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Wood Density May Explain Stradivarius Secret
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Jul 03, 2008 09:37 AM
from the don't-sit-on-it dept.
from the don't-sit-on-it dept.
Whorhay writes "A Dutch doctor and a violin maker from Arkansas have compared five classical and eight modern violins in a computed tomography (CT) scanner. Apparently the 300-year-old violins are made of wood with a more consistent density than the modern violins. They aren't saying for sure that this is what gives the Stradivarius violins their unique sound, but it's the first scientific explanation I've heard for it that seems to have merit." Unfortunately science has yet to explain how how all three chords I know ROCK on my SG.
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Submission: Wood density may explain Stradivarius secret by Anonymous Coward
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Harmonics (Score:5, Funny)
It might go a log way to preventing them from producing undesirable harmonics.
Anyone know of any studies which looked at the waveforms to find unique qualities?
Re:Harmonics (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not being a guitar player, I have to ask...
Is it the density, mass, or maybe the structure?
Would a quartz guitar play amazingly?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not likely. Jackson made and aluminum guitar, and I thought that it soundedking of harsh. My mahogany guitar sounds different than my ash guitar and my mystery wood guitar, they all have maple necks and the same model picukps. Mahogany is warm, ash is a little bright, etc.
I also think a crystal guitar would buckle the first time you put the strings on. they run at 16+ pounds of tension per string.
Re:Harmonics (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Harmonics (Score:5, Funny)
Great! Let's destroy them to build crappy guitars!
Parent
Re:Harmonics (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not a guitar player. I might try my hand at making one, though.
I can imagine that the wood affects the rigidity with which the bridge and (for guitars, the fret on) the neck hold the string, and hold the pick up under the string. Some frequency components of the vibration of the string get damped because the body and the neck absorb them.
And, of course, the weight and shape and finish of the instrument change how it affects the musician. Do not underestimate this impact.
Re:Harmonics (Score:4, Interesting)
Even with electric guitars weight and density are considered a good thing. You'll find people complaining how heavy their Les Paul Custom is yet still play it for the sustain the extra weight provides.
That sustain comes at the expense of having a very simple clean tone. They're great for distortion, though.
And Swamp Ash is a preferred material for Stratocasters and Telecasters because it is very hard while not being as heavy.
A swamp ash Stratocaster is my ideal guitar for playing clean, since it brings out the fundamental note and higher harmonics without so much midrange -- that's great for getting an ominous sound when you want it. I suspect it's the hardness that lets the higher frequencies reverberate so well.
You have to remember, though, that Fender sells many times more Stratocasters made of Alder than made of ash. Not everyone wants that sound.
Parent
Re:Harmonics (Score:5, Informative)
I saw a special, on History Channel I think, where they thought that the trees that Stradivarius used to make his violins had unusual density qualities caused by the mini ice age.
Parent
Re:Harmonics (Score:4, Informative)
There is quite a demand for old growth dunderheads ,logs to heavy to float all the way to the sawmill from the logging days. One of these logs pulled out of the mud in a river or lake bottom after a hundred years can fetch thousands or or tens of thousands of dollars at auction depending on condition and species.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You'll find people complaining how heavy their Les Paul Custom is yet still play it for the sustain the extra weight provides.
Nigel: The sustain...listen to it...
Marty: I'm not hearing anything.
Nigel: You would, though, if it were playing.
Re:Harmonics (Score:5, Funny)
It might go a log way
Nicely played. :-)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I would even go so far as to say that he's a natural.
Re:Harmonics (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Harmonics (Score:5, Funny)
This is all too complicated. I'm just going to wait for "Violin Hero" to come out. The delux package comes with a kettle drum, brass and woodwind section, conductor's baton, etc.
Parent
This has been known for years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This has been known for years (Score:5, Funny)
So.. you blame Global Warming?
Parent
Re:This has been known for years (Score:4, Interesting)
So I suppose someone could carefully manage a tree farm to produce some new perfect instruments.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It would have to be an indoor tree farm, as things like cool temperatures, sunlight, humidity would all have to be carefully controlled. If a little ice age can slow the growth of the trees down you would have to duplicate that, over a period of 30-50 years to grow the slow growth trees large enough for timber.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It would have to be an indoor tree farm, as things like cool temperatures, sunlight, humidity would all have to be carefully controlled. If a little ice age can slow the growth of the trees down you would have to duplicate that, over a period of 30-50 years to grow the slow growth trees large enough for timber.
Wouldn't it be possible to find a natural climate that caused slower tree growth. I live in Colorado, and trees tend to grow slowly here, probably due to the dryness and possibly altitude. Would an ash or maple from Colorado produce a superior instrument?
Re:This has been known for years (Score:5, Informative)
There is much confusion among musicians as to what causes tone qualities in various instruments. Violins may well be locked to resonance
more than other instruments. But for brass and woodwinds the hardness of the material is overwhelming as an influence. What is not clear in any instrument is to what degree the hardness of the surface coatings are vital as opposed to the hardness of the material underneath the coatings. Dr. Adolf Sax from whom the saxophone gets its name was the genius who discovered the importance of surface coatings.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is a good bit of knowing it is an expensive instrument in hearing a big difference. The player plays a much bigger role. A good player on a good day with a cheap violin can sound be
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Thee and me, probably not.
According to this [sonoma.edu]:
Re:This has been known for years (Score:5, Informative)
When you get to a certain quality, you start getting diminishing returns, and there is really no difference from a certain point on.
It's like encoding music. You can easily tell a 32kbps file from a 128kbps file, but it's harder to tell a 160kbps from a 256kbps. And anything over that is just a waste of bits. A Stradivarius might sound as good as an uncompressed WAV file, but there are many violins that sound as good as a 320kbps mp3. (What a great analogy, better than cars).
Parent
Magic........ (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, a trained professional can pick a Strad' out of a crowd of violins just by the tonal qualities. The resonances & harmonics have a distinctive gestalt.
Dito.
No, there is a difference that you can clearly see in the waveforms between a good instrument and a great instrument.
God no. Ignoring the sense of pacing, emotion, and the hundreds of details a violinist can put into a piece, a cheap violin sounds just that - cheap. Even on a bad day, a mastercrafted violin has a sense of warmth & a clarity of tone that a cheap instrument can't match. It's like saying a trashcan lid is just as good as a Zildian cymbal.
That being said, there is a diminishing return & once you get into those instruments that are made by the masters of their craft, then the differences become minute. The difference between an instrument hand crafted by a master of the art & any mass produced ones will be detectable.
Parent
In past it was chemical treatments and soaked wood (Score:5, Informative)
Well, perhaps this is the final verdict? However, in the past the claim was the wood was from logs that were at the bottom of a swamp or something. Also, it was thought to be the chemical treatment. I suspect this is just the latest theory.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Stradivarius-Violins-Mystery-Solved-41462.shtml [softpedia.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
New news? (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't saying for sure that this is what gives the Stradivarius's their unique sound but it's the first scientific explanation I've heard for it that seems to have merit.
This idea (and papers supporting it) have been around for years... a quick Google Scholar [google.com] search turns up papers going back to at least 2003. The only new part was the use of CT imagery, as far as I can tell.
Alternative idea: varnish (Score:5, Interesting)
The varnish on a Stradivarius [sciencenews.org] is what biochemist Joseph Nagyvary thinks is relevant. Cheaper varnishes may be too rubbery and as a result damp high frequencies. He's built some violins based on his ideas, though apparently a good musician can still tell the difference between one of his and a Stradivarius.
One problem with the wood density idea is that not all Stradivarius violins have the sound for which they're famous.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I believe that your statement "... not all Stradivarius violins have the sound..." may support the wood hypothesis, not refute it.
The ideal test (if possible) would be to obtain several Stradivarius violins, have them categorised by top-notch professionals as "have" or "not have" with regard to "the sound", and then compare them.
A reasonable (though maybe not accurate) "assumption" would be that the varnish is identical on all of the sample violins. That way, the only variable to be examined would
density seems to be the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a problem with woodwork. It is difficult to get dense wood. Only 20 years ago it was easy to get good dense wood that could be built and oiled so it would last a very long time. Now all I see is light junk wood.
The physics of violins (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a TV show some years back about a physicist who tried to figure out what makes violins sound good. He found a few interesting things.
High-frequency response depends on the shape of the bridge. All those curly-cues cut into it control the transfer function from the strings to the body.
Mid-range response depends on the shape of the f-holes in the body. In this range, the bridge is rigid. The strings push on the bridge, and the bridge rocks the portion of the top plate between the f-holes back and fourth so that it radiates sound.
Bass goes from the strings, through the bridge, down through the sound post to the back panel, and is radiated by the back panel. Stradivarius shaped the back panel of his violins asymmetrically, so that the center of percussion was right where the sound post pushes on the back panel. IIRC, getting the center of percussion under the sound post was a distinguishing characteristic of Stradivarius violins.
The Stradivarius Myth (Score:5, Insightful)
So, there's some big mystery about Strads that makes them sound better than other violins? Or do people just think they sound better, because a single Strad goes for millions of dollars? Jon Rose adheres to the second theory:
As any honest violin dealer will tell you (and there are a few) the sound of a violin can be priced in a range from $50 (bad, but playable), to $10,000 (good-sounding) to $20,000 (extremely good tone and projection) to $100,000 (simply over-priced). The rest is snotty-nosed hubris. As has been proven on a number of occasions, most notably by the BBC in 1975, a well-made, top modern violin can sound just as good if not better than the prized golden age models. In a recording studio, behind a screen, the violins of Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman and Charles Beare were played back to them. The instruments were a Strad, a Guarneri del Gesu, a Vuillaume, and a Ronald Praill (a modern instrument less than a year old). None of the esteemed violin experts really had a clue which violin was which. Furthermore, two of them couldn't even tell which was their own instrument. They were left mumbling platitudes about the personal relationship between fiddle and player — bloody obvious if you spend most years of your life playing the violin.
His full rant here [abc.net.au].
"The Subjectivity of Wine" (Score:5, Interesting)
Read the complete article here [scienceblogs.com].
Parent
Then there was the violinist.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Who alternately and randomly played a strad and a fake strad for an audience and for experts. Turned out that the well made violin was dubbed a strad equally often as the strad even by experts.
What really makes a strad sound good is the musician playing it.
How many entry level violin players play a strad?
There is no magic, there is just LOTS of practice.
Overlooked explanation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not Stradivarius was the best violin craftsmen? Ever.
Because there were several other people living in the same town at the same time who made comparable violins.
Define the terms.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have played fiddle for 10 years, mostly bluegrass and Irish music. I've also spent time in an orchestra as a clarinet player, as well as a smattering of other instruments. The world of bowed strings and the prices associated with Strad-grade instruments has always astonished me. I can't name another type of musical instrument people are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for, and I think there are a couple of factors behind it:
1. Most classical violinists play in the company of others, i.e. in an orchestra, where 'one-upmanship' can play a big role. If your instrument isn't as expensive as your stand partner's, you might fear the perception that you value your craft less highly! In fact, I'm told some orchestras won't audition players unless their instrument cost a certain (quite high) dollar amount.
2. I can say as a violin player that the instruments are basically impossible to perform systematic A/B tests with. For example, I can't A/B two different brands of string on my instrument, because changing the strings takes at least 5-10 minutes, by which point my short-term aural memory is already gone. Furthermore, it's next to impossible to change strings without shifting bridge and tailpiece position, both of which affect tone as well. Need some more nails in the coffin? Rosin buildup on the strings and string age also affect the tone _more_ than different brands of strings do. It's a different picture than, for example, factory built electric guitars, where you could set up two identically built solidbody guitars with your A and B stringsets, and (at least within a first order) you could claim equivalence between your two string-testing platforms.
In the absence of the ability to perform systematic tests, it seems like string players go for a lot of "magic" - $90 sets of strings, rosin with gold flecks in it for "warmer, richer tone" - and a lot of other bullshit, including price-performance equivalence. Like Lotus owners, violinists are usually limited far more by their technique than their instrument (once you get into the 10-20K range), and yet there is still a push to buy the 100K instrument!
As for the Strad instruments: scientific inquiry into things like wood density, varnish, etc, seems pretty disingenuous if no one can reliably detect the qualities the instruments are supposed to have. If, as the earlier posters mention, Strads can't be reliably detected in double-blind conditions, it seems obvious that any investigation into their unique properties would be chasing one's own tail. Even if there is an amazing, one of a kind Little Ice Age, shipwreck-sunk virgin blood Stradivarius, none of those attributes are relevant if they don't impact the sound. And if "what makes Strads so great" isn't about the sound, then WTF is the point of the investigation? Dense wood really isn't great for its own sake.
Whew. rant over.
Find a music teacher. http://www.learningmusician.com/ [learningmusician.com]
Another theory I heard was.... (Score:4, Interesting)
That it was the volcanic dust they used to finish rubbing the wood before varnishing, which stayed in the wood to leave a very hard layer under the varnish - it floated my boat.
People have tried things like this (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a woodworker and some of my friends have tried to make violins. They all looked good and sounded terrible. It's definitely a tough business.
I wonder how long it will take nanotech to win? (Score:5, Funny)
The same could be asked of wine. In principle, a team of analytical chemists with the right equipment and no reverence for the past could characterize(and possibly, at some future time, economically duplicate) whatever vintage has the experts drooling this week.
the density of good old wood has been known (Score:3, Interesting)
for a long, long time now. every real violinmaker has a chunk of heavy old curly maple that was inherited from somewhere, in case they need it to repair a fine old instrument. they tap the wood to determine the density by the sound, like testing for the best watermelon in the bin.
Re:Create some new ones ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Highly unlikely. Are old paitings worthless because we have high definition movies now? No, because they are considered works of art. This is the same for the Stradivarius.
Parent
Re:Create some new ones ? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Create some new ones ? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only a work of art, but a historical artifact, just like Civil War-era keyed bugles, serpents, sackbuts, etc.
Re:Create some new ones ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily.
I know this is anecdotal, but I've a violin that's my grandmother's, which was her mother's (I think). It's very old, and German, and is a pleasure to play.
I also have several new violins that have been modeled after the really good old ones (including one that's modeled after a Bolshoi instrument [wikipedia.org]). Now, the new ones sound fabulous, no doubt, but the old ones still have an ineffable quality to them that makes the music stand out.
For the longest time I thought this was psychological, but I've played both kinds of violins to friends and family with no music knowledge, and almost always, people say that the older violin just sounds richer. Even more interesting is the fact that the strings (both violin and bowstrings) are all quite new, so it most certainly is the body.
Secondly, it is also the collector's value - you have some excellent replicas of some of the world's most famous paintings, perhaps in better quality and in better resolution. However, that hardly diminishes the value of the original.
Do I enjoy playing my new violins? Hell yeah. In fact, I've some with fixed microphones inside which makes it easier for me to make recordings and the like (this is a problem because appropriate placing of mics inside a violin is hard, without affecting the harmonics, and there are some violins that take this into consideration).
And while some of my new violins can certainly take a beating, while I'm scared shitless of doing anything to my grandmother's violin. That does not mean that it diminishes the value of the old one - if anything, it makes it a delicate, valuable item.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Did anybody else hear the theme from Deliverance while reading that?
Q: What's the difference between a violin and a fiddle?
A: People actually like fiddle music!
There was a world class concert violinist (don't remember his name, it has been several years ago) who said he tried to learn to play the fiddle. "Turkey in the Straw is Mozart played real fast with extra notes!" he siad.