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Legacy in the making :  A Guitar That Roars

How a Canadian luthier turned an eureka moment into an international career.

Magnifissance Magazine, 2022          

 

By J.H. White

When luthier Thierry André first picked up a guitar he felt as if the vibrations of the strings were bound to the divine. 

 

At that moment, the theories he was learning in high school—from physics to chemistry— started to make sense, as if they were encompassed within that one note of music. 

 

“It was like discovering a new universal language,” André says.

This eureka moment was a call of destiny the young man couldn’t ignore.
 

“A big door opened in front of me. That vibrating string gave me a road to follow,” he says.

A musical calling

From fixing a friend’s bike to building a ramp for the local skate park, André found joy in working with his hands. Nonetheless, his private high school was guiding him toward theoretical professions like law or medicine. 

 

“I was honestly feeling a little lost, and I didn't know where to put my energy. I didn't find that satisfaction in my academic studies,” André says. 

 

It was during this time that he fell in love with the guitar. He possessed a strong sense of musicality but it never dawned on him that he could make such a magical instrument with his own hands. 

 

This changed after André realized that a guitar’s structure and form follow the rules of design. These rules encompass both the materials used—screws, fret wire, wood, paint, and coating— and their assembly.

“When I understood that I could learn to make a guitar, that I could create sound with my own hands and toolbox, I cried,” he says. 

 

At 19, André entered Bruand, a luthier school in the Montreal area. He was grateful for the opportunity, but struggled with the design process until Fred Carlson, a celebrated luthier from California took him under his wing in 2004. 

 

André observed how Carlson spent days or even weeks sketching an instrument, planning the intricacies of a complex built on paper. This taught the young man to understand the value of a lengthy design process, which led him to apply it to his own craft. 

Multi-Harp Guitar by Thierry André-Andre Instruments
Ancre OUDTAR story

An impossible feat

André has always pushed the boundaries of what is possible with the sound and structure of his materials. For one of his most highly acclaimed creations, the oudtar, he gained inspiration from the oud, the predecessor of the lute. 

 

This was also made possible by his location. 

 

André’s luthier workshop is based in Montreal, a cosmopolitan city that gathers musicians from all over the world. Artists from Turkey, Africa, India, and the Middle East have regularly brought him instruments for repair. 

 

“This gave me the opportunity to see lots of different instruments—old world instruments,” he says. 

 Many of these musicians play the oud, meaning “from wood” in Arabic. The oud was the first stringed instrument to be crafted with a wooden top. Before that, all the stringed instruments had a skin top. 

 

“At one point, I was repairing the oud more than anything else. This was a big influence on me,” he says. 

While working intimately with the instrument, André had a nearly impossible idea. 

 

In Europe, the lute was popular before the introduction of flat-backed guitars. André felt like there was a missing link between the lute and the modern guitar. 

 

He thus created the oudtar, an instrument that combines the features of both instruments. 

Oudtar-acoustic bowl-back guitar by Thierry André-Andre Instruments

To pull of this imaginative feat, André had to innovate new methods of construction. He received a grant from the Quebec Council for the Arts and spent a year and a half building the new instrument. 

 

The most challenging aspect of crafting the oudtar was its double-curved back. A regular oud has one convex curve, which means that it’s easy to pull the shell out of the mold. But André’s oudtar has two curves. 

To make the double-convex back, he built it into two parts and pulled-it out of the mould sideways. Then he joined the two parts at the end. The difficulty was fully worth it. 

Oudtar-by Thierry Andre-Andre Instruments-acoustic bowl 2pc mould
Oudtar-by Thierry Andre-Andre Instruments-acoustic bowl construction done

“A standard steel-string guitar has a compliant back. When you strike a note, the back will pump air and move. It will give you bass notes in this way, acting as a trampoline,” he says. “But with the oudtar, the double-curved back makes the whole soundbox reflective. It’s like a dome or vault that gives reverb to the sound.” 

 

André likens this to the acoustics in a cathedral whose design allows people to hear their voices echoing up the walls. Since the oudtar doesn’t have the sharp edges of a guitar box, the sound resonates like an oud or a lute, instruments that also have a rounded back.

“The bass of the oudtar roars like a lion,” André says. “It sounds deep, but it has no flexible material around it. So it's full, strong, and focused.” 

 

Built from his passion and devotion, André’s career is like the deep, resonant roar of his oudtar. Its special sound lingers on.

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Bio text; from the early years:

Bio-in story

"Practicing guitar making in Quebec - Canada professionally since 1998, my first workshop was a small industrial space located in the Rosemont-Petite Patrie district in Montreal. It is really in this building at 305 Bellechasse - rubbing shoulders with visual artists on a daily basis, that my current practice was born.

Initially, I limited myself to the general format of the guitar, to quickly branch off towards what I could call -the origin of the guitar-, by actively taking an interest in the making of small lutes and instruments with raw and simple characters. This method of making opened up my understanding of the guitar, and I have maintained it in parallel with a more standard production.

 

Between 2003 and 2007, small round-body instruments were born from my hand, to slowly approach the format of the acoustic guitar, with Guitare-Fruit in 2008. During this part of my research, I offered a variety of timbres and tones to local musicians, while exploring the shape of the instrument, materials and construction methods:

The influence of this work related to round-body instruments will have culminated in the creation of works of the type -acoustic guitars with round body-, such as Po, in 2009, and Oudtar in 2011: The latter, in reference to its Middle Eastern root inspired by the Oud, will have completed my research on form and design started ten years earlier. It will have also taught me to work the assembly of wood in 3D in a more complete way, and will have informed me on the acoustic incidence of the rounded sound box. 

 

Between 2014 and 2018 I explored the instrument's register. Guitars such as Multi, Maya, Raga, Old-School archtop, and Guitare-Fruit Wurcer, all have in common a search for sound amplitude.

 

The arrival of Sun, Moon, and Vibrations (2019), Clara Archtop (2020), Echoes of Time (2022), Raga 2 (2023) and that of my current projects, support in their own way, my desire to express the multidimensional value of the guitar instrument; i.e. its known expressive sonic possibilities and those in development." 

(T.André)

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