Bass Bar-verticle or not

[Stephen Faulk]

This is an interesting comversation, I've read most of it and leaned a lot. But I decided sometime this afternoon, that for a while anyway, I will refer to this item as the Bass Beam instead of the bass bar.

 

I want to instill in my tactile memory an intellect that this is a structural beam of some type. I want to conceptualize it as a beam not a bar. It is a bar of wood, but that sounds soe strange when it is really a structural beam. No matter how it functions with the vibrating aspect of the instrument, and that is complex, it is performing a structural task.

 

To call it a bar seems so abstract and dissassociated with what it really does. So beam gives it a bit more meaning...language has intent built into it; I never really thought much about the bass bar as a structural element of the architecture of the violin until it popped into my head - 'beam' holds things up- can be flexible, yet stable.

 

Then I thought 'post and beam' construction, it's a system, they go together. It's not post and bar construction, it's post and beam. When that word entered my mind the whole idea of how that thing- bar, beam, stick or whatever it is became non abstract it made sense. Something twisted my brain cells and came alive about that component that I did not have a feel for previous to the the word beam representing it.

 

This navel gazing has been brought to you by SF productions, back to regular Bass Bar talk. Get it? ... bass Bartok......he he - oh my...yeah I'll stop now.