Tonewood and vocals

[Boneman]

I don’t overthink it; play guitar, sing.

 

[Br1ck]

A lot of it depends on the guitar more than the woods as a whole.

If I had to pick one wood combination to sing with, it would be mahogany/spruce or mahogany/cedar if I only play fingerstyle. Mahogany tends to lend itself to being picked lightly and get out of the way of your voice easier.

I think it depends more on the player than anything. If your sound seems too dense, play on two or three strings or arpeggiate. Too loud? Back off. You should be able to adapt to any guitar, built with any kind of material. And hopefully without thinking about it much. Hand any guitar to any good player and they make it sound good. It is a part of the skill set one needs to develop.

 

[Skywalker]

Guitars have got to be the most plastic of all musical instruments. They are completely transformed in passing from the hands of one musician to another

 

[Rayk]

This chart gives some insight in to the actual frequencies:

Acoustic Guitar EQ Chart - Every Frequency and What It Does - Music Guy Mixing

This acoustic guitar EQ chart explains both what is happening in each frequency on the acoustic guitar plus where to cut or boost via EQ.

www.musicguymixing.com

The factors I try to identify are more in the timbre or "color" of the voice and instrument.

We have an 00 size mahogany guitar and is more "midrangy" and less "bassy" than a dreadnaught , but the timbre still has the mahogany color.

That being said, different voices have properties that bloom in different frequencies.

Good stuff it’s all about sonic space , Hogs work better in multi instrument group recording and rosewoods work better with singer song writers or solo artists .

Book marked this one .

 

[plaidseason]

But then we mostly plug them in for live performance . . .

I'm like 30 years and I have no idea what works best, it probably depends on the day.

The only thing I don't like is rosewood. I love the wood visually a lot, just not the overtones with my thing. This is probably more true of a rosewood dread than say an OM. As I've said elsewhere, I came to the conclusion a few years back that an arch back Guild dread is the "rosewood" sound I thought I longed for, all of what I want, but without the rest.

 

[JohnW63]

My singing days are over, so I look for guitars that do sound "rich". I think that means low and mid range resonance with clean highs but not prominent levels. Just trying to help MY idea of a sonic sound I call rich.

 

[Boomstick]

I think it depends more on the player than anything. If your sound seems too dense, play on two or three strings or arpeggiate. Too loud? Back off. You should be able to adapt to any guitar, built with any kind of material. And hopefully without thinking about it much. Hand any guitar to any good player and they make it sound good. It is a part of the skill set one needs to develop.

There are a lot of things a player can do but at the same time there are times where you have to play to the song too if you know what I mean, maybe getting morr volume on your vocal mic is the way to go

 

[Bmack59F30]

Great question. To me, the degradation of the note is what is important. How long does it sustain. I am a tenor. I have a softer microphone voice, if you know what I mean. I love singing with all my guitars. But I do change the way I play, depending on what I am playing. I have noticed that my two maple guitars are easier to sing with. The note dies quicker, and that allows for the pocket of the melody to be more clear. I have a Gibson J185, and a Gibson Dove. It also might be that I just get excited when playing these super flamey acoustics. To me, the notes are different.

 

[Boomstick]

Great question. To me, the degradation of the note is what is important. How long does it sustain. I am a tenor. I have a softer microphone voice, if you know what I mean. I love singing with all my guitars. But I do change the way I play, depending on what I am playing. I have noticed that my two maple guitars are easier to sing with. The note dies quicker, and that allows for the pocket of the melody to be more clear. I have a Gibson J185, and a Gibson Dove. It also might be that I just get excited when playing these super flamey acoustics. To me, the notes are different.

I find the opposite to be true with maple Guilds. They are full in sound and while the immediate sustain on the initial note is super short but well defined on maple, the notes really takeover.

Fortunately I play more instrumentals than not.

 

[Skywalker]

I find the opposite to be true with maple Guilds. They are full in sound and while the immediate sustain on the initial note is super short but well defined on maple, the notes really takeover.

Fortunately I play more instrumentals than not.

I believe that is one of the key reasons why maple is used for the back and sides of traditional string instruments. I recall the manager of Martin saying something along the lines of.

" If we made a guitar top out of maple it wouldn't sound like anything!"

Ie. It is a neutral tone wood with little in the way of overtones.

 

[Bernie]

That's a very interesting thread : it took me a long time to become aware of this particular element's usefulness, but I know tend to consider a guitar as part of a more general mix between my voice and my guitar's volume it seems ; I have become more of a singer than I was I guess, and having spent a lot more time on lyrics recently, I pay more attention to being understood... But I tend to limit myself to guitar's volume more than to its tone as well. That second part I haven't studied it carefully so far, but I seem to consider GA format as about the right one for me; as far as volume's concerned...I know that Rosewood is often preferred by singers, from my Taylor days where I learned that bit, but now play Sitka/Walnut or Cedar/African Mahogany mostly...I remain a guitar player first, and my guitar's tone starts it all...
But I will do some recordings in order to study tonewoods' interaction with the voice. I will tell you when it's done, but I won't have equivalent guitars to do a good comparison for now...I will tell my results though when I manage to do some more...

 

[dwasifar]

I used to sing with a Taylor 710, which was bright sounding, as Taylors tend to be. Over time my voice has deepened (from baritone to bass-baritone), and now the Taylor is too bright, and I favor the richer and more complex Guild D-55.

For context on that, I can sing Folsom Prison Blues in its native key and hit the low note solidly. When I first learned it, it was a crap shoot whether I could go down that low on a given day. Now, on a good day, I can sing along with Hoist the Colors and hit all the low notes. A bright jangly guitar is no longer a fit.

 

[Skywalker]

 

[steveintampa]

My wife and I were running through some songs last weekend. She was playing her Bailey 00-18 style, mahogany/spruce and I was playing my '81 D-46.

We switched so I could listen to her with the D-46 and it solidly covered up the lower midrange of her voice.

 

[Skywalker]

My wife and I were running through some songs last weekend. She was playing her Bailey 00-18 style, mahogany/spruce and I was playing my '81 D-46.

We switched so I could listen to her with the D-46 and it solidly covered up the lower midrange of her voice.

And there you have it !!!

 

[Boomstick]

I believe that is one of the key reasons why maple is used for the back and sides of traditional string instruments. I recall the manager of Martin saying something along the lines of.

" If we made a guitar top out of maple it wouldn't sound like anything!"

Ie. It is a neutral tone wood with little in the way of overtones.

Well it's a more neutral tone as in frequencies are there that are missing with other woods. My maple guitars have a ton of overtones though.

You might be able to get away with nickel strings on a maple guitar, which in and of themselves have minimal overtones with good results, but that's true for any wood.

 

[Skywalker]

Well it's a more neutral tone as in frequencies are there that are missing with other woods. My maple guitars have a ton of overtones though.

You might be able to get away with nickel strings on a maple guitar, which in and of themselves have minimal overtones with good results, but that's true for any wood.

It's not that a maple back and sides instrument doesn't have overtones, it's that its overtones derive more exclusively from the strings and the soundboard.... Or this is how I understand it .
It's all just a cake recipe!

 

[Boomstick]

It's not that a maple back and sides instrument doesn't have overtones, it's that its overtones derive more exclusively from the strings and the soundboard.... Or this is how I understand it .
It's all just a cake recipe!

People always say that maple stays out of the way of the top more than other woods. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I don't think that would necessarily have any effect on overtones.

Personally, I would say my maple guitars have more overtones than my non maple guitars. That's one reason I like maple.

My G-37 does have a ton of midrange and my voice doens't have a lot of higher overtones into it (think Leonard Cohen but less extreme) so when I sing a note at the same pitch as someone else, it sounds lower. So that's a pretty good guitar to stay out of the way of my voice.

 

[Skywalker]

Back and sides material may be better viewed in terms of frequency response than overtones I would imagine

 

[Skywalker]

And then there's' Velocity' !!.... All in all it ends up being something somewhere between Alchemy and Rocket Science.