Official Luthiers Forum!

I have some questions that have been bugging me for quite some time now concerning the philosophy of the geometric design of top bracing. They may be covered in a book called, “Left Brain Lutherie.” Although I haven’t read it yet.
As I trace lines of a pattern on my top that was designed by another, I can’t help to wonder, “why draw here”. Why not up 10 mm or over 3mm as an example.
In the Renaissance, mathematics was the handmaiden of art, rather than the tool of technology as now. Luthiers were true artists and not mere methodists, as I seem to be as I merely trace a line on wood. My purpose here is not to say we are not artists for I have seen beautiful works of art in every guitar here. Instead, understand how the original makers designed them.
Strobel said, “Almost every new maker at some point wants to make his own model, stamped with his own unique personality. Experienced makers usually are no longer afflicted with this need. They have learned that, apart from novelties being generally unsalable, the constraints on the design are so narrow and the number of excellent makers of the past so many, that it would be unrealistic, not to say presumptuous, to come up with something better without first studying the offerings of the past. Having done this, the maker decides to either follow an outstanding example, or to integrate selected features into his own model, but without any radical departure from time proven designs.” I quoted Strobel for the fact that almost every idea has been tried and it’s not a bad idea to go on ahead and trace proven lines of time. I don’t think I could improve upon what has stood the test of time. Although, others say the creative process has no boundaries. No rules, no guidelines, anything goes. Creative work comes from free-thinking craftspeople who think, envision and dream.
Anyway, getting back to the philosophy of the bracing design. An early Dutch manuscript of a lute was found with drawings and instructions approx 1450 AD by Henri Arnault of Zwolle that were drawn with compass and rule. The violin has the Golden Division of the body length, and the middle width and “stop” derived from the 5/4 division. What does the guitar have that is equivalent? How did C.F. Martin derive at the idea that this is where he will glue the X-brace? How did he come up with the mathematical distances of tone and finger braces?
As I studied the plans John Hall sent me, it occurred to me that if you follow the lines on down from the finger braces they seem to intersect at the mid-line forming a small diamond shape near the tone bars but dead center. His plans are as such. Finger braces on each side is 61 mm to the first one and 121 mm to the second one being measure from the intersection of the upper X-brace. X-brace intersection starts 32 mm from bottom of sound hole. Bridge plate starts 28 mm from bottom of intersection on the X-brace. What other mysteries might be found if one studied in detail. I’m sure great men have.
Anyway, I guess I could go on and ask more silly questions but sometime my analytical mind takes over and I have to stop and go….huh?

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

From architecture, to movement of celestial bodies, to wavelengths of colors, to musical tones, etc., so many people yearn to find some pure, ideal sense of natural cosmic harmony. Pi, Phi, golden ratio, simple ratios...

My advice - don't put too much thought in to it. You'll be chasing this romantic ideal forever. It's a luthier's alchemy.

Things develop by trial and error, and can end up so close to coinciding with some pure geometric philosophy that you just think that there has to be some divine form behind it.

There ain't.

If it doesn't drive you mad though, it can be awful fun to think that there is! I'm sure some luthiers have even discovered an ineffable harmonic truth to it's design, most likely with chemical assistance.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Chuck, since you appear to have some free time, here's a site to get you started:
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/pyramid.htm

You could do for the C.F. Martin design what John Taylor did for pyramidic numerology.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

And let's not forget lattice bracing either ala Somogyi.

just for a bit of trivia .. martin was not the first to use x bracing ....johann stauffer .. whom martin apprenticed with ......20 years before cf was on the scene jody

I think the reason we draw braces where we do is because "they just look right" where we put them. Stuff that is drawn according to the golden ratio is typified by "just looking right". You don't have to calculate everything out to design something that complies with this - or other - mathematic rules of thumb for composition.

And another thing...who says technology is not an art?!? I'm just as impressed by the body of a Ferrari as I am by the engine...

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

i remember studying that pyramid stuff in Old Testament class in college... ^^;; It bugs me out to no end. As for bracing philosophy, I'm certain that there's a definite science behind it if one really thinks enough about it and studies it. I'd imagine it is similar to the philosophy and science of architecture. The problem with any applied science however, is the need for control. I feel that the number of variables in lutherie at the moment are far too many for our current science and technology to accurately predict an outcome. You can use the same exact bracing pattern in two guitars, but depending on the type of wood, density, distribution and arrangement of fibers, or even the amount of glue used, you could easily get two completely different results. Until enough of these factors can be controlled with some degree of consistency, it seems to me like there's not too much of a point delving deep into it. After all, theory without practical application is a bit pointless in the end... =/ I'd imagine that most of the bracing patterns created to date were a result of trial and error rather than some sort of understanding of some of the overbearing principles of acoustic behavior in guitars. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I assume so simply because the guitar is still such a young instrument and as such, there hasn't been a great deal of time spent yet in studying the structural and acoustic characteristics and behavior of the instrument. I'm sure over time we'll see more progress and evolution, but it'll take time.

Thanks for your responces guys, you've been predictable.

Well, it seems I've touched on a tender lutherie nerve here that maybe none have dared to travel. Far be it from me to rock the beliefs that being a methologist is comfortable.

I draw bracing patterns on the wood not because it looks right, but because that is where someone else thought it looked right and it was on the plan I bought.

Michael and Todd, thanks for opening your mind a minute for your consideration. I don't want to change anything because I don't have the experience of gluing on piece after piece of wood that Howard has. Not yet anyway.

Just a question to see if we think.

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

Todd -
Thanks for your reply. This has been bugging me since I first found out there were sticks glued inside there. It makes a lot more sense now.

Miek

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Mike Lindstrom

Good reading if one is interested in the geometrical background of European lutherie way back then:

Geometry, Proportion and the Art of Lutherie by Kevin Coates

Unfortunately it is out of press so it may be quite hard to find these days, though.

This is an interesting concept:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

It's a function of time, but I think it relates to the variables involved in guitar building.

Maybe this is where experience and intuition come in to play.

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Horton, MI

Curtate cycloids used for the arching of some old master violins and more recently by Al Carruth on an Archtop guitar are worth checking out.

I'm not sure that I should step in here, but...



From a philosophical standpoint, I'm wondering why would one want total control over the above factors? It seems to me that a goodly portion of this craft of lutherie is the art of creation and I for one, want to be a little bit surprised by my creations once in a while! I think that reducing a bracing pattern to a set geometry might be something that factories would want to aspire to (Taylor and Martin), but even the best of these assembly-line guitars are a bit sterile when compared to a well crafted custom guitar. I like the feel of something that was once alive in my hands; I like the uniqueness of each piece of wood. I like the "Je ne sais quois" of art butting its head just a little way into the craft of gluing up a wooden box.
I like a surprise once in a while, even if it isn't in the direction that I was pointed!

I'm done with philosophy for a while now and mean no offense to anyone --

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

Jim, this is exactly what I was hoping for. Please, no offense taken here.

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

It's late so I will probably be wordy. if you want to avoid the reiteration and repetitive nonsense so blatantly evident in my writing, then skip down and read the summary.

Well, I suppose this all depends on your philosophy. Does control over variables necessarily take away from art? If anything, I think it only enhances it because it then becomes completely your expression that is reflected in the completed work. It's not about reducing a bracing pattern to a set geometry, but understanding how and why the guitar reacts to the particular brace geometries. From that understanding, you could manipulate the instrument to sound however you want (in theory given a complete handle on all of the unknowns). Of course in a factory setting, this means that all of their guitars in a given model line would sound exactly the same which is great for their purposes, but in the case of the individual craftsman, it also means that he is better able to accurately produce the tone he wants, which need not necessarily be identical from model to model.

Which is the greater reflection of the artist? An ink blot or a sketch? I believe the ink blot is more of a reflection of probability and the characteristics of the ink than it is of the artist. Why? Simply because of the amount of control you have with a pencil vs. the amount of control you have with dropping some ink into a paper and folding it in half. This is not to say that an ink blot can't be art. All I'm saying is that the blot of ink doesn't reflect the artist's precise intention behind it as much as a sketch or a painting (unless "random" is the intention) which still really isn't a real intention at all if you think about it. Feel free to disagree with me if you will.

I think the contradiction here is that you're saying that lutherie is about "the art of creation" yet at the same time, you're willing to relinquish some of that ability to create (in precision) to mother nature and random chance. So the tone of your guitar, therefore, is not something you created but rather what happened to result from the building process. Granted, we do not have sufficient knowledge and precision to truly produce the exact results we want or intended, but the point remains. As of now, we build based on plans and experience, but the true result we are working toward is something that we do not see or hear until the day it is done. Therefore, that result is not something what was of our intention. It may be close, but never exactly as we had pictured it in our mind (assuming that we do picture it in our mind at all).

I don't truly believe that there is a single luthier in the world that would really prefer to be unable (an option in the end) to spread his glue the exact way he wants or to make sure the joints fit together exactly the way he wants or to know exactly how the density and thickness of the wood will affect the final product and to what degree if given the choice. I believe that it is human nature to at least want to know, even if you are unwilling to apply the techniques and knowledge. By nature, we want to understand. Why do we use a drill press or table saw? Why do we measure to such precise measurements? Every bit of progress in the field of tools and lutherie has been for increased precision and control to do PRECISELY what we want.

I think that when we start to over-spiritualize a craft, it hinders progress. Instead of saying that factory guitars sound sterile and custom guitars sound alive, we should be analyzing what exactly gives us the impression of something being sterile vs. alive in terms of acoustics and tone. It's not about a hand built guitar vs. a factory built guitar. It's about one guitar behaving in one way and possessing certain acoustic properties while the other behaves another way and possesses different acoustic properties. If we could identify what exactly makes a guitar sound alive and figure out how such a sound is achieved, then theoretically every factory guitar can sound just as good as today's hand built guitars. Of course this would be horrible for the custom guitar industry, but yeah...

At any rate, this has been my late and sleepless night post. Maybe I should get some sleeping pills or something because I've just been having massive trouble falling asleep.

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SUMMARY OF EVERYTHING ABOVE:

1. There's no "magic" or "voodoo" in lutherie or any other craft.
2. Everything is science in reality and it's physical facts that ultimately define an instrument.
3. What we feel and hear when we play a guitar is a reaction to a physical reality. (frequency of sound waves, density of wood, fitting of the joints, acoustic behavior, etc.)
4. Because of this, understanding the cause and nature of those realities helps us to better express the reality that we want expressed in any particular guitar.
5. Understanding alone is not enough. We need to have a higher level of precision and control over the various aspects of a build in order to truly put our understanding into process and achieve the exact results we want.
6. Since this precise understanding helps us better express ourselves in each guitar, it doesn't detract from the ART of lutherie, but instead only further adds to it.
7. While all of this would be lovely, it's a bit pointless to dwell too much on it because we're not yet at a point where we could make any such knowledge or understanding useful... but to say that it wouldn't be useful or desirable, however, is just plain wrong in my opinion.

So in short:

- Michael Jin

The views expressed above belong solely to Michael Jin and do not necessarily reflect the views of this forum or anyone else in it. No offense was intended toward anyone, but if you feel offended feel free to flame away.

???
I love those definite statements…
There IS magic in lutherie, as well as everywhere in nature.
Science accounts for what we know about the universe, very little. It is a useful process but has become a religion, the religion of perpetual progress.
You got #2 in reverse: reality exists, no matter what, and science helps us make sense of it, like religion.
I doubt whatever physical facts defining an instrument can fully be understood, too many variables, including the player.
In other words the unknown unknowns far outstrip the known unknowns, themselves far outstripping the known knowns.
I am afraid it will be forever so.

"Belief in progress in the prozac of the thinking classes." John N. Gray

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

What the hey!....



In general, I agree with Michael's point number 3. In my mind the rub is in "density of wood", though more properly we should probably be speaking of the Young's Modulus. Wood was alive and enjoys (suffers?? ) the vagaries of life -- as we all do. Wood is a very cool engineering material, but is varies from piece to piece, from inch to inch (cm to cm) along the same piece of brace wood, etc. There comes a point when you just have to feel it and listen to it and in my mind, that negates some portion of point number 5. I think that good luthiers throughout the ages have come to an understanding to achieve the results they've wanted without reducing the design to a total mechanical engineering exercise. The Cremona violins come to mind as incredible instruments built by artisan/craftsmen.

It sort of reminds me of weather prediction. In the beginning of the 20th century, meteorology was finding its way as a science, calculations were done by hand and the forecaster's were correct about half the time. Fast forward 100 years. The mathematical models are much more precise, there is a greater understanding of the vagaries of weather specific motion, the forecaster's have access to some pretty incredible computing power and, well, the "long range" forecasts (ten days, or so) are now correct about half the time.

To me, there is some ill-defined limit where more number crunching and attempts at "control" are counterproductive -- in a diminishing returns sort of way. It still comes down to feeling and listening to the wood as you are building. With experience, the artistic side of your brain will do you well as you strive to come closer to what you perceive as perfection -- usually! -- and that's the surprise I mentioned before. Its not just throwing stuff together to see what happens, but its feeling the wood, taking a shaving off here or there on the braces. One could spend a lifetime chasing a mathematical model of this. Me, I prefer to build guitars.

I don't think of artistic creation as voodoo or magic, its just me listening to my heart once in a while. As far as voodoo and magic go, I can only refer one to a study of quantum mechanics -- more than enough voodoo to go around.

There are lots of ways to look at this stuff, lots of ways to go about making guitars, lots of ways of coming to understand ourselves -- none of them are right and none of them are wrong, only different!

My $0.02

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

Farmers always had a good sense of the weather for their specific area, their senses were (are) tuned to patterns, pressure, humidity and so on… It's not difficult, one has to pay attention to the elements, animal behaviour and get better at it until it seems obvious. Animals and non-civilized humans are totally in tune with their environment and need no weatherman…
The more we rely on prosthetic devices, the less we use our senses, the worse they become and the less we trust them. Yes a GPS device can be useful, but isn't it better to develop good orientation, sharp observation and good sense of time?
Lutherie is the same.
One scientific observation: humans have been toolmakers for at least 2.6 million years. The size of the brain, shape of hands and relationship between goal, eye and hand is indeed part of our physiology. This is how we experience the world.
Modern scientific process is at most 4 centuries old.
Measurements help, they put us in the ballpark. But senses are our main tool, the one that needs perpetual sharpening. Otherwise it gets dull.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

The science of musical instruments falls under the category of physics. Most people do not understand what physics is even though they have taken it in high school. It is easy to miss the point because we tend to try to understand the world around us by analogy. Here is a simple description of physics:
1. Measure some physical phenomenon. (example: falling spheres)
2. Create a mathematical equation that gives you exactly the same an values as you measured. (this is your theory)
3. Improve your measurement technique ( example: drop your spheres in an evacuated cylinder)
4. goto step 1.

Notice that the process never stops. The theory is just a mathematical equation. It doesn't have to make "sense". It just has to give the same answers as what was observed. (ex. quantum mechanics). Step 3 may be to construct a whole new experiment to measure the same phenomenon and this were where long standing theories may have to be discarded and a new theory created. In quantum mechanics, every test that shows light is a wave succeeds. It is only when you create a test that shows that light is a particle and it also succeeds that you have to completely rethink your theory (equation) and come up with a new one that takes into account the new test results.

How does this relate to science in lutherie? The process is the same . BUT! Our ability to take meaningful measurements is limited. The data we get is complex. We can't easily repeat our experiments because we can't build the exact same guitar twice. Is it hopeless? I don't think so. What we need to do is to take every measurement that we can think of for as many instruments as we can. Try to draw a correlation between the values that we measure and the final performance of the instrument. The final performance is then judged subjectively and then we try to draw a correlation between the subjective observations and the objective measurements.

Another problem, and this is a very tough nut to crack, is that we don't have a definition of "good". Watch the customers at a music store try out different guitars. One player will pick up an instrument, strum it, say yuck!, and move on. Another customer will try the same instrument and decide that it is wonderful and he has to have it.

This is not something that every builder should, can, or wants to do. It is for certain builders who have the inclination and temperament to do it. Scientific lutherie is a sub discipline of lutherie and will remain that way. From time to time, the results that the scientific luthiers produce will be incorportated into the work of other builders. (For example, several traditional violin builders are using curtate cycloids for their arches).

I take Michael here not to be making a claim about whether science as a body of knowledge will succeed in mirroring each and all states of affairs in the universe. Rather I take him to be stating his belief in physicalism--that the totality of states of affairs in the universe can be described in physical (value-neutral) terms. More simply, that there is nothing supernatural that needs to be taken into account in order to have the kind of understanding that would allow the prediction of all future states of affairs based upon a full description of all present states.

The physicalist view was neatly summed up by the great French scientist Laplace in his famous exchange with Napoleon Bonaparte. Laplace presented Napoleon with his five volume treatise in which he described all the known movements of objects in the universe by means of differential equations (thereby transforming Newton's geometric explanations into the language of calculus). Napoleon remarked that he was surprised to find a treatise purporting to describe the entire workings of the universe that made no reference to God. Laplace replied (in French, of course), "I have no need for that hypothesis."

Nowadays all science proceeds from the assumption of physicalism; this was not true in Laplace's day. Even Newton had speculated that God regularly intervenes in the physical universe to keep things moving according to plan. Michael was, if I may presume to speak for him, suggesting that our references to "art" as opposed to science should be taken as referring to our present ignorance rather than to some variation on the God hypothesis.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

While I agree that the senses are important (I've got one helluva calibrated eye after a few years machining), but I don't think you can really discount scientific process as compared to the sharpening of the senses and intuition. Four hundred years ago we were lighting people on fire if there was a bad harvest, after millions of years of observing the weather. I claim that adding the feedback of a scientific approach to that of your own senses allows you to calibrate them much more sharply.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Descartes and Newton were devout Christians and set to discover "God's work"… What an irony now when conventional wisdom tends to pit science against religious belief. We tend to forget that humans are not rational beings.
The magic, in my mind, is the secret working of experience. Perhaps this is what's called inspiration. Nothing to do with God, depending on your beliefs, of course…
It seems like a variation of the old discussion, scientific method vs. empiricism.
Will moving this of that brace 3/64" here of there change anything?
Theoretically when everything else is in place, but in practice, for a beginning so many other incalculable factors are in play that no, probably not.

And psychopathology…

I disagree with this. Again and again educated ears tend to gravitate toward the same guitar(s) in a given group of instruments. As for uneducated ears (beginners) they tend to gravitate toward what's easier to play, or strike their fancy in terms of aesthetics.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I am not, it's not an either/or proposition!

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Consider two guitars. One is a Martin D28 and the other is a Gibson Hummingbird. These two instruments sound like they came from different planets. I tend to like the Martin sound while my neighbor loves his Hummingbird. We are both looking for something completely different in a guitar. If I made a guitar and it ended up sounding like a Hummingbird, it would end up in the fireplace. I'm not arguing that my neighbor is wrong in his tastes (a bit misguided perhaps) but his definition of a "good" sounding guitar is very different from mine.

You made this up as an example, right? You don't know actually know someone who likes a Hummingbird......

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.