By Erica Wilson   

Professor Nophachai Cholthitchanta wanders the organ room in the music building, observing his students create their own clarinet reeds. They have spent weeks curing the cane, using a guillotine to split the material, gouging the cane into blanks with an aggressive blade and examining its arcs to select the perfect tip. They have shaped the blanks, making sure to squeeze the center of the shaper, apply even pressure and cut from the wider to narrower side of the cane. One mistake and they would have to throw the material away and start all over.         

I stare at the reed I have created so far and think about what a miracle it is that I’ve made it this far in the complicated steps. Attention to detail has never been my strong suit, and I can feel myself growing tired of the tedious process. Nophachai instructs us to draw a perfectly straight line across the cane to use as a reference to measure its thickness as he passes out rulers to each student. I grab my pencil and draw a line across the tip, without using a straight edge to guide it.  

Nophachai eyes me immediately. “No, no no,” he says. “Not straight enough.” I sigh and in response he says “It has to be perfect.”      

Perfection has been a recurrent theme throughout my entire musical experience, starting from the very basics in 6th grade to my high school band’s motto “the relentless pursuit of perfection.” There’s a reason the pursuit is relentless, and it is because perfection in of itself is ultimately unattainable. Perhaps that is what makes it so endearing. 

And the medium for this relentless musical pursuit is the instruments themselves, in which their creation requires a whole other quest for flawlessness, improvement and excellence. Such precision and accuracy is required from instrument-makers, using skills they have spent years and years fine tuning. 

Nestled amid Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains, Alvin Thomas ‘Tom’ King spends his days carving scrolls, intricately placing strings, gouging plates and finishing off his work with a varnish. Each step is meticulous, requiring complete care and focus, yielding the finished product of violins, violas and cellos to be shared with the music community. Once merely a side hobby, King has turned his craft into a well-respected shop called Fiddleheads.             

The journey to where he is now was a long and difficult one, a story which bears resemblance to my favorite novel, Mitch Albom’s “The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto.” An ambitious young Frankie is eager to learn how to play guitar from his maestro, but it takes a whole year before the maestro even lets the boy touch a string. Instead, the pair focuses on music’s intricate details and building up the boy’s knowledge.   

Like Frankie’s musical endeavors, King found his journey to making a cello to be much more tedious and lengthy than he expected. He went to his first teacher, Willis M. Gault, and said ‘I would like to make a cello for myself.’ His teacher looked at him and said ‘First of all, we make a violin.’ 

When King heard these words, he felt a wave of disappointment wash over him. Over time however, he learned that the process of starting with a violin was a wise one.

His main goal was to create an instrument that both looked and sounded good, which turned out to be a long process of trial-and-error, he said. 

Excitement coursed through him when he finally completed his first violin, but when he handed it off to someone to play, they looked at him and said “My, this sounds awful.”

“It was crushing because not only did it look awful, as it was clear to me that it looked awful, it sounded awful too,” King said.  

Nophachai said he experienced a similar sentiment during his beginning days of making reeds in 1998. He felt great novelty at the idea of being able to make his own reed as few universities teach the skill. However, at the time reed-making equipment was not as refined, and so it was much more difficult to pinpoint mistakes in the process. 

For a few months, Nophachai made failed attempts to create his own reeds before resolving to give up. It was not until eight years later that he picked the hobby back up, spending a whole summer crafting hundreds of reeds. 

After a year or two of experimentation, Nophachai began to feel confident enough in his skills that he could make a quality, consistent reed. Since then, he has always made his own reeds instead of purchasing them and he has never been happier, he said. 

About 34 years after embarking on his instrument-making journey, King garnered enough knowledge and experience to craft his first cello six years ago. Just recently, he completed his fourth.  

“It has been a real thrill to see people perform using his instruments and think ‘oh gosh, that’s something I did, it sounds that way because of me,’” King said.  

He has spent an immense amount of time and research studying everything he can about the string instruments because he thinks the world does not need any more unless there is something special about them. Although King said perhaps his first teacher taught him the greatest lesson an instrument-maker can learn: “truly love the role of helping each instrument to emerge.”    

As I finish out my final university concert season, I reflect on the last twelve years of my musical career. I started out small, learning the correct lip and tongue placement on just a mouthpiece and barrel before even picking up the clarinet. From there I learned small, simple songs. One of my most distinct memories of learning how to play the clarinet is bawling my eyes out over “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” But I forged on, making it from middle school band to a college ensemble so many years later, having the clarinet I bought in the 8th grade with me through it all. 

Throughout each ensemble I have been a part of, my main goal has always been to improve. Playing music with a group requires an active effort in trying to make yourself a little more in tune, your tone a little clearer, your finger technique a little cleaner, and the list goes on and on. 

And I know that to make my pursuit to refine every last detail of my musicianship possible, the person who crafted my clarinet had to go on a relentless pursuit of their own. One that took great time, practice, perseverance and attention to detail. Ever since reading Mitch Albom’s novel, a specific quote has always stuck with me, true for both the musicians and the instrument makers themselves:  

“You will never know all there is to know. You will learn until your final days. Then you will inspire someone else. This is what an artist does.”