Waking Hours

Paul Doyle is a third-generation luthier and former architect. Each string instrument he makes is an original. He also runs a school, passing on his trade. Born in Westport, Co Mayo, he lives in Rahoon, Galway

A life of quiet passion

Ilive in Rahoon, and my workshop is smack-bang in the centre of Galway town. It’s in the part with all the music bars. Every musician in town has to pass my door. It’s a very good location.

At 10.30am, a group of us will gather in the shop and have a communal coffee and a quick porridge. Then we start into work. It’s more like a workshop, as opposed to a shop that you walk into and buy stuff. I work on my own, but I’m with the pupils, too.

I have a school for musical-instrument making, so people come for a week, or for a month-long course. I’m a luthier, and the third generation in my family. A luthier is the old name for the trade, and it’s becoming more popular now. The word originally came from the making of lutes, which was the number-one instrument in the world. But now it generally applies to a maker of fiddles and guitars and all string instruments. I like the term, but some people mix it up with Lutheran, which is a religion.

We make everything here. I do reproductions of antique instruments, so I’m in museums quite a lot, measuring up stuff. I make all sorts of instruments, from the 14th Century up to today. Learning from the old instruments helps me to do a different angle on the new instruments. A lot of guitars are copied from American guitars, but I have everything the other way around. I’m using European instruments from the 16th Century, and so on.

We have the Renaissance guitar — a small-bodied guitar — and then they get bigger and bigger. Then, in the mid-19th Century, they went smaller again, because the small instruments are more efficient in producing sound. I take the violin-making from my father and grandfather. They made violins, but they didn’t have the vast knowledge that we have today with the internet. So I have gone to the exhibition in Cremona, Italy — the home of violin-making in Italy.

I am an ex-architect. So I draw everything first. Buildings are built from a drawing. If they work on paper, they have to work in real life. I work on the same principle, but that would be unusual. Not many luthiers would be handy at drawing. I draw every detail on them, and I show my drawings. If people want them, I make them. We draw it first, and then we make these thin patterns. Different structures yield a different sound.

When you’re making a guitar, the most important thing is that the front has to be a soft wood, because it vibrates like a membrane. There are only seven woods for the front, including cedar and spruce. The back is a hardwood, to kick out the sound. There are a lot of exotic woods that we get in specially — flamed maple or ebony. They look fantastic, and they are for the more expensive instruments.

The nicest part of guitar building is bending sides. The aroma of the wood comes up as you are bending it. You wet it first, and then the wetness turns to steam, and then that penetrates the wood and makes it pliable. You could make any kind of shape by bending wood. Precision is very important. To make these instruments, you don’t need any performance ability. It’s more carpentry than the theory of music.

U2 asked me for a very highly ornate instrument. I made a bass bouzouki for Adam Clayton, and a mandolin as well. Hothouse Flowers bought three mandolins. The film star Woody Harrelson bought my millennium guitar back in 2000. He asked me if it was a good guitar, and I said, ‘You won’t get anything like that in America’. Not one of my guitars looks like a factory instrument. They are all one-off designs.

All of this started out because I had very inferior guitars. I never had any money. When I was doing work as a session musician in London, I heard some of the sounds that were way better than my old banger of a guitar. That’s why I made my first one. It took me nine months. When I brought my guitar home and showed it to my dad, he told me that there was no resonance in it. ‘What would you know about resonance?’ I asked. It was then that he told me that they used to build fiddles in our family.

It’s a very noble craft. If you make a chair, people sit on it, and that’s the end of that. But with an instrument, there’s some magic in them. If a guy tells me that he wants a particular sound, I can make it for him. A lot of instruments died down because the maker didn’t pass on his trade. That’s why I’ve set up a school.

At the moment, I have three French

“There’s a magic in instrument-making. If a guy wants a particular sound, I can make it”

people from a woodwork school. They have made a ukulele and guitar between them. I can see if someone will take to instrument-making within a few days. You have to have an artistic mind.

I work late at night time. Instrumentmakers find it quieter and more creative after 6pm. I often work until midnight. I tend to gravitate towards fiddles in the night, because they are very complicated. I like my job. It keeps me peaceful in my head. Sometimes, if I’m wound up about something, I play music to get off to sleep.

I play 18 different instruments: bass, bouzouki, mandolin, guitar, and I play traditional Irish music, blues and rock. Sometimes I head off and play in a session. I had a fight one night in a pub, and someone explained why it broke out. He said, ‘That fella is jealous of you because you always bring a different traditional hand-made instrument with you.’ He was probably right.