David Beard

This is a beautiful definition. It is interesting to look at various literal definitions of the old words for ranking: Apprentice =A bound assistant and student of a master Journeyman = a post apprenticeship worker under masters. But basically free to change shops or town Master = master of a shop Master = Having completed a peer accepted masterwork, and now elligble to run a shop Doctor = 'speaker' on the subject. One who is able or does speaker or lecture or publish on the subject Andrea, despite the beautiful humility, you are a Master. No one but you runs your shop.

Inspired by other recent threads. Follow the best traditional examples. Use a modern setup (or modern Baroque when customer wants). But follow old Cremona examples in the making, in all ways possible. This means: 1) study and observe classical instruments, 2) do what they did as thoroughly as you can understand to, 3) lay aside modern mindset and tools as much as you can, 4) build using classical methods and means as thoroughly as possible, 5) they didn't make copies, so 'doing as they did' also means make each instrument as itself, not as a copy. Use TRADITIONAL MATERIALS, as traditionally sourced in all ways as possible.

A short string length is indeed higher impedance. So the feel and sound are very different than for a long string length. But 'volume' is not so simple as a number on a guage, at least not perceived volume. Both the complexity and the simple energy level of a sound can contribute a sense of fullness and volume to a sound. The short string length can be hard to control. The soundpoint is small. And the string can more easily be driven hard than played delicately. The long string length can more easily give a simpler clean sound. The energy put in tends to distribute in different ways for a short versus long string length. But that doesn't necessarily mean that one wastes more energy than the other. If one isn't really wasting more energy than the other, than energy-in to volume-of-sound-out should be similar, though we can expect the character of the sounds to differ.

That style of divider was made for centuries I believe. I would guess yours is most likely from somewhere between 1830 and 1930. Is the thread bent too much to work properly?

Wow! Some of you apparently get a lot more specific info from scratching than I can imagine. I get a very loose impression of material quality. And then, to less reliable extent, a loose impression if things are still too stiff or heavy. Getting more is beyond me.

I use this, but just in a loose intuitive way. I believe you can get a general impression of 'liveliness', 'clarity', and 'character'. These are intuitive concepts, and the scratching only gives an intuitive impression. But in truth, i'm not sure anything better or meaningful actually exists to go on. You can collect numbers and measurements instead, but what do thise numbers mean? The scratching sounds give enough to have an opinion about how I like the scratch sound. I want 'lively'. I want a sense of 'clarity', the sense that I can really hear the details of the physical actions of the scratching in the sound. And I want a 'pleasing' 'character'. That could be various characters. But might have an unappealing character. I'm sure to some these ideas must seem silly, but I find this useful when selecting wood, and in final stages of working a talkative component od the instrument. Mostly it gives an aural component to consider when trying to decide if a part is free and flexible enough. **** When I look at spectrums and data about sound, I often find it mentally interesting and intriguing, but it never tells me much I care about. Spectrums and data never helped me decide if I liked a sound. But the ear easily does. Spectrums never told me the physical nature of the sound source, but my ear often does. You can hear things like 'that was wood struck with metal', but can anyone distinguish that looking at the data? Anyway, that's my two cents.

In the larger sense, this is within the traditions. From ancient times, hide type animal protein glues were made by boiling a gel from either bone or skin. I think your antler glue is essentially a bone glue. Some glues were known to be more brittle, or more flexible, or stronger, or tougher etc. Cennini for example goes into differences between fishbone glue, glue from scraps of used parchment, and a few others. Today, we distinguish rabbit glue as more flexible and therefore fit for sizing canvasses. Etc. I'm not sure how much of the old knowledge of how protein glues from various differed and were most suit for particular. The dominance of our common modern version of 'hide glue' is very like a matter of what emerged as most economic during industrialization. Some have suggested that the old Cremona makers might have used some other glue like casein based on observations that the original undisturbed joins are very difficult to open. But another possibility would be some special bone/hide type glue. These sorts of details I don't believe anyone knows.

Cockburn: Right, amplitude is width in relation to the waves mean. A flat line, if considered as a wave, has amplitude zero and frequency undefined, so problematic. These issue are intrinsic to the line and don't need a context. Right: Difference tones (Tartini tones) don't appear in a correct fourier transform. On the other hand, they do appear as periodic cycling of pressure. Depending on your definition of 'sound' that either does or doesn't make them sound, and real. Yet, under the right circumstances, they are audible.

Not really a use except as a component of understanding intonation. However, easy presence of harmonics and difference tones is probably a good sign in a fiddle.

Yes. For me, I rarely focus on hearing the Tartini tones distinctly or separately. Getting them that clear and prominent takes a special effort. But, I was taught that when you play an interval strongly and cleanly and you hear the intonation just sort of lock in, the Tartini tones are part of that difference you hear in the locked in interval. As for physical differences in instruments, I suspect that low Qs of the various instrument resonances helps. The violin presents various masses that are driven to vibrate following the signal from the strings. But all these masses and modes of vibration also have their own natural resonances. (Q is a measure of how much more the resonance responds to energy coming in at a frequency near its natural frequency versus an input energy that differs in frequency. A high Q object like a good string very strongly favors its own natural frequency. A much lower Q object like a good soundboard readily responds to a much broader range of driving frequencies.)

What I mean is that the wave is not medium. While the wave causes displacements in the media, the induced displacements don't necessarily lead to oscilations of the components of the material that are simple reflections of the wave. More importantly, the local disturbances are caused by the propagating wave, they are not it's cause. For sound, the waves are propagating cyclic disturbance of the presure in the medium. This closely linked to, but not necessarily the same, as vibrations of the medium. Many such vibrations of the media give heat without giving sound. Why does this matter? The waves of sound are in some sense independant of the medium. They do of course need to be expressed in a medium, but they can propagate from one medium to another. In a larger sense, a wave is the communication of energy through a medium. Waves step into a connecting borderland between physical materal, energy, and information. I'm not saying this in any mystical sense, but in a literal physics sense. As such, mathematical effects can easily be confused with physical ones. It isn't always easy to separate the phantom from the real. Consider an ideal sawtooth presure wave. Physically, the presured goes straight up linearly, then goes straight down linearly, then repeats etc. Mathematically, these cyclic presure changes are same as adding together an infinite number of simple sone waves. But physically, really, there is only one simple saw tooth cycle. An fft's task is deliver a series of sine waves that up to the sawtooth. A good fft does exactly that when it 'sees' a sawtooth. It reports an endless sum of sines, but no sawtooth. So which is the real physical wave, and which the informational illusion. Sound is endlessly tricky in such things.

Air molecules vibrating back and forth?? We are talking fluctuating collective air presure, not vibrating molecules. (Vibrating molecules = heat. Periodically cycling presure wave = sound) The air presure of waves is additive. Beats do present a periodically cycling extra degree of low and high pressure as two waves of different frequency add their pressures. If a listener, mechanical, mathematical, or human, fully recognizes that the periodically cycling extra peaks and valleys of the difference are completely dependent on the two basic waves, then the frequency of this cycle can be discounted and doesn't need to be reported/heard as a tone. But the cycle of the difference tone is still physically present. And, the fact that we hear these only tells us that or hearing system does include the rule 'discard presure cycles that sum from sine waves you're hearing at the same time'.

??excuse me?? There is no simple relation between the pressure wave frequency and motion of individual molecules. Only the collective presure directly has the frequency. Individual molecules of the medium will move move in response, but not necessarily simply and directly tracking the frequency as pulses of the wave pass through.

Perhaps I miss understand? Difference tones are simple. F1 - F2 = dF. Essentially just an extension of beats. As a violinist, I grew up believing i'd learned that Tartini discovered using these actual difference tones in playing. And that people called such difference tones 'Tartini tones'. Is this not the case?

All hail.