Three‑Axis Sky & Guitar Constellations
The Story of Sound : From Six Moments to a Three‑Axis Personality Profile of Guitar Voice
My wife Shash has one piano and one keyboard. That’s it. As we were loading four of my guitars into the RV for a long loop through France and Spain before the Bilbao ferry home, she looked at the cases and asked, with affectionate exasperation, “Why do you need so many guitars?”
I tried to explain that I’m not a collector - I’m a player, and I curate a small assembly of instruments because each one has a different voice, a different way of speaking in different musics. I’d even recently sold Eliza‑Ellen, a guitar I loved, because her voice no longer belonged in the set I used. But even as I said all this, the explanation felt vague. The curator in me wanted something clearer: a way to describe those voices, to understand how they differ, and why each guitar earns its place.
The Wrong Guitar, the Right Question
A few days later, as I was getting ready for a local sing‑song session, I picked up Lucille and began half‑absently playing The Only Living Boy in New York. It took barely a bar and a half to realise she was the wrong guitar for this music. I put her back in her case and reached for Éiru, my lush Adirondack Celtic warrior‑maiden of a guitar, and the room changed instantly. Her voice swelled through every open door and window.
That contrast stayed with me. So I went back, picked up Lucille again, plucked a single note, and paid attention. Then I did the same with Éiru. And over the next few months I repeated that small test with every guitar in my little universe - plucking, listening, making notes - until I could describe each voice from memory.
Only later did I realise that this was the beginning of the constellation work, long before I had the language for it. I’d already started talking about my guitars as if they had personalities - some strong‑willed, some tender‑hearted; some coloured and atmospheric, others direct and to the point. A few were natural groove engines, while others were more articulate, almost conversational. I’d chosen them because they suited the musics I was playing, but now I was beginning to hear their voices more clearly, to understand their personalities rather than just thinking, ah yes, Lucille - she’s my blues parlour. Something deeper was happening, and I needed a way to describe it.
Where Listening Becomes Method
So I turned back to the Six Moments. They were my way of listening to the life of a note, but now I began using them as a way of listening to the personality of a guitar. I took each instrument in turn and walked it through the same small sequence - touch, speak, bloom, settle, and all the subtle behaviours in between. And as I did, the vague impressions I’d been carrying for years began to sharpen. The strong‑willed guitars behaved one way, the tender‑hearted ones another; the coloured voices revealed their shading, the direct ones their clarity; the groove engines and the articulate talkers each traced their own distinct path through the Six Moments. Patterns were forming, and they were consistent. Something deeper was taking shape.
The Three Qualities That Kept Appearing
When I compared all those notes, three qualities kept appearing, each one anchored in a different part of the Six Moments. The way a guitar speaks in the first instant - its attack, its confidence or hesitation, its willingness to step forward - revealed its assertiveness, the quality I’d been calling strong‑willed or tender‑hearted. The way it blooms and fills room showed its colour, whether its voice was richly shaded and atmospheric or clean and direct. And the way it settles into rhythm or hangs in the air exposed its articulation, whether it was a natural groove engine or a more precise, conversational instrument. These weren’t impressions anymore; they were consistent behaviours. And together they formed the three axes.
When I stepped back from all those patterns, the three qualities resolved into three clear axes. I called them Assertiveness, Colour, and Articulation. Every guitar I owned - every guitar I’d ever played - lived somewhere along these three lines.
Once I had the three axes, the whole thing opened out into a kind of cognitive space -a room in your head you can walk around in. Assertiveness ran left to right, from the strong‑willed guitars on the left to the tender‑hearted ones on the right. Colour ran vertically, from richly shaded voices at the bottom to clean, direct ones at the top. And Articulation ran front to back, from the more articulate, conversational guitars close to you to the groove‑driven instruments further back, the ones that want to move the body. With those three lines in place, every guitar I owned suddenly had a position in the room. I could point to where each lived.
Entering the room…
Once the room existed in my mind, I could finally walk around inside it. Each guitar I owned had taken up its own place - not by category or price or tonewood, but by behaviour. Some stood close, some further back; some rose high in the space, others settled low; some leaned toward the strong‑willed side, others toward the gentle. It was the first time I’d ever been able to see their personalities instead of just feeling them. And once I could see them, I could begin to understand why each one belonged.
Lucille settled herself in the front‑right‑top corner of the room - tender‑hearted, direct, and quietly articulate. She’s even a little timid: a 24‑inch parlour with a breathy voice, quick to speak and quick to fade, more storyteller than groove engine. She doesn’t push or project; she simply offers what she has with a gentle, honest clarity. Seeing her there made perfect sense.
Éiru settled almost diagonally opposite Lucille, in the front‑left‑bottom of the room - strong‑willed, richly coloured, and articulate with real authority. She’s a 25.4‑inch, 12‑fret 000 with a big air cavity and an Adirondack top, a guitar that can carry a slow air with expressive nuance and still drive an alternating bass with confidence. She doesn’t shout, but she commands a room - even a 12th century church - with a voice that blooms and holds its shape. Seeing her there made the whole room feel larger.
Serenity settled into a quieter part of the room, over on the gentle side but lower down, where the warm, expressive guitars live. She’s a short‑scale Furch Pioneer with a cedar top and Khaya back and sides - quick to speak, shaded in tone, intimate without being timid. She doesn’t push or drive; she shapes phrases with warmth and ease, a guitar for slow airs and reflective playing. She filled a softer, more contemplative space in the room, one that neither Éiru nor Éala had touched.
And of course, the room was only the beginning. Once I could see where my own guitars lived, I started to notice the empty spaces - the regions where no instrument of mine had ever stood. Those gaps began to matter as much as the guitars themselves. They hinted at other voices, other personalities, other musics. The room was a map, but beyond its walls there was a whole sky waiting to be charted.
Discovering a universe of guitar constellations
There’s a whole wider sky beyond the room - the constellations, the families of instruments, the musics they belong to. I’ll come back to that later in the series, once we’ve spent time with the physical features that shape a guitar’s voice: the shapes, the woods, the scale lengths, and the design elements like bridges, headstocks, and soundholes. Those are the tools that let us understand why a guitar behaves the way it does.
In the end, the room only appeared because I slowed down and listened to what each guitar was actually doing - not what I assumed it was, not the category it belonged to, but the behaviour it revealed in those first few seconds of sound. The Six Moments kept pointing to the same three qualities, and once I named them, the whole space opened out. Every guitar I owned finally had a place to stand.
Take‑Away
The whole framework came from ethnomethodology, forensics, musicianship, and simply paying attention. The Six Moments of listening - the attack, the bloom, the sustain, the feel, the balance, the behaviour under pressure - kept pointing to the same three underlying qualities:
Assertiveness
Colour
Articulation
They weren’t theories; they were the patterns that kept repeating themselves. Once I named them, the room appeared, and every guitar I owned finally had a place to stand.
Next month, we’ll take the Six Moments and use them as a practical listening tool - a way to describe a guitar’s personality in sound and locate it on the three axes. Once we can hear those behaviours clearly, we’ll begin exploring how shape, woods, scale, and design create them, and how whole families of instruments emerge.
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