On 19 November 2025, as part of the event Sound as Vibration: Perspectives on Perception at TU Dublin Conservatoire, I held a conversation with Jonathan Leathwood , addressing several aspects discussed in the article A Lost Culture of Touch and Sound: The Contribution of Visually Impaired Musicians to the Evolution of the Spanish Guitar. The exchange was conceived as an informal conversation, freely moving across different topics.

At one point, we discussed the tornavoz, a metal cylinder used in many historical Spanish guitars, particularly in instruments by Torres. Toward the end of the excerpt presented here, in response to a question from Jonathan, I also explored the relationship between Spanish guitars and blind communities. In the article, you can find a more extensive discussion on the tornavoz.

The full video is available on YouTube; however, I decided to slightly edit my responses in this portion of the conversation in order to clarify certain points. Below is the edited transcript of the discussion:

except from the conversation between Jonathan Leathwood and Marco Ramelli in event Sound as Vibration: Perspectives on Perception

Jonathan: Can we return to the tornavoz? You proposed a rather counterintuitive idea: that it makes the guitar quieter for the person playing it, without making it louder for the listener. What, then, do you see as its function? In José Romanillos’s book on Torres—who is most closely associated with the tornavoz—he admits that no one really knows what it was for. Yet you propose a theory in your article, don’t you?

Marco: For me, the tornavoz is a way to keep the guitar vibrating across all its components for longer. In an instrument such as the historical Spanish guitar, different parts vibrate at different frequencies. By increasing the instrument’s internal vibration through the tornavoz, the haptic perception can overload the player’s perceptual field, helping to generate inspiration. This cluster of information can stimulate creativity if the player is used to processing subliminal tactile information, overloading the rational part and making it less in control.

This idea may sound unusual today, but it was quite common among musicians in the Arabic world, who had a strong influence on the Spanish approach to sound. There is, for example, a Sufi musician from the early twentieth century, Inayat Khan Rehmat Khan (1882–1927), who spoke about the vina—a plucked instrument used in India and within the Sufi tradition. The vina, which has resonators similar to the tornavoz, for him is designed to produce a very soft sound while concentrating vibration for meditation.

The point, then, was not to make instruments louder, but to concentrate vibration and allow the player to perceive it more intensely. What Torres did was to create an instrument with projection while still preserving this idea of transmitting more vibration to the performer. It is not merely a matter of vibration being reflected back to the player; rather, it involves creating a feedback loop. When I play the guitar, the instrument vibrates, I receive that vibration, and in turn, I feed energy back into the guitar through multiple points of contact. This ongoing exchange continually shapes the relationship between the player and the soundboard.

Jonathan: This seems almost paradoxical. Most of us assume that the louder an instrument is, the more it vibrates. You are suggesting that there are situations in which an instrument can be muted—though in a very specific way—and that this muting actually increases the vibration experienced by the player.

Marco: Yes. It is a question of balance: between the instrument’s acoustic volume and how long it continues to vibrate. Not all parts of the guitar’s vibration contribute to the sound; the soundboard is the main contributor, but other parts also vibrate. Through their vibration, they create a dialogue between the player in touch with them and the soundboard. The vibration reaches the player, and the waves return to the soundboard. When that happens, a strong coupling between the player and the instrument occurs, but that requires the guitar to vibrate for longer. When you begin to work more as a coupling system with the instrument—when you process the subliminal vibration and interact with it—that interaction can also affect projection. Because the coupling system of the player and the instrument exchanges more information.

In this sense, it is not the object itself that becomes louder; rather, it is the interaction between the player and the instrument that creates a tightly coupled system, one that can ultimately result in greater projection.

This concept is not limited to the Arabic world or the Spanish Guitar. The clavichord, for example, embodies a similar idea. It was traditionally regarded as an instrument for composition, and it allows for a more direct perception of the strings’ vibration, including the creation of effects such as messa di voce. It enables a heightened awareness of what exists between the notes, the vibration of the instrument.

Jonathan: One of your arguments is that this kind of instrument is especially well suited to communities of blind guitarists. Could you elaborate on that?

Marco: Plucked instruments evolved alongside blind communities. From early written sources, such as cuneiform texts—the earliest written language we possess—we know that blind musicians were among the most active players of plucked instruments. Across many ancient cultures, blind individuals were central to the performance of these instruments.

This suggests coevolution between the instrument and the players. On the one hand, less technologically advanced instruments, particularly those that use gut strings, are inherently unpredictable and require a high degree of tactile control. On the other hand, blind and visually impaired musicians often develop heightened tactile sensitivity because of their reliance on touch.

Together, these factors contributed to the development of instruments in which tactile perception is central. It is not simply that blind musicians were especially well suited to these instruments; rather, the instruments themselves evolved out of their practices.

Jonathan: A kind of symbiotic relationship between the two.