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What is voicing? It is the name given to the process of shaping the braces on a guitar top and it is a word I do not like. You really are not giving your guitar a voice. You did that when you chose the materials and body size and shape. For example, a Brazilian rosewood Sitka spruce dreadnaught guitar will never sound like a walnut back and sides with redwood top OM guitar. You are simply making the guitar more or less responsive. I like to think in terms of stiffness and looseness while building and I have three ways to control stiffness and looseness. The first way is the thickness of the soundboard. How thick or thin it is determines how loose or stiff it is. The second way is the bracing pattern and where you place it on the soundboard and the final way is what you do with the braces after they are on the soundboard. You can remove material until you get the right amount of stiffness and looseness for the tonal response you want. There is also a fourth way to control stiffness and looseness and that is the radius you choose for the top. The tighter the radius the stiffer the top. These are some of the techniques I teach in my six day one on one guitar building classes. About 15 year ago I also filmed what has become an online course on the subject of Steel String Guitar Voicing. Check out the sample lesson video links below
Here are some things you will learn about in the course:
- How to select soundboard material
- Thicknessing
- The concept of stiff and loose
- Soundhole size
- What to listen for tonally while voicing
- Bracing
- Shaping the braces – where to remove material and how much
Here is what someone had to say about the course.
Just wanted to give a shout out to Robbie's guitar top voicing course.
I just went through it and took pages of notes! Although the videos
are a bit old and not in HD, the content is excellent and I would
strongly recommend it to anyone who's a beginner or who hasn't really
figured out top voicing. One thing though - be sure to listen to it
with decent headphones - the sound when the tops are tapped and flexed
is important.
Basically it covers
- wood selection - what makes a nice sound board - what are the
properties of a good piece of sitka etc.
- thickness. Turns out that just thinning to 3mm and being done isn't
really the right approach and you might be leaving a lot of tone on
the table so to speak.
- bracing - how to make braces efficiently and then the order of how
to shape them and the tonal properties you are looking for.
- and a lot more.
Anyhow, I found it very very useful. Definitely worth the price.
Cheers,
Rich
I also have an online course on Classical Guitar Voicing. Both courses will help you make better guitars.
Happy Building!
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