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By
PAUL JAY
Photography by MARTINA SORBARA |
A LUTHIER'S LABOUR
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| Martina
Sorbara's guitars resonate with craftsmanship |
The relationship between musician and instrument has always
been an intimate one, and few instruments illicit the full array
of human emotions like the guitar. Jimi Hendrix used to sleep
with his. Pete Townshend smashed his. Many name their guitars,
and treat them like old friends or passionate lovers.
 Martina
Sorbara, a rising Toronto-based singer-songwriter, is no exception.
But her connection to her guitar is a little more like that
of mother and child. After all, she is giving birth to them.
In her workshop.
"My last guitar took me six months to build," says the 22-year-old
musician, who plays both guitar and piano while mixing folk,
pop and jazz styles into her music. "It took a little longer
than it probably should have, but you get going and then reach
a certain point when you just can't take it anymore and want
to give up. I've heard the same thing about going through labour."
"When you finish the guitar it's really exciting, but I haven't
gotten into an intimate relationship with my latest one yet,"
she says. "It takes time for that relationship to develop."
 Sorbara
has accomplished quite a bit in a short time. She has already
released two CDs independently, with her second release The
Cure For Bad Deeds receiving rave reviews and scheduled for
release on a major record label in February. And in her spare
time she has already crafted three guitars over the past four
years.
Sorbara, who grew up on a farm in Maple, Ont., first got the
workshop bug while attending the Toronto Waldorf School, an
alternative school where attention is given equally between
traditional subjects like math and English and artistic classes.
At Waldorf, woodworking was a required class from grade three
to grade 11, giving students a chance to work with their hands
at an early age. When given the chance to continue woodworking,
Sorbara didn't hesitate, hoping to learn how to make her own
guitars. By the time she was 16 she began performing and in
her final year of high school she had crafted her first guitar.
But though her career and hobby seem a perfect marriage, the
skills involved couldn't be more different.
"The
reason I enjoy it is it's a break from the more open and creative
world of songwriting. Everything has to be done very carefully
and with precision. It's a totally different part of my brain,
and one that I don't get to use with my career," she says. "It's
also a great teacher of discipline. You have to get everything
really right or it won't come out the way you want it. I don't
get that kind of discipline anywhere else."
It doesn't take much to get a guitar to look like a guitar,
says Sorbara. But getting it to sound like one, or at least
the one you want, requires painstaking detail: making sure the
fretting is done properly and the wood is the right thickness
(a guitar that is too thick won't resonate sound as well, while
a thinner guitar will produce a tinny sound). And don't even
mention lacquering.
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