Playing Music to Your Guitar?

cosmicmechanic
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2009 8:39 am
Status: Offline

Mon Oct 29, 2012 6:24 am

This video includes a discussion about how guitars "open up" about 14 min into it.

The main subject of the video is how different tonewoods affect the sound of a guitar.
I found the whole of it to be enlightening, hope you do too.



wrench
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:12 pm
Status: Offline

Mon Oct 29, 2012 1:46 pm

cosmicmechanic wrote:
This video includes a discussion about how guitars "open up" about 14 min into it.

The main subject of the video is how different tonewoods affect the sound of a guitar.
I found the whole of it to be enlightening, hope you do too.
I have a couple of hours to kill this afternoon on Hurricane Sandy's dime, so I'd like to weigh in on this video.

I feel like I'm trying to put the genie back in the bottle. I know these guys. Two years ago I had a long conversation with Richard Caruso about using spectrum analysis to analyze the sound of guitars. I can't say for certain, but it appears to me he is using spectrum analysis to sell guitars, and I have no objection to that. The issue I have with these videos is that the graphs do not seem to accurately depict the sound of the instrument being played. Most of these guitars showed strong signals all the way to 20kHz, and the graph was nearly flat from 60Hz to 20kHz. Even the laminated Yamaha. In my thousands of hours of sound analysis on acoustic guitars, 20kHz signals do not occur often, and when they do, they usually sound really bad, and they are caused by defects. And it's hard to get a guitar to make a strong low E at 82Hz much less a strong 60Hz, which is a note not even played on a guitar, so I have some questions about the source of that signal as well. I also don't agree with all the conclusions and descriptions they glean from the graphs. You would see even more of this in the first video. Their descriptions are understandable enough, but I think they don't have a real good handle on the science.

To even the scale here, I don't think bad at all of Richard Caruso. He has a great store with a lot of high end guitars, and he has been in the business his entire life. He really knows his stuff - in a qualitative manner, not a scientific one. While I don't think his science will be published in Scientific American, I applaud his effort to integrate the quantitative and qualitative descriptions of guitar sound. I am not of the opinion he is a great scientist, but I am of the opinion he is a premiere dealer of premium guitars. By the way, I played some of the guitars in both of the Acoustic Addict videos, and they are some seriously nice instruments.

Speaking of nice instruments, listen to the sound quality of the '93 Taylor dreadnought in the pilot video.



If you listen to this, I think you just heard a really nice guitar really opened up.

While we don't really know what happens to wood when it opens up, I would describe it as this: a reduction in stiffness without a change in natural frequency, which requires a change in mass, and results in higher amplitudes of vibration and longer sustain through a longer, flatter, decay profile. I think the fungal method Chris described is the most effective of the artificial methods of aging, but to my ear, there's no substitute yet for playing the guitar vigorously every day for 25+ years.


cosmicmechanic
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Apr 04, 2009 8:39 am
Status: Offline

Tue Oct 30, 2012 8:23 pm

wrench wrote:
... I feel like I'm trying to put the genie back in the bottle ...
Or trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube ? :silly:

But not to worry, wrench ... it's not an evil genie !
Thanks for sharing this info so generously ... I'm ripe to hear all about it and am also taking prurient interest in guitar building resources.

Pierre


User avatar
neverfoundthetime
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Aug 01, 2009 2:14 pm
Status: Offline

Wed Oct 31, 2012 6:16 am

Thanks for your input Dan... I wish I understood more on the sound frequency side of things, its fascinating stuff.
Would you agree that the comparisons shown on the spectral graphs are real and would you agree generally with the interpretation given... and even go with the wine analogy?


wrench
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:12 pm
Status: Offline

Wed Oct 31, 2012 7:01 pm

neverfoundthetime wrote:
Thanks for your input Dan... I wish I understood more on the sound frequency side of things, its fascinating stuff.
Would you agree that the comparisons shown on the spectral graphs are real and would you agree generally with the interpretation given... and even go with the wine analogy?
I don't doubt the graphs are real, I doubt they are real good. :lol: The graphs seemed to better represent the sound in the pilot video than in the second one (the one Pierre posted). In the second one, the graphs showed too many frequencies and showed them all at similar amplitudes. I don't think they are phony graphs, but I think they have some unwanted signals they fail to realize are not from a guitar. Even in the first video, they pointed out the bass signals at 40Hz. That's more likely the building vibrating than the guitar.

Now I agree they hear what they hear, and describe it in flowery terms, but I don't think these are all necessarily good attributes, and I don't think they accurately correlated these sounds to the graphs. For example, they used the terms "bloom" and "jump". Bloom and jump are conditions where the top and back have natural frequencies that interfere with each other, and impedence mis-matches between the strings and the bridge. To me, these are things I fix, not selling points.

That Santa Cruz 12 fret dread in the first vid is a masterpiece. I had a hard time putting that guitar back on the wall.


User avatar
neverfoundthetime
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Aug 01, 2009 2:14 pm
Status: Offline

Thu Nov 01, 2012 6:10 am

I hear you on those artifacts Dan.
Interesting what you say on that "jump"... I was wondering if that was something I'd want or not.
I must admit though, I am still learning to "hear" a guitar. The more you listen and talk with those that know more, the more you learn, the ear has to be trained and at first you don't realise all the things you are missing. I learned this lesson first spending a lot of time with graphic artists and photographers... we don't see what they see and it really is an eye-opener when you do start to see, but it requires coaching. This frequency analysis is is interesting but its really a side show as the guitar has to sound good to you and touch you, that's all that's really important.

I sat down with a Santa Cruz two weeks ago and had the same experience... wow!


Post Reply Previous topicNext topic