I am participating in several discussion forums these days, so I am intending to post various musings in more than one place. I write slowly and I can’t answer all the questions and comments I get; I’m guessing that no one is going to mind very much as long as I make some provision for not writing the exact same thing to everyone.

At this very early point in the unfolding of things (with the release of my books and my DVD) luthiers everywhere are being exposed, perhaps for the first time, with my style of giving information, and I’m already becoming aware of two main kinds of feedback. Each is interesting and pertinent in its own way.

The feedback is just a tiny bit polarized. On the one side there are lots of really positive comments. These are from people who are basically saying ‘thank you for doing this; I’ve puzzled over this-or-that for a long time and you helped put the pieces together so that I can finally make sense of it’. They find the books useful right off the bat. On the other side are a good handful of comments that are somewhere between puzzled and not quite knowing what to make of the thing. They are not seeing something that they’d expected to find; namely, specific instructions, numbers, or measurements. And certainly, in books with a high price tag -- and especially ones that pretend to be authoritative -- one would expect specifics in abundance, no?

I never intended to disappoint or mystify anyone; in fact I tried to include everything that I know about the guitar. But there is a mismatch of sorts in effect here, as evidenced by these kinds of responses. This is because I’m doing something they haven’t run across before: I’m offering to teach them how to think (at least as I do), instead of telling them what to do. I mean, isn’t that what all the other books do?

I think the single thing that people are most looking for but not finding is specific numbers for top thickness and bracing heights. They want to know. But the whole point of everything I’ve written about guitar making is that these numbers, by themselves, are irrelevant. Guitars are much more ‘if this . . . then that’ than ‘this’ or ‘that’.

I think it might be helpful for me to say a few things about my learning and teaching styles.

My teaching style is a direct outgrowth of my personal learning curve in lutherie work over a span of forty-plus years. When I began making guitars I was working in a vacuum. I sort of knew that I liked doing this (like all of you), but I didn’t know anything else. There were virtually no resources, no books, no DVDs, etc. The very few luthiers who were hardy enough to survive in that climate were all making Spanish guitars. No one was making steel string ones (which are my area of specialization); that guitar was a complete backwater. By the way, this is not a poor-me-I-but-triumphed-anyway-through-brilliance-and-gumption thing; it’s a we-all-learned-blindly-because-it-was-the-only-option thing. The internet, if I may say this diplomatically and in hushed tones, didn’t exist.

So I stumbled around mighty blindly for a long time, and my learning curve was slow because it was almost entirely trial-and-error. I’d make an entire guitar and maybe learn something; I’d make another guitar and maybe learn something else. After five years of this I became aware of having almost no real control over my craft -- which is a statement that people who sign up for my classes are honest enough to tell me has been their own situation. Technically, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t know enough things, but I didn’t know The Rules. I could assemble a guitar body, of course; most of you out there reading this can already do that. You will understand when I say that when my next guitar sounded worse than my last one (for no known reason!!!) I was totally confused. I would have given my pancreas and my DNA for the internet and the ability to log onto a lutherie discussion forum, ask a question, and get four answers.

Anyway, every now and then I’d have an ‘ah-hah!’ moment when I had insight and saw a bit of the truth about One Of The Rules. (Maybe a bit like James Orr's experience, reported in this very forum.) Those experiences were, and are, like finding a diamond on the sidewalk. They were better than sex. I actually had sex sometimes, but I’d have an insight only rarely, and these bits of the truth seemed more valuable if only because of that. My own learning curve was therefore one of slow unfolding of a mystery, if I can put it like that without sounding weird. But lutherie has been that, for me: a slowly unfolding mystery that I’ve wrestled with. In any event, I want my books and DVD to be like a well that you can get water from for years, and not an expensive one-way ticket to your next book or class or DVD.

If, for you, lutherie is something you want to master quickly, and you don’t want to waste time with details and such, then you’ll wind up in a different place than I’m in. As for those who are looking for specialized specific techniques, are two entire chapters on the specific ways of using tap tones and voicing the guitar not sufficient?

I think that a teacher should value what he teaches; I’m seeking/hoping to engage the reader, rather than to tell him what to do. Look: I’ve already mentioned how we old timers didn’t have the resources that are freely available today; a man of lesser moral character than myself might well pull out that old chestnut about how ‘you youngsters have it soooooo much easier than we old timers did’. Well . . . this may be true, technically. But the flip side is that today knowledge is pretty cheap. It’s available for the mere asking now that you can log onto a discussion forum, google, wikipedia, or just buy a book or DVD. Information is easily traded. And it is also, in the process, cheapened.

An unrecognized benefit of a dismally slow learning process such as my own was is that once you are lucky enough to learn something it gets internalized in a deep way. Learning is valuable to anyone, anywhere, if it’s cost any real work to obtain. It’s no different from one of you giving a guitar to some prominent guitar player, as opposed to selling it to him; he will value it according to what he gave in exchange for it. This isn’t clever or dumb or fair or unfair or self-serving or cliched or anything like that; it’s how things work. Likewise, if I can get readers to think, they’ll value my books more.

O.K., enough for one session. I’ll post more soon.

Ervin Somogyi

I have these books and am reading them for the fourth or fifth time but this time I am actually reading the end notes in order as I come across the references in the text.

These books are the best bargain I have ever seen.

The way I think about the elements that make up the guitar have changed radically. The ideas contained it the books are real and they work. I have built two and a half guitars since obtaining the books and they are huge improvements over previous work. (I have high hopes for the half done one anyway). I just recently had one of my later guitars played by an accomplished professional guitarist and he was truly impressed. I don't say that I owe everything to these books because I have a brain too but I ask different questions now and see the materials differently. I think in a different way concerning the process, causes, and effects. The way I measure is different. The way I feel out the build is different. I will not adopt every process or aspect of Mr. Somogyi's style but I am forever changed in my process of thinking and feeling. I still have a long way to go but I feel that I am years ahead of where I was six months ago and the head start was reading these books.

Sorry to hijack the DVD thread-I haven't ordered it yet.

_________________
http://www.booneguitars.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stephen-Boone-guitar-builder/488208541257210

Welcome back to the OLF Ervin - it's great to have you here!

A bit of housecleaning if I may please. This thread and another one much like it are the result of efforts made by Kim of the OLF and ANZLF in which Kim invited Ervin to visit with us and talk about his new instructional offerings.

Many thanks to Kim and Ervin for thinking about us and making these threads so!

We would certainly like to hear more impressions of Ervin's new DVD and books if anyone would like to share please?

And of course if anyone has any questions for Ervin or those of us who have these materials please ask away?

Thanks

No questions from me....but most certainly a hearty welcome!

Sit....stay....we'll build you a campfire (but you gotta roast yer own marshmallows mister!)

Don't have your books yet but will someday.

Chris

_________________
There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

Welcome to the OLF Ervin and thank you again for joining us on these discussion forums which i know a quite alien to you. It takes a big man to walk new paths once settled on who we are, and i admire your courage, honesty and openness.

Hesh,

Thank you but i cannot possibly take credit for bringing Ervin from the woods so to speak. It is true that i did have some input into the collective comments of many who voiced their own observations and heart felt assessments of Ervin and his work that was most likely to have compelled Ervin to join our discussion in order to clarify uncertainties and effectively dispel those notions assumed by many from past events. That said i feel it would be a disservice for anyone so far removed from a personal audience with Ervin to NOT read the attached link in it's entirety. It is long, but worthy of your time as it explains so much that has been missing about Ervin Somogyi for so long on our forums.

A warning: Some of you may not find the style of discussion at the ANZLF to your taste, but then the ANZLF is 'our' forum so i personally shall ask no forgiveness and will express no apology if you do happen to be offended in any way. I will say that we have a way of nutting things out by presenting circumstances as we see them warts and all. This means that you will not find anything apologetic until valid clarification has been given, even if that does happen to be clarification of an incorrect assumption. Again i make no apology, rather i would like to thank Ervin Somogyi again for the statesmanship and grace he displayed in joining us at the ANZLF to finally clear the air.

http://www.anzlf.com/viewtopic.php?t=2020

Kind Regards to All

Kim

It's a real pleasure to see a thread with Ervin's work being hashed through and dissected a bit without it deteriorating. It's even more of a pleasure to have Ervin show up and so eloquently illuminate his history in direct response to the polarity of reaction to his teachings. It's very refreshing.

I was at the Healdsburg lecture and have the books. I am also an inexperienced builder. I could feel the knee-jerk reaction at first to the lack of formulas and numbers in the material. "Where's the bracing height?" But I started to notice something else happening right away also. It was feeling as though if I just hung in there and paid a little attention, some new neuron pathways were beginning to fire. I was getting fleeting glimpses of understanding that would then pass quickly. I hung in there a little more and the glimpses were expanding. When Ervin says he wants to teach people how to think, I have to say that his method is brilliant at doing exactly that!

I notice that I end up going over and over some parts of the book. My feeling is that I am ready to assimilate what that info. has to offer and before long a flash of understanding happens. Other parts of the book I find that I skip over. I don't think I am ready for that part yet. After many passes on the books, I am now discovering places that I have never read before and now find facinating. I also am re-reading places and finding new layers of deeper understanding. It is my opinion that a truly great work will show itself in time as the layers of understanding become revealed by the reader.

Thanks Ervin, your old school approach is a breath of fresh air and a much needed addition to the community.

Ervin asked me to review this DVD as well and I am in the process of writing up my thoughts. I should have that ready in a couple of days, but a quick thought about all of this....

One of the things I think the video has done extremely well is give a glimpse of Ervin's methodology. For such a long time when these conversations come up on the forum they instantly devolve into a guys-who-went-to-the-class-won't-tell-anything-about-what-they-learned.... when in fact it is such a sideways shift in the way we think and approach the instrument that to try to explain his methodology rarely does it justice - we need some serious time to apply the knowledge. To really get where he is coming from, you just need to see/hear Ervin methodically walk you through it in his insightful humorous deadpan approach. The DVD is a great introduction, and I suspect it will inspire you to dig further.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Hello, all:

Thank you for your excited and perceptive comments. Quite a few of you are well on your way to significantly changing your approach to this endlessly challenging craft, and I'm really pleased to see postings that announce multiple readings of my stuff. So far, so good. And no flameouts! Yay!

In my previous posting I’ve been commenting on my learning and teaching styles. I try to give my students and readers the kinds of learning experiences that I had -- illuminated by insight and understanding, rather than by instructional short-cuts. Mostly, I want to give them a method for making sense out of a whole lot of confusing empirical data -- with the end goal of using the knowledge to make a soundbox that doesn’t fight itself (most soundboxes really do massively fight themselves). It's obvious that a lot of you get this. I'm pretty sure I can help to accelerate people's learning curves to much, much, much, much less time than it took me.

I also mentioned that I learned a lot of my teaching style in my own formal education. I am one of those unfortunates who spent a lot of years in school. A lot of years. I got lots of formal and expensive schooling. For most of my lutherie life I’d thought that those years were completely wasted; and they certainly were as far as developing any hand skills goes; lutherie is a wonderful activity but, sadly, it hasn't traditionally done much for the intellect -- unless your interests run to the scholarly and historical. But a lot of schooling has been useful for learning how to think and teach. And in this way my readers get, uh, the benefit of all those years I spent in high school, university, and grad school.

Basically, in addition to learning a lot of facts about history, sea urchins, and Victorian poetry, I’ve had a lot of practice at Inductive Reasoning (but usually without it having been called that). Science involves that kind of thinking. You know: we look at a lot of empirical data and can make sense of them by theorizing that there’s a Principle involved . . . remember? Then one goes and test the theory.

The dictionary definition of Inductive Reasoning is: “the process of inferring or verifying a general law or principle from the observation of particular instances”. This is no more nor less than what I’ve done in my lutherie: to try to figure out what’s really going on, from looking at and thinking about tons of factoids that I’ve gotten from a steady stream of successes and failures in the work.

The flip side, Deductive Reasoning, is the predicting of specifics from a general starting point. This is extremely useful in guitar making. Once you understand the principle of the Cube Rule, for example, you can extrapolate all kinds of specific brace sizes, top thicknesses, etc. from it and stand a good chance of improving your work over your previous attempts.

Parenthetically, for those of you who are Sherlock Holmes fans, he never deduced a dang thing. He induced. He used Inductive Reasoning to go from observed facts and particular instances, to arrive at a general conclusion that encompassed all the facts. If Sherlock Holmes had really used Deductive Reasoning then he would have looked at the fact of the crime and, from the overall picture, been able to unerringly find (deduce) the specific clues to it: the smudge marks, the footprints, the broken branch, the fact that the moustache was false, and the peculiar odor of Pondicherry cigar smoke, etc. This is, alas, not so impressive if you’re a detective. But it’s pretty hot stuff if you’re a guitar maker working out of an overall picture and thereby coming up with, say, some specifics and subtleties of bracing.

O.K., enough for now. I’ll post again soon.

Ervin Somogyi

One of the things that I appreciated the most about your writing style and seeing you in person on your DVD Ervin is that your teaching style encourages the student to think for themselves and when we do we are handsomely rewarded with understanding the points that you so eloquently make. There is a rhythm too to your presentations that I had no problem following but I often found myself surprised where you led us and pleasantly so.

Not that I would ever wish this on the world but had you not been a Luthier you would have made a fantastic professor.

I've been a member of the forum for awhile but this is my first post. I'd like to start by thanking all the other members for all the great information I've gleaned from reading the posts. I first heard of Ervin Somogyi when I had the opportunity to play a couple of his guitars a couple of years ago at Dream Guitars. To say the least they were impressive. When I heard that Ervin was going to be publishing a 2 volume set of books on building guitars I preordered the set. They arrived as I was just starting to brace the top of my third guitar. I wanted to try out some different ideas for bracing the top that I had not done on the first two and was hoping the books would tell me exactly what to do. After reading through them the first time I was somewhat disappointed that they were not a recipe with measurements for making a guitar. But they got me to thinking about what I was doing with my third build and more importantly, why I was doing things the way I was and what impact it would have on the finished instrument. A light bulb went off and I realized at that point that for me Ervin's books were much more valuable than a recipe book. They provided me with a new framework for looking at building and provided me with some tools for asking myself questions about building and more importantly provided the clues about how to answer those questions. I find myself going back and rereading sections, every time I do I get something more. For a new builder who is trying to improve this is priceless.
Ervin, I want to thank you for your books. In terms of my building they have been the best money I've invested so far. I feel like I actually am starting to get a handle on how to get the sound I want from my guitars. The third guitar turned out to be my best so far. Now I'm working on number four.
Regards,
Mario Bucco

I remember years ago, that any topic that had Ervins name in it always stirred up controversy and confusion. Some felt that unless you were a "member" of the Ervin group, you were not privileged to be enlightened by his knowledge. As if there was some secret society. Many threads deteriorated because no one was giving recipes on how to build a better guitar. No one was giving data on the height of the X brace or thickness of a top. Many of our answers to questions about Ervins methods just confused people. So many people got ticked off. As stated many times in so many threads, Ervin makes you think. He changes the way you approach the entire construct of the guitar. So our responses taken out of context were just more confusing. His comments here are so nice to see. If you carefully read his comments in this thread you will get an insight on how his classes are. Just his comments on deductive and inductive reasoning are so enlightening. It is like a small window into a completely different way to look at how a guitar is built.

As a former student of his who thoroughly enjoyed his voicing class I can say that I have both his books and his DVD. At first I thought, why buy the DVD when I have the books and took his voicing class. Well, I completely enjoyed the DVD. It is a great insight into a completely different thought process in guitar building.

For those who don't have the books or the DVD's or have never taken his class. Here is my take on all three.

Personally I think a prerequisite to all three items is to first know how to build the box and to build it well. It would be like trying to run a marathon before you have learned how to take your first step. Learn to take steps first and get comfortable with it. Learn to walk and get comfortable. Learn to jog THEN learn to run. You cannot appreciate the subtile details of running when you don't know how to walk. The same applies here to a considerable degree.

1. The DVD is a great visual starting point. Once you are a runner, watch this video!!!! This lecture for some will be the first time the light bulb will start to glow. It gives you that first "ah ha" moment. It will begin to take you in a completely different direction in guitar making. A new way to think on how a guitar works and how to steer you in the right direction. It will be enlightening to take your building to a completely different level. The next logical step is to take his course

2. The voicing course is truly fantastic. The greatest investment I have ever made in this field bare none!!!! (Even though it is expensive....about the price of a guitar) The books are fantastic as well, but there is nothing like the hands on learning and sharing experience. You carve braces and see and hear the changes, you can pop off a brace and alter it and see and hear the changes. You learn to hear when you have gone too far. All this with his tremendous guidance. No spoon feeding, no regurgitation of data. Just teaching you how to think and observe. It is at this point that you will probably NEVER build from someone else's blueprints or plans ever again!!!!!!!! Not that building from plans are wrong. I am not saying that at all. If you are new here, plans are like learning to walk. A VERY important first step. It is just that with a new knowledge of how a guitar works and how to think, you won't want the plans. You will want to design the box your OWN way. Not Ervins way, but with Ervins teachings, your OWN way.

3. To me, the books are the ultimate reference source to be reviewed and reviewed and reviewed. I tried to suck as much knowledge as I could in the class but it was overwhelming. My notes were awful and as days passed, I felt like I was loosing what I learned...not the thinking process and the direction to go, but some of the details. These books are like a life saver for me. They are beautiful and well articulated and will forever allow me to "go back to class"

So in conclusion if you can afford it, all three are very valuable in very different ways.

My 2 cents

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Andy Z.
http://www.lazydogguitars.com

Hi, all:

Thank you for your appreciative and perceptive comments. It's satisfying to read that people understand the things I'm saying . . . confusing though they might seem at first. Lord knows it took me forever to have a clue about them. And the confusion is because most people have not been exposed to my particular style of teaching. I think. And this is that, frankly, I'm really not interested in teaching people how to make Somogyi guitars; I'm trying to get people to think about how to make their own.

There is such a thing as the ‘ethics of teaching and learning’ -- as compared to other concerns such as clarity, following a syllabus, technical content, efficacy, relevance, audiovisual vs. written content, style of instruction, etc. I try, in teaching, to emphasize the pertinent principles. Each one is fully equivalent to having a versatile new tool: you can do things with it that you couldn’t have imagined even thinking about the week before.

And what’s great about this is that if you have the concept then it really is your tool to use in any way that you can. But if I give students a measurement -- say, the instruction (or the ‘secret’) that the best guitars have tops that are .107” thick -- then it’s really MY measurement, not theirs. They will have discovered and claimed nothing as their own, and will be copying me or someone else. That’s bad teaching. It has to be: I happen to know that there are many, many kinds and designs of really good guitars out there, and many more yet to be made by people like you. For me to pretend that there’s only one kind of really good guitar -- mine -- would be pretty arrogant. Don’tchathink?

Speaking of teaching, there’s a part in my DVD where I think I blew it, or at least missed an opportunity. Toward the end, in the question-and-answer part, someone asked that I show them how I’d shaped my bracing to achieve my tonal results; I said no, they’d have to take my class to get information that specific and proprietary.

I might have instead pointed out that it would have been bad teaching technique for me to show my bracing -- even though it was totally based in the principles I’d just spent an hour describing. Why? Because those IDEAS, and not the specific layout of little sticks on the inside of a guitar top, are the real Holy Grail. The whole point of my lecture was exactly to make the audience aware of them and how they operate in different guitars. Had I showed ‘the Somogyi bracing’, everyone in the audience would instantly have forgotten everything I’d said and gone home and copied THAT bracing on their guitars. They would have done so without paying attention to the things that would not only help them to understand what I’d done nor why they might now be getting better results, but would furthermore suggest different ways of achieving exactly the same results -- or even better ones. No, I’m not wrong about this one: it’s lousy teaching.

I also know this because in every annual voicing class that I teach there’s someone who, halfway through, stops and slaps himself on the forehead and says something like ‘Duh, I finally get it: you’re teaching us How To Think about the guitars we’re making!’. Then they give voice to the fact that up until then they’d been wondering when the heck I was going to stop bee-essing and tell them the real information, in specifics. No, I’m not making this up, although I am paraphrasing a bit. After they get to that point, though, their real learning starts . . . and they eventually wind up on discussion forums saying mysterious things like, ‘well, it’s sort of hard to tell you about what Somogyi taught us, but it sure made me rethink my entire approach to making guitars’. But you’ve already read such postings on this forum. These people aren’t trying to be secretive or cultish; they’ve simply had a learning experience that’s been so significant for them that they don’t know where to begin. I mean, it's sort of like, uh, a forty year old man trying to explain women to a teenager: the life knowledge is in the journey, not the pep talk. So I think I’m doing something right.

Some time ago one of my students posted the specific information on a discussion site that Somogyi puts a certain pounds-and-ounces weight on his guitar tops and thins them to such-and-such deflection. I was very sorry to find out about this. First, it’s a violation of my proprietary methods, as I ask my students to not reveal specifics in public venues. Second, it devalues my methods, my thinking -- and their own learning process -- to throw out, for free, information that they’ve paid a lot of money for and that they do not yet understand the value of. Third, it wasn’t the right number, so it doesn’t do anyone any good. Fourth, even if it were the right number it’s meaningless without knowing anything about the bracing, the scale length or stringing, the body size or doming, or saddle height. And fifth, it should be obvious by now that each of these variables calls for a different number. Nope, I don’t think that revelation was a service to anyone.

Keep on reading. Keep on thinking. Buy my books and DVDs. Donate to charity.

Cheers, Ervin Somogyi

What gives? I thought I owned the rights to using the word "Cheers" as the sign-off on my postings?!

Cheers,
Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

I grew up in Oakland and realized very soon after moving away that, while cleverly disguised as a town most people want to steer clear of, it is just about the coolest town in the world. Dr. Somogyi is a crowning example of why. I haven't met Ervin Somogyi and don't know precisely where he lives, but what I say is true even if he lives in Berkeley.

<major digression warning>

From this thread I now know how to articulate what I've been trying to say to the 16 year old currently living in my house that keeps pestering me to teach him "how to play" things on guitar. He keeps wanting to be shown new things when he only was shown whatever I showed him yesterday, well, yesterday. My own guitar teacher when I was 17 always taught from this thin cheap notebook. Like a $.49 spiral bound cheap thing with notes scribbled in it. He was a Berklee graduate and very good. After months I noticed we seemed to have advanced only 2 or 3 pages. It was too incongruous; it had seemed as though we were covering a lot. Thinking either he was holding out somehow or I was really lame I said "Well how many lessons could there even be in that little notebook?" He riffled the pages for a sec. "About 6 years worth." A profound lightbulb for me. So here was like, the whole superstructure of music in this rediculous notebook. A vast forest in seed form. I adopted a very reverential posture towards that notebook (1). Information is, as Ervin says, extremely cheap and overabundant. Earned knowledge is extremely potent. Extremely. So I've always operated that way: trying to perceive patterns, inducing principles, applying those to new situations. It is literally how I stay employed. So to my new young friend I shall say: "I can't show you how to play guitar. If you want to play, you must learn to play. All I can show you are some tools you can use to that end, to discover your own guitar playing." </end digression>

Please resume your regularly scheduled programming...

Peace,
Sanaka

(1) - I was not a disciplined student, and only studied with that teacher for a year. But the fraction I gleaned in that time has carried my playing, such as it is, for these 30 years.

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...imagine there were no hypothetical situations...

You are right on track, Ervin. I don't know much about building guitars, but I know a lot about teaching. And teaching someone to think is the best thing you can do for them, but they need to be ready. I'm sure if I took your class, I'd leave really frustrated, because I don't have enough of a fluency with the building of a guitar to be able to think about it, though I've learned a lot and am improving. I've read your books and I can tell they are full of good stuff, but I can also tell there's much more I'll be able to get out of them when I'm more experienced.

Teaching someone to think is really hard for both the teacher and the student. You can't just say, "Think like this..." I was a math whiz kid and major, and when I started teaching, everyone wanted me to teach the math because I was good at it. But being good at something is very different from being a good teacher. It was hard for me because math came easily to me. When someone didn't get it, the only thing I could say was, "Well it's obvious, just think about it." Not too helpful. (I'm much better now.)

You can model and demonstrate and think out loud. You can ask questions and lead people to think in baby steps. And over time, it develops. But for thinking to develop, the student needs to have an interest and willingness to think about it and a fluency of language in the topic. Not language in the sense of vocabulary words. The sound of the wood, the stiffness, the way it flexes, understanding how it gets floppy as you thin it and stiffens when you glue sticks to it, all add up to be a language of building.

Partly, this is the problem of teaching luthiery. When the language is neither clear nor common, it makes it harder to communicate your ideas. When you are voicing your top, you may intuitively know exactly where to reduce the bracing to get the sound you want, but putting it into English is hard. The things you are trying to say are elusive. Even if you had your building down to a science and you knew exactly the exact right way to carve your brace, you can't just say, "sand it down here, here, and here 1/8 inch to bring out the bass," because there are so many variables that go into the making of that decision, and you need to make sure your student understands how every one of those things contributed to your thinking. And in my limited experience, I believe all luthiers don't fully understand what they are doing. There is still a lot of intuition involved.

Right now, most of my students are pretty good at adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions. They're able to use those skills solving simple word problems, but eventually, they'll be able to understand when and how to use those skills easily and intuitively. It's the same thing for me building guitars.

Thank you for taking the time to write your books. They won't teach me how to build a great guitar, but hopefully, they will help me develop my own thinking and language so that I can think about what I'm doing when I build. And that at least has the potential of helping me to eventually build great guitars.

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom