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How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
http://luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=50482		 Page 2 of 2
Author:  Freeman [ Wed Apr 04, 2018 9:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
talladam wrote:
Well I was feeling like the question was a bust at first, but now I think I'm learning some things.


I don't think the question was a bust, and I think it segues into three other questions.

First - when people watch/listen to that vid do they hear differences between those guitars? Darn tootin', they may not be the three most beautiful guitars in the universe but the do sound different. In fact, they sound pretty iconic - I can close my eyes each time he plays a riff and identify the guitar he is playing on. The Taylor sounds like a Taylor, whatever that means. Is it interesting that Taylor has "revoiced" their guitar several times and they still sound like Taylors. When Andy Powers came to be the luthier in charge one of the first things he did was create the Grand Symphony model (x16) - bigger body, bigger air volume, probably trying to add a bit of bass, eh? Still sounds like a Taylor. And now they have patented a great new bracing pattern. Does it seem like Taylor is still trying to find their tone.

The Martin dread sounds like a dread. At last years GAL Steel String Listening session their was one dread (out of 35 guitars!) - the audience agreed that even tho it was built out of some unusual wood it sounded like a dread.,

And to my ears, the Collings OM sounds like an OM. It could have been a Martin OM or a Froggy or a Franklin or even the guitar that I just finished - they are all OM'ish.

Second - can I put into words what I hear? I can try, but its like describing "red" or the scent of a rose or why my partner is beautiful. Some of our members can tell you the amount of upper partials that one guitar has, or how quickly a note decays or sustains. I can't - I just try to use the same terms I hear other use, hope they mean the same things.

Third - can you (or I) build a guitar like any of those? Yes and no. There are several very good sets of plans for different OM's and dreads (and I suppose if someone cared they could draw up a GS) - its pretty easy to build something exactly to those plans. For a mandolin builder there are some pretty good plans for Lloar signed F5 - top graduations, tone bar sizes, yadda yadda. If you have the building chops you can build a 1923 Lloar F5. Will it sound like Crusher or Monroe's mando - probably not.

As a beginning builder your bigger problems with be getting the neck geometry right and joints done properly. You'll struggle with binding and finish and fretwork. You'll wake up a dozen times thinking "did I completely screw this" or "how the heck am I going to do that". So, no matter how good your plans are, you can't build the same guitar.

Its interesting that the" three most beautiful guitars in the world" are off the shelf production items. Spendy little jewels, yes, but I've played a Collings OM and a friend has a Martin OM-42 (same bling as the dread in the vid). Among our little group I would expect more - I would expect a good builder, a true luthier (I don't use that title lightly and I certainly don't apply it to myself) will know how to deviate from those plans - to choose slightly stiffer braces because the top isn't quite as stiff as the last one he built, to tap and flex and understand what the wood is telling him. I would expect a Grand Symphony or a rosewood dreadnaught or an Orchestra Model built by one of our members to be even more beautiful than any of the guitar in the video.

I would expect them to be truly beautiful - in looks, in tone, in every way
Author:  Haans [ Thu Apr 05, 2018 6:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
talladam wrote:
I actually loved that he polished the metal label on his case. He just treats them like his babies.


Sorry, you lost me on that one. It ain't about the label.
Let the others 'splain it to you...
Author:  jfmckenna [ Thu Apr 05, 2018 8:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
I thought the video was good because of the way he blended in the same runs on the guitars. I could do without the eye catching photography techniques though :) But it's a You Tube video so it's never going to be really good. None the less when 'looking' for certain tones in guitars there are certain things that stick out and one might even argue that if they stick out even in a crappy You Tube video then that might indicate that the guitar has that tonal property in full force. You could hear the differences in those instruments mostly on the basis of what was already discussed, a Dred is going to sound different then an OM and so on.
Author:  SteveCourtright [ Thu Apr 05, 2018 8:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Lots of interesting and fun comments here.

My wife had a career in training subjects to evaluate food - taste, texture, etc. and thanks to U.C. Davis (due to influence of the wine industry) the techniques are now considered a science. It's called "organoleptic" evaluation, which technically is not limited to taste.

The same approach could be used in evaluating sound but I am not aware of (in my limited experience), a standardized set of descriptors for sound. Technical data is useful but is not easily correlated to whether a sound is preferred or pleasing or whatever. There is no mystery that sound quality is subjective. So we each form our own opinions as to the qualities or characteristics of sound using our own language.

While I think it's hard to describe sound in absolute terms, it's clearly easier to compare sounds in relative terms. E.G., this guitar has more bass. This has more treble. This has a richer midrange. Some other descriptors don't address the tone. Some guitars are punchy, or louder, or have a bell-like quality, or more separation of the notes. I could go on but you get the idea. I bet this topic is the subject of more than a few graduate papers.

I spend time each month or so playing a bunch of guitars to try to burn the range of sounds that the instrument is capable of into my memory. Fortunately, I live in place with lots of great guitar stores and some great builders. That way I have my own internally calibrated standards for a good sounding instrument. At this point I have a pretty good idea what I am shooting for. But don't ask me to describe it except in general terms!!!
Author:  doncaparker [ Thu Apr 05, 2018 11:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Another factor to consider, not so much in terms of the descriptive vocabulary, but more for what we like or prefer:

Sometimes, a guitar sounds "good" to me because it sounds like a guitar I have heard on a recording that I enjoy. This is a more obvious factor when we are talking about electric guitars, but I think it can apply to acoustic guitars, too. Think of Nick Drake's guitar on Pink Moon. If an acoustic guitar captures that tone (or any other very distinctive recorded acoustic guitar tone), then it triggers a memory of that recording, and assuming I like that tone, I tend to view that guitar in a positive light. Someone who does not share that reference point, or who does not like it all that much, might find that guitar to be excessively dark and boomy.
Author:  talladam [ Thu Apr 05, 2018 6:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Man I love Pink Moon. I'd better listen to that one again. I'll just pull out my vinyl.. oops I mean Spotify :)
I do try to play as many nice instruments in person as possible and this mostly happens at the acoustic music camp I go to (FAMI shout out for Calgarians). I think I may have been concentrated more on mandolins though. And its funny, I feel like I actually know what I like a lot more specifically for mandolins. Maybe I've just got to play more guitars. Maybe I'm not paying attention at the jams, but I see more high end custom build mandolins and more Collings, Gibson, Martin ect guitars.
Author:  Freeman [ Thu Apr 05, 2018 7:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
talladam wrote:
And its funny, I feel like I actually know what I like a lot more specifically for mandolins.


So, can you tell me in your words the difference in sound between an F style and an A. Between oval soundhole and f-holes? How about between a carved top and a flat top mando? Tater bug, bowl back, flat or carved? There have been reams written on what Lloyd Loar was hearing when he voiced his signature instruments - do you hear it too? Can you describe it?

And if you were to build a mandolin right now, could you achieve the sound you hear and want?

I'm not being a smart aleck - I've built one mandolin and spent hours poring over Roger Sminoff's books, tapping and tuning and not at all sure what I was hearing. Several good mandolin players have played it and said it sounds pretty much like a mandolin, but I really don't know whats good and whats not.

Image
Author:  Trevor Gore [ Fri Apr 06, 2018 7:00 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
talladam wrote:
I'm a new builder and I have struggled a bit with trying to decide what exactly I like in an acoustic guitar...

Back in 2007, Ra Inta did a PhD in guitar acoustics with Joe Wolfe at the University of NSW. One aspect of the work was to try to normalise a set of descriptors of guitar sound, i.e to try to discern what descriptors like "muddy", woody" etc. and other common language terms actually meant in the context of describing guitar sounds. This piece of work, despite some heavy statistical analysis, concluded that these everyday terms were essentially meaningless, in that they had no common meaning that was useful.

When I was writing the book, I needed a set of words to describe guitar sounds and after Ra's experience this was clearly not going to be derived from common usage terms. So I attacked the problem from the other side and invented my own vocabulary rather than trying to rationalise everyone else's terms. I split the sound spectrum up into bands that roughly corresponded with the guitar's major modal resonances, then filtered guitar sounds through various analogue and digital parametric filters so I (and a listening panel) could hear what happened if the sounds around the band under analysis were suppressed or augmented, then gave a name to the band describing what was heard. So, for example, the band centred on 200 Hz (~ the frequency of a guitar's main top resonance) we called "weight" because if the frequencies around 200Hz are attenuated or amplified the guitar's sound as heard looses or gains weight. Similarly, the band centred on 1000Hz we called "nose", because over-emphasis of this band give a guitar a very nasal sound. This sort of vocabulary is very useful because not only do you get a descriptor of the sound which is easy to relate to at a personal level, you also get the frequency range it applies to, the modal resonance it relates to and hence a lot of guidance as to what needs to be done to a guitar to change it's sound by altering the woodwork that influences that mode; because, at the end of the day, what we mainly hear in a guitar is directly related to the activity of a relatively small number of modal resonances. How I did theses tests and how to apply the insight to alter a guitar's sound is detailed in the book.

Whether this terminology will ever get adopted as a standard remains to be seen, but it's a good place to start.

One thing I'd point out when listening to recorded guitar, is that whilst it can be quite difficult on occasions to pick the differences between two recorded guitars, virtually irrespective of the technology used, when the same guitar is heard both live and recorded there is never any doubt as to which sound is which. Which just goes to show how poor at reproducing a truly natural sound even the best technology still is. It's worth trying the live vs. recorded listening test, just to try to explain to yourself what the difference you hear actually is.
Author:  Alan Carruth [ Fri Apr 06, 2018 12:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Trevor Gore wrote:
"One thing I'd point out when listening to recorded guitar, is that whilst it can be quite difficult on occasions to pick the differences between two recorded guitars, virtually irrespective of the technology used, when the same guitar is heard both live and recorded there is never any doubt as to which sound is which. "

Right. IMO that's because the guitar is a very complex instrument, and intentionally so. Every part of the guitar is putting out sound at some frequency or another. The soundboard has lots of different resonant frequencies, and for each one it's vibrating in a different way, with different parts moving in different ways. All of the sounds coming off each of those small top areas (and the hole, and the sides and back , and...) , add up in a complex way, sometimes reinforcing each other and sometimes cancelling out. This can add up at some frequencies to a 'beam' of sound, sort of like the beam of light from a light house, going out in some direction. As the guitarist or the listener move those beams move around, and you hear them more or less, as you would the light from a light house.

Your ears find that all very interesting. The senses are, after all, set up to detect changes and discount things that stay the same.

Amplifying the guitar necessarily requires simplifying things. A single pickup, no matter how good in itself, picks up only part of the sound: it's like watching a ball game through a hole in the fence, you can only see part of the field. Adding in another pickup can help, but it would take a fair number to really mimic the complexity of a decent guitar. Even then you'd lose a lot, simply because you don't have enough 'speakers'. Plugging in in the usual way takes all of that complexity and squeezes it out of a single speaker, like toothpaste from a tube. Even without compression you'd still be hard pressed to make a recording that would do justice to a real guitar.
Author:  talladam [ Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Freeman: Wow, beautiful Mando. yeah, I think I could compare mandolins better in my own words, better being compared to myself with guitars. I most definitely couldn't build one that sounds a particular way. I can definitely say,"this mandolin has a nice woody chop" but what I'd like to be able to say is, "this mandolin is a bit lacking in upper mids on the e strings." Or something along those lines. That's part of why I made this thread: I would like to have an ear that could separate out that stuff and the language to communicate it to others.
Author:  arie [ Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
practice, experience, etc...
Author:  Andrew Berry [ Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
This thread reminds me of a time that I stopped into a store to play a custom-built guitar. It was the best sounding guitar I've ever played. When we walked out, my bride told me that the sound from in front was weak and awful. The guitar had a sound port and the experience to the player was fantastic. Now I always want to try to hear a guitar both as a player and as an audience in order to try to evaluate the sound.
Author:  Haans [ Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
talladam wrote:
That's part of why I made this thread: I would like to have an ear that could separate out that stuff and the language to communicate it to others.


The "ear" takes years to get...the language takes forever.
Author:  Brad Goodman [ Sat Jul 14, 2018 10:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Haans wrote:
talladam wrote:
That's part of why I made this thread: I would like to have an ear that could separate out that stuff and the language to communicate it to others.


The "ear" takes years to get...the language takes forever.


According to the Philosopher Ludwig Witgenstein it doesn't take forever, it is impossible........
Author:  Haans [ Sat Jul 14, 2018 1:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Figures he had perfect pitch and was a mathematician. Might apply that to thinking in general while we are pounding in our "imperfectly spaced" frets.
Nah, I'm good with approximate...
Author:  mike-p [ Sat Jul 21, 2018 7:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
If you want to know what tone you like then what do the players you like play?maybe build some of those. I'm trying to build a guitar which makes me sound like Blind Blake....Err...I'll let you know if it works!
Author:  RNRoberts [ Tue Jul 31, 2018 7:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Strongly recommend buying "This is your brain on Music" by Daniel J Levitin. It's from way back in 2006 but is the best help at understanding what you are trying to get your ears (brain) to do that you could possibly find. Also packed full of fascinating aural non-musical facts. Any one who wants to truly understand what they are hearing should give it a read.
Author:  banjopicks [ Wed Aug 01, 2018 2:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: How do I describe my ideal guitar tone?
Haans wrote:
The first thing you might think about is the music you are playing or want to play. Bluegrass almost demands a dread, fingerpickers demand clarity and definition and strummers...well, I don't know, herringbone?


bliss Yeah, my first guitar will have herringbone bliss It's cheaper than all that zipflex and abalone. Oh and scalloped braces. I don't know any better at this point. :?
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