BY MATT WITHERS – AUSTRALIAN GUITARIST
Imagine a guitar that can sing, producing the deepest bass to the highest treble, evenly and with good sustain.
An instrument capable of holding its own in terms of volume within a chamber music setting, whilst simultaneously having the ability to reproduce with ease the subtle intentions of an elite player’s controlled touch.
You’d almost think an instrument like this couldn’t exist, or that you’d have to wait a decade to own one. Though, Greg Smallman and Sons’ waiting list is only one to two years for this amazing instrument. And I chose to stake it out so that I could perform on one of these incredible guitars myself.
As an international performer, teacher, and lover of this instrument for many years, I admire the beauty and evolution of the classical guitar throughout history. As we know it today, the guitar is a relatively young instrument when compared with orchestral counterparts, and has a vast array of styles – both in its construction and musically.
An individual’s own instrument can, of course, reflect personal taste, and various guitars can certainly suit different repertoire. The evolution of the guitar since the 1800s has seen the instrument grow in size, volume, and sustain; with more recent construction developments by Australian luthier Greg Smallman being the next logical step in the evolution of the classical guitar.
I’ve had the pleasure to interview Greg on a number of occasions – once, in my post-graduate studies in 2008 under the tutelage of the renowned pedagogue Tim Kain, for my thesis on the Development of Guitar Construction; and again recently for this article. In my interview with Greg, he states that “making guitars has always been challenging and that is what makes it interesting and fun”.
Greg’s love and joy for making guitars stems from his first meeting with John Williams in the 1970s. John was playing a Fleta at the time and wanted a better musical instrument – not one that sounded just like the guitar he was using. John was interested in how everything worked with the reduction of wolf notes (bad notes), and a lower level of percussiveness being of great importance as, ultimately, it is the sound that matters.
Greg states that “John has continued to be a great inspiration and influence in my work”.
Also passionate about sharing his knowledge, Greg tells me: “I enjoy seeing the evolution of the guitar!” He takes pride in seeing other luthiers copy features of his guitars, themselves experimenting and developing the instrument in exciting and diverse ways.
Smallman & Sons guitars are played by the top performers worldwide, including highly esteemed musicians John Williams, Craig Ogden, Xuefei Yang, Tim Kain, Ben Verdery, Judicael Perroy, Gabriel Bianco, Milos Karadaglic and many more (not to mention yours truly). So it’s no wonder that Greg says: “The very best guitarists use my guitars. The aspects they like are what others dislike”.
Greg’s two sons Damon and Kym each started working with their father in 1993 and 1996 respectively.
“We work well together as we are all involved in getting the sound right. Also, we are all messy workers!” Greg admits.
Now, Smallman & Sons together make guitars that are as responsive to the player’s input as possible, with the aim to reproduce as much of the information as possible that the performer gives the plucked string via the soundboard.
Greg sees it as the job of the luthier to control how percussive the guitar is. The term percussiveness, in relation to the sound of an acoustic guitar, refers to the extra un-musical sound that’s produced on the release of the plucked string, taking away from the musical, pitched sound of the note. It is a sound typical of traditionally crafted guitars and, through conversations with John Williams, is an element that Greg has reduced considerably; essentially creating an even more flexible musical instrument for performers to work with.
Through my own experience as a regular touring performer, and as a prior student of the guitar under the guidance of Tim Kain, I have learnt that the music we play should often emulate the singing voice. Each note has a birth, life, and death related to the initial attack, sustain, and decay of the note. When you listen carefully, you can hear that on traditional guitars, all of these are relatively short, often loud and quite distinct in sound from one another. The initial attack is quite brief and percussive, which can be quite loud; leaving the fundamental of the pitched note sustaining only for a short time at a comparatively softer dynamic than the initial attack, which then quickly dies away quietly.
This percussive noise is regarded as an unfortunate feature of the traditional instruments since it can interrupt the flow of the melodic line, especially as they can tend to emphasise more of the percussive starting transient at higher volumes. Where Greg has succeeded is that the fundamental sound of his guitars stays the same as the dynamics increase and decrease, unlike traditional guitars.
As musicians, our job as performers becomes much easier when our pitched notes can more easily sing naturally through the guitar, without the line being interrupted by notes with overly loud percussive beginnings followed by a rapidly dying residue of harmonics.
Greg agrees that, at this level, the sound that a guitar produces is very important – and we should be paying it more attention.
“I spoke to lots of guitarists before I met John Williams. They talked about the wood, the strings and the action, but not about the sound!” he says.
“I have made guitars both more responsive and with more sustain. This is what makes our guitars highly regarded by so many musicians.”
Greg has reduced the extra, un-musical percussive noise and allowed a wider range of harmonics to sustain and colour each note by making the soundboard substantially lighter and more flexible. The result is a beautifully resonate instrument that represents a major step forward in the evolution of the instrument.
As a comparison, Torres style soundboards are about 110g – and Greg’s are half that. Because of the immense pressure produced by the strings on the thinner front of the guitar, he had to create a different bracing system. And through his lattice design, he has taken the energy that was absorbed in the original percussive starting transient and spread it over a larger area of the face of the guitar.
Greg’s soundboards are only a few tenths of a millimetre thick in places. Greg has made effective changes to the construction of the soundboard that cannot be seen on the exterior of the guitar, which make them incredibly efficient in responding to the player’s touch and intentions.
In the 1970s, Greg experimented with various materials and strutting patterns, mostly cedar wood and fan struts, with some exceptions. He changed from spruce to a cedar soundboard as the wood is lighter, and built his first lattice guitar in 1974. But this guitar didn’t work well with this particular bracing, as the top was still too thick and heavy – though he didn’t come to realise this until ‘79.
This first decade of guitar construction felt like a period of trial and error for Greg. But in retrospect, it was clearly a gradual process towards making the soundboard lighter. After this experimental period, he found that the major factor in relation to sound production is the weight of the soundboard. He said that the “difference in weight can make a more responsive guitar” and that by reducing its weight, more of the soundboard can be set into motion. Because there is greater flexibility, more motion can be produced by the soundboard and a more audible, richer sound can be produced.
The soundboard is the most active part of the guitar in terms of sound production. However, the soundboard is not the only contributing aspect. The back, sides, and neck of Smallman & Sons’ guitars are all thicker and heavier than a traditional guitar, which all helps to reduce the excess waste of vibrations of the sound being lost through other parts of the guitar, and instead directed to the soundboard and ultimately to our audience’s ears.
Greg reveals that his biggest step forward was in 1981 when he strung up a guitar that he had constructed with a soundboard of only 1.5mm thick all over. He was expecting the soundboard to break under the immense tension of the strings. However, it didn’t, and was sold to John Williams who played it for many years to come. He uses this with a carbon fibre layer on the soundboard, which results in the guitar generating and sustaining a wider range of harmonics, resulting in a fuller body of sound.
One of the important characteristics of a high-quality guitar is the evenness and balance of each note. An even sound is very important; there should not be any notes that dynamically leap out nor should there be any that are too dull or relatively dead. With his extensive experience, Greg is now able to make calculated decisions and slight physical adjustments to the construction of the guitar, in particular to the soundboard, that all make a vast difference to the sound production.
Greg explains that he initially adds more carbon fibre than necessary to the inside of the top of the guitar so that he can scrape it off after the guitar is constructed. The reason for this is to fine-tune the instrument’s resonance. He details how he spends a lot of time with his hands inside the guitars once they are constructed, adding and taking away layers from the inside of the soundboard.
On his search for greater resonance from the soundboard, Greg has found that if a guitar doesn’t have any wolf notes, then there are no good ones either; and the guitar sounds dead and unresponsive. It’s not a surprise to hear Greg agrees that wolf notes make it hard to control and play fluid melodies. As well as removing the excess carbon fibre from the lattice, he explained to me that he found a way to work around this problematic area, relating to greater resonance, because the frequencies above the fifth fret, first string, are narrow enough to be moved and hidden between frets quite simply by the use of Blu Tack on the inside of the soundboard to lower the resonance of the ‘bad notes’.
This modern evolution of construction has prompted many new Australian makers and luthiers around the world to develop their own guitars in a similar style to Greg. There are many varieties in tone colour that a Smallman & Sons guitar can now produce along with a greater volume, sustain of the fundamental note and most importantly the reduction in percussiveness.
Greg is a luthier of such skill and commitment, and it’s evident that the sound his instruments achieve is highly valued by elite players around the globe.
Smallman & Sons guitars are available directly from their website www.gregsmallmanguitar.com for $22,000AUD, with a waiting time of one to two years.
Hear writer Matt Withers – Australian Guitarist play a 1999 Smallman & Sons guitar on his latest album Songs of Yesterday. The album also features duets with Tim Kain, and you can read all about it in the inaugural print issue of CutCommon.
Watch Matt perform Rodrigo’s Aranjuez Concerto with the Geelong Symphony Orchestra in Spanish Fire, 7.30pm June 23 at Deakin’s Costa Hall, Geelong Waterfront. He will also present his Imaginations Tour with Acacia Quartet featuring a program of Australian works by Richard Charlton, Robert Davidson, Philip Houghton and the winning works from the Matt Withers Australian Music Composition Competition.
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