FoxMitchell

That's where I was yesterday!

Well, the weirdness continues! This week's oddity, a custom double-necked saz!

Heifetz could use a banana to play and we'd never know he's not playing a Strad! The guy who owns this Stroh recorded himself playing something Carnatic/Middle-Eastern and I think it works for that. That style isn't too concerned with complex timbre and overtones... I still couldn't handle the weight.

Thanks! And yes, it was fun to work on it, but I wouldn't have one myself, it's too heavy! Thanks! Ash is a sweet kitty indeed! And he's snoozing in my lap as I write this, because he's very needy and clingy.

Weird things show up at the workshop from time-to-time! This time, it was a Stroh violin. So I had to make a video of it! (bonus points if you get the thumbnail reference)

Well, it happened, I had to make a video of this weird thing! ...there's a sample of what it sounds like at the end if you don't want to sit through the whole refurbishing process.

The entire instrument is over 980 grams.

We shall find out when I'm done working on it!

Juuust a little bit, yeah. Yeah, that's what my research has shown. Weird little thing it is!

Hey folks! Every now and then something weird shows up at the shop, and here is the latest one: a 'Stroh violin'! Isn't it gloriously steampunk? The design seems to be pretty similar to some sold here by a company called 'Lark in the Morning', except the tag on the top is not like theirs, this one's tag seems to have some ...Burmese writing I think? Can anyone read it? Also this one has machine tuners (which I suspect aren't original). Has anyone seen one of these before?

Hi! Welcome! And your violin looks very pretty! What does it sound like?

So pretty!

Thanks! It's hard to capture in the video (with a smartphone camera/mic) the subtle differences, but #2 is more 'earthy', a bit more growly perhaps, and #3 is brighter, lighter on its feet, like a lyric tenor, and doesn't like to be pushed hard, while #2 you can be a bit more heavy-handed before the sound crunches.

And somehow I forgot to post here, my favorite forum these days, the one video I made that's most relevant to the things discussed here! My violins #2 and #3, in the hands of a competent player! We felt that #3, which is very loosely based on the Messiah Strad, was very suited for some Mozart playing. And their colors I couldn't get to appear right on the video, they are a lot more rich and have much more red/brown, but the camera picked a lot of yellow! #4 has been finished for a while now, I need to get a good sound sample of it sometime, and post it here too when that happens!

You are correct! But my statement was made as a huge oversimplification of this extremely complex and convoluted concept that is 'art'. I mentioned "aesthetically pleasing" a couple of times I think, and in one of them, "aesthetically pleasing" in this case would be the perspective from the artist, not necessarily the audience, as the artist sets out to create something, and (in an ideal scenario) will conclude it once they deem it "good enough", "pleasing to their sensibilities", ergo, aesthetically pleasing, at which point, the artist calls his work 'art'. Yes, you have artists who are grumpy and emo or just low on self-esteem, who think their stuff is not good enough, but in my experience even those will try to achieve something they are at least to some degree satisfied with before sending it out (and if you ever took an artist's unfinished work and went ahead and called it 'finished' and published it, oh boy, that can be terrible for them, I've seen it happen, it isn't pretty). From the perspective of the viewer though, once again putting it in extremely oversimplified terms, one will call something 'art' if they think it's "good", if it pleases them; or they will dismiss it as 'not art' with statements like "this isn't art, this is garbage" if they don't agree with the work. In both cases, it elicits emotions, as you said art should, and an outside observer could call either option 'art', because it made the viewer feel/think something. But if what the viewer felt was that it was not art? ...is it art? Context is also extremely important: If I see a pile of bricks on a construction site that's neatly stacked, it might please me, I might find the proportions are nice, but does that make it 'art'? Now if we see that pile of bricks on a gallery and they say it's 'art' and put a pricetag on it of $100k, suddenly that's 'art'? I hate art! It's not a concept easy to define and is extremely dependent on sociocultural perspective. So I went with the simplest way I could possibly put it: You make/see something, you like it, you call it 'art'.