A university setting for violin knowledge

[martin swan]

 

 

For example, let's just say that Ben Herbert, Martin Swan, Roger Hargrave, and Jacob Saunders had the time and the monetary incentive to break away from what they normally do for say 2 weeks....and that in some imaginary world they had been talking among themselves  and said, "hey, were all here in Europe, let's put together a 2 week course related to everything about violins not related to building them", mostly as it pertains to id and applying that in the "real world". They would have time to organize and promote the future date, much like Oberlin does, and I'm sure that they could charge a pretty penny, and fill the class up.

 

 

Jezzupe, I'm flattered by the faith you show in my knowledge, but it's very slight. I'm a dealer and an enthusiast, not an expert. My approach is to rely entirely on the acknowledged specialists in particular schools of making, rather than to think that I can learn it all myself. I may seem free with opinions on Maestronet, but in the real world of "do I buy this", I am much more cautious, and stick to what I know. 

 

I'm afraid I find the premise of this thread to be somewhat disingenuous. What Skiingfiddler really wants is to draw attention to the conflicts of interest and potential for corruption and rank dishonesty within the antique violin trade. I think this should be discussed openly and clearly, without fudging it up with entirely unrelated matters such as the teaching of violin-making or acoustics, or the spurious non-starter of a university degree in violin connoisseurship. This idea has been dismissed with great force of logic many times, but Skiingfiddler keeps coming, because that's not really his agenda.

 

I would agree that there is an unhealthy disparity of knowledge between the sellers of violins and the purchasers of violins. The first thing that can be done to rectify this is for conservatoire students to further their understanding of violins and bows and how they are traded and valued.

 

I meet with profound ignorance and prejudice from players on a daily basis - very strongly held beliefs which have never been tested or questioned. These beliefs all lead violinists in the direction of spending more money, so they are very convenient for the trade. I think players should apply much more thought and study to how to choose and how to genuinely hear instruments and to distinguish their qualities. I rarely see anyone go about it with reason and intelligence.

 

I would like to see a far greater separation between violins which are valuable and/or interesting and violins which work as musical tools. From my point of view, the more violins that end up in the hands of private collectors or museums the better - I would like to see an end to the confusion between tone and investment.

[Ben Hebbert]

Ben,

 

I understand your post and your defense of the Hills in simplifying the market.  Their decision was correct from a business point of view.

 

How can we account for the fact that the Hills were very ready to attribute the hands of Andrea Guarneri, Francesco Rugeri, and JB Rogeri to the genuine works of Nicolo Amati (indeed, the Hills attribute entire instruments made by those three as genuine Nicolo Amatis), but couldn't attribute others hands to Antonio Stradivari?  How is the Stradivari situation different from the Amati one?

 

Stephen, 

 

To me, their logic is quite obvious. Around 1900 Cremona violins were in three tiers, Strads & Del Gesus at the top of the tree, then Amatis and afterwards the 'old Cremonas' of whatever other sort. The observation still stands today. There was every incentive to distance Strad & Del Gesu and keep them in the stratospheric top end of the market. But by drawing comparisons in the early Guarneri family to Amati helped to narrow the gap, making these closer to a good strong Nicolo Amati Grand Pattern price. 

 

If you look hard at the Guarneri book, you'll see that they quite obviously abandoned their plans for an Amati monologue, because in truth it really is based chiefly on research around Nicolo Amati's period in Cremona. But they used that information instead to support the idea that Guarneris and thus Rogeris, Ruggeris etc. where not so different. 

 

Clever sods. You have to respect them for it, and the market conditions they created have held.... even if you kind of hate them for it!  

[Conor Russell]

I think Martin's right.

 

I have found this thread frustrating because, I think, I've been trying to answer the wrong question all along.

[Melvin Goldsmith]

I went to University. ...a good one....it made me very well aware that a degree, Masters, Doctorate, proffessorship mean very little in relation to knowledge.

[Stephen Faulk]

Perhaps  

 

But then, you haven't spent much time around universities... Henry Kissinger, war criminal and arch political guru said something priceless once when he was president of Columbia university: "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." I couldn't agree more.

 

 

  Love this. 

The two times I worked at a college I left because I could not justify slitting someone else's throat politically for so little money. So petty. ( If you are going to be a sociopathic gunslinger only work for high grade pay.) 

 I had a position on the graduate dept. staff of an art college. The dean came to my office one afternoon and said there's going to be fire fight and your direct boss is going to go down. A powerful faculty member has been bending the ears of the board of trustees and the axe is going to fall soon. I'm going to protect you, but you should refrain from trying to protect your boss or object out loud or this faculty member will come after you. 

So then I left and got a job in a museum, where if the politics are petty and small minded you can at least wander into the galleries and look at art while they fight. 

 

Instrument making is a vocational education, fitting it into a university would only burden it up with theoretical components it does not need, which would interfere with hands on acquisition of knowledge. At this point I'm deeply questioning whether fine art should be taught in university. I think Goldsmith College was one of the first art schools to offer a doctorate in studio art. When I asked what that was useful for I was told, grant writing. 

 

Nobody needs a doctorate in studio art. English composition class is where you learn to write grants. A school offering a doctorate in studio art is simply making up a meander through matriculating in order for the school to milk more money out of the student in return for something preposterous. A doctorate in studio practice? Spare me. Making art, your time would be better spent renting a studio and working on your own for three years. 

 

Violin making in a university setting would not be much different. It would be a cash cow which produced a cadre' of half prepared highly degreed people with student loan debt. Although the networking between the half educated would be fabulous. 

[jezzupe]

"yes, and he was killed all for only 5 dollars"   like being killed isn't bad enough, at least there could have been something on the line

 

The thing that strikes me funny about higher education and art is that most of the people that students and teachers talk about,learn about and try to emulate are people who were born with natural god given talent and that somehow they were able to use it to achieve great art, and that some how these "higher edumacated " people think that paying lots of money to study great artist's is somehow going to give them the ability to become great artist's too. Not saying things can't be learned for students who are apt, but in general for the masses it's just seems like a scam being run by people with higher criminal educations.

[skiingfiddler]

 

 

I'm afraid I find the premise of this thread to be somewhat disingenuous. What Skiingfiddler really wants is to draw attention to the conflicts of interest and potential for corruption and rank dishonesty within the antique violin trade. I think this should be discussed openly and clearly, without fudging it up with entirely unrelated matters such as the teaching of violin-making or acoustics, or the spurious non-starter of a university degree in violin connoisseurship. This idea has been dismissed with great force of logic many times, but Skiingfiddler keeps coming, because that's not really his agenda.

 

 

Martin,

 

You've identified part of the problem: "Conflicts of interest and potential for corruption and rank dishonesty within the antique violin trade." 

 

But there are more shortcomings in the information concerning violins.  On another thread, I asked what I thought was a rather straightforward question about how a violin functions:  If the rocking motion of the bridge is the main manner by which the plates are put in motion, then what would happen if the pressure on the bridge were increased or decreased?  Would the rocking motion increase with increased pressure, or would the additional pressure suppress the rocking motion?  Similarly, what happens if the pressure is decreased? Apparently, that's a rather complicated question that doesn't currently have a clear answer.

 

It looks to me like the physical mechanics of the violin are far from understood after 500 years of the existence of the violin.  What can be done about that?  Maybe more minds need to work on the problem.  Where will we find those minds?  A university physics department would be a good place to look.

 

Similarly, the chemistry of classic Italian varnish seems to be an on going mystery.  Again more minds from a university chemistry department might speed understanding.

 

Dating wood, dendrochronology, has been a university based discipline for some time.

 

There seem to be a number of problems in the violin world that universities are already set up to look at.  If they haven't, it might be because the problems haven't been brought to their attention.

 

There are also some issues that universities are currently not prepared to look at because the faculty may be lacking, such as the history of the violin, violin construction, violin restoration.  Having the history of the violin in a university setting seems reasonable, but why, one might ask, would one want to have violin construction in a university setting?  Because if students of violin making knew, for example, the underlying physics and chemistry of the violin and its varnish, they could build with a full understanding of what is actually happening, rather than just "making by the numbers," ie, doing what tradition has established.  I believe that understanding why one is doing something, rather than just how to do something, leads to better results, because one then understands how to adapt to varying conditions.

 

Once there are faculty at a university into the physics and chemistry of the violin, violin history, construction, restoration, wood dating, history of Europe from the Renaissance to the present, you have the components for training someone in the beginnings of violin connoisseurship.  It's then up to that student after graduation to take that beginning and turn it into expertise.

 

But you may be right.  That may be way too ambitious.  It may be plenty to wring the "conflicts of interest and potential for corruption and rank dishonesty" out of the violin trade, specifically the antique trade.  That would be a very worthwhile goal.  To me, that means finding some independent and separate institution from the violin trade to do authentication and attribution.  That might be achieved by dealers setting up such a separate institution or using an existing institution, such as a university.

 

Alternatively, dealers might agree that no instrument gets an attribution unless at least 2 separate dealers agree.  That at least would have inhibited the Machold wrongdoings.

 

Please feel free to pursue other possibilities.

 

Your post continues on:

I would agree that there is an unhealthy disparity of knowledge between the sellers of violins and the purchasers of violins. The first thing that can be done to rectify this is for conservatoire students to further their understanding of violins and bows and how they are traded and valued.

 

I meet with profound ignorance and prejudice from players on a daily basis - very strongly held beliefs which have never been tested or questioned. These beliefs all lead violinists in the direction of spending more money, so they are very convenient for the trade. I think players should apply much more thought and study to how to choose and how to genuinely hear instruments and to distinguish their qualities. I rarely see anyone go about it with reason and intelligence.

 

I would like to see a far greater separation between violins which are valuable and/or interesting and violins which work as musical tools. From my point of view, the more violins that end up in the hands of private collectors or museums the better - I would like to see an end to the confusion between tone and investment.

End quote.

 

That's absolutely true.  It sounds like there's more of a need to educate players and public about violins.  I can see a role for the university in that, certainly those universities with violin majors.

 

[martin swan]

Stephen,

There are many issues here, and I would love to address them, but long posts get ignored! I really think we should focus on the matter of expertise in antique instruments, since the other aspects of "violin understanding" are either currently taking place within academia or are not viable within a university context.

 

Your real concern has always been the Machold model - and your underlying question, is it all actually a scam, or at least a closed shop which has evolved to separate fools from their money?

 

We all know that the answer is sort of yes, sort of no. But while some dealers and dealer/experts exploit the "knowledge imbalance" with psychopathic zeal, others are transparent, scholarly, fair, and keen to share much (though never all) of what they know.

 

Let me put my thoughts forwards a bit more laterally.

 

Geronimo Barnabetti

A Barnabetti is not an expensive violin, typically selling for £1500-2000. Some dealers like to talk about Barnabetti as a real person, an Italian "journeyman" who appeared at the JTL workshops and was one of their best makers - perhaps they put £500 on the price because you could almost say this violin was Italian. If you look back at uninformed source material, you will find this myth substantiated (Henley for instance if I recall correctly).

But an extensive study of JTL violins (perhaps looking at a couple of thousand or more) will tell you that Barnabetti labels can be found in 4 or 5 common Mirecourt models, that the work can range from "monkey with a mallet" to relatively refined, that there's no consistency in varnish type or colour etc. So from this you can deduce with 100% certainty that Barnabetti is a trade label, and no more.

However, come the time to sell your Barnabetti, the customer likes it, the price is right, all looking good. The customer asks a bit more about who Barnabetti was - they've read on the internet that he was an Italian journeyman etc etc ...

You patiently explain how the Mirecourt system worked, the concept of trade names, the way different people worked on different parts of the violin. You see the customer begin to look confused, perhaps they look a bit annoyed, their upper lip puckers ... basically it becomes clear that they wanted Barnabetti. They wanted their Italian journeyman, not a trade Mirecourt violin with a made-up name.

 

For better or worse (and I would say worse) the concept of a single artisan is so ingrained that it's very hard to tear people away from it, even with the humblest trade violin. I'm not surprised that some dealers resort to the pretty version, since it makes everyone happy.

 

It's no different with Stradivari, Vuillaume or most other makers, just bigger money.

[jacobsaunders]

Sorry about your cold.

 

Yes, I have introduced the topic of the university as a place for violin knowledge before.  I think it needs to be brought up more often because the validity of knowledge in the violin world is the most important topic in the violin world.  People are paying huge sums of money based on that knowledge.

 

As far as being a non-starter, it's great to see some former supporters of the idea, here, again (Thanks, Ron), and some new support for the idea from those with stronger arguments than I am presenting. 

 

Jacob,

Get used to seeing this topic again when the occasion calls for it.  As I noted, the validity of knowledge in the violin world is the most important topic there is for the violin world.  And there are reasons to question it:

--People who authenticate are the same people who sell, creating a conflict of interest. 

--The opinion of a very small group of experts is viewed as fact, and the violin world wants to be collegial and not disagree, certainly not publicly.  It takes the actions as blatantly wrong as those of Machold to break that collegiality. 

--Getting something wrong in the violin world, as it's structured now, costs somebody money; so there's very little room for speculation.  Speculation in all the sciences is encouraged.  Wrong steps are part of taking the right steps in the sciences, and nobody's penalized.

--There have been a couple hundred years of writing about violins that is quite inaccurate, a point you often make, yourself.  How do you undo that tradition of inaccuracy?

 

As far as my personal feelings go, please cite the posts in which I've gotten upset.  I'll have no trouble citing those in which you've gotten upset.  Concerning my ambitions, I'm past retirement age and harbor no ambitions beyond getting a good night's sleep and losing weight.

 

To all,

I greatly appreciate the greater civility this thread has shown.  Hope we can keep it that way and deal with the facts and ideas of the issue and not poster's personal feelings and ambitions.  With that in mind, I'll retract my request to Jacob to support his claims about my personal feelings and ambitions.  Going that direction would really be a non-starter of no interest to anyone.

All of your issues with this subject were answered multiple times in your thread 2 years ago. Which makes me wonder why you say that I should “Get used to seeing this topic again when the occasion calls for it“. What occasion?

Let me point out again that when the court appoints an „expert“ here, they stipulate a classic training in „the Trade“ as well as 10 years working in „a leading position“ therein. This is for 2 main reasons, the first; because that is where expertise is to be found, and the second, because they wish to avoid the “general dilettante” (which you are advocating) at all costs. Should an “expert” be suspected of impartiality, a second expert is appointed to check the statements of the first.

You seem to have a fixation with Machold, and to have misunderstood that topic thoroughly. Machold was not, resp. is not a violin expert. He preferred to deal with instruments that had mountains of papers already, his customers predominantly financial institutions and musicians who dealt “on the side”. The business model was the hardly original rob Peter to pay Paul system, which one sees often enough (e.g. Magby), just that he kept appearances up for a couple of decades, possibly partly because he was spread around many different countries. I sometimes can't help thinking he drifted into the wrong business. He would surely have been a brilliant Chairman of the Federal Reserve

[Ben Hebbert]

For fun - but a serious point: 

 

I'm a major consumer of coca cola. In my life already I've probably spent enough on Coca Cola to have bought me a reasonably priced fiddle, and it's clear that Coca Cola is not only going to be a constant commitment to my resources, but something that will have unknown effects on my future life. However, I don't know what it's made from, I don't know what the biological balances exactly are, I don't know the health risks, and I don't know where the ingredients are sourced - I don't know what ecosystems are at risk because of the production of it's ingredients, nor if the agricultural policies that are determined by them destabilise small states, and have knock on effects like civil wars or population migration. I don't know if the addictive qualities of Coca Cola are inducing me to other kinds of behaviour - am I more likely to take drugs because this is enhancing an addictive element in my neurological chemistry, or if it is satisfying it, thus making me less likely to other addictions. I find it totally obnoxious that Coca Cola obviously have this kind of knowledge, but are unwilling to share it, or are aware of things that they decide not to research further. Moreover, the cost of Coca Cola is obviously a rip off, because it must have an immorally high margin. Yet I keep drinking it. Not to mention the fakes and frauds, Pepsi! Supermarket own brands... we have a right to know. 

 

I think anyone interested in being a consumer of Coca Cola, and especially anyone who intends to take the moral and ethical responsibilities of selling Coca Cola should be moved to study all these elements in a university, and universities should be moved to establish specialist degrees in CocaColology. Should be possible to do this in a Masters course of two years, or maybe a set of workshops in a week. Let's ignore just for a second that any single part of the syllabus could be a life times dedication for hundreds of people alone. 

 

Syllabus:

 

1) Nutrition

2) Global politics. 

3) Organic Chemistry

4) Geography

5) Agriculture

6) Polymer science (bottles - elective) 

7) Metallurgy (cans) 

8) Glass blowing and silicates (glass bottles) 

9) Glass tinting

10) Neuroscience

11) Marketing 

12) Cultural History since 1892

13) Cooking

14) Physics of bubbles, surface tension. 

15) Pigment analysis. 

16) Analytical chemistry

17) Logistics

18) Ethics

19) Business studies

20) Law

21) Ad infinitum ad absurdum.

 

The fact that the recipe has been kept secret, only known to a tiny number of people, is in itself grounds for the firmest indictment. The fact that it tastes well with Jack Daniels, another firm that holds to it's own secrets reeks of an absolute global conspiracy. We have the right to know, and the obligation to have a university course on it. 

 

By Skiingfiddler's logic, my demands are unarguable. 

 

 

 

Any comment? 

[jacobsaunders]

You seem to have forgotten about coke's rust dissolving properties, surely the most important aspect

[jezzupe]

All of your issues with this subject were answered multiple times in your thread 2 years ago. Which makes me wonder why you say that I should “Get used to seeing this topic again when the occasion calls for it“. What occasion?

Let me point out again that when the court appoints an „expert“ here, they stipulate a classic training in „the Trade“ as well as 10 years working in „a leading position“ therein. This is for 2 main reasons, the first; because that is where expertise is to be found, and the second, because they wish to avoid the “general dilettante” (which you are advocating) at all costs. Should an “expert” be suspected of impartiality, a second expert is appointed to check the statements of the first.

You seem to have a fixation with Machold, and to have misunderstood that topic thoroughly. Machold was not, resp. is not a violin expert. He preferred to deal with instruments that had mountains of papers already, his customers predominantly financial institutions and musicians who dealt “on the side”. The business model was the hardly original rob Peter to pay Paul system, which one sees often enough (e.g. Magby), just that he kept appearances up for a couple of decades, possibly partly because he was spread around many different countries. I sometimes can't help thinking he drifted into the wrong business. He would surely have been a brilliant Chairman of the Federal Reserve

But, but....well, I don't think he's a Zionist, so I don;t see how that would be possible

[Ben Hebbert]

You seem to have forgotten about coke's rust dissolving properties, surely the most important aspect

 

I hoped to reserve that for a university degree in bow restoration, Jacob  

[Jeffrey Holmes]

 

1) You've identified part of the problem: "Conflicts of interest and potential for corruption and rank dishonesty within the antique violin trade." 

 

2) But there are more shortcomings in the information concerning violins.  On another thread, I asked what I thought was a rather straightforward question about how a violin functions:  If the rocking motion of the bridge is the main manner by which the plates are put in motion, then what would happen if the pressure on the bridge were increased or decreased?  Would the rocking motion increase with increased pressure, or would the additional pressure suppress the rocking motion?  Similarly, what happens if the pressure is decreased? Apparently, that's a rather complicated question that doesn't currently have a clear answer.

 

3) It looks to me like the physical mechanics of the violin are far from understood after 500 years of the existence of the violin.  What can be done about that?  Maybe more minds need to work on the problem.  Where will we find those minds?  A university physics department would be a good place to look.

 

4) Similarly, the chemistry of classic Italian varnish seems to be an on going mystery.  Again more minds from a university chemistry department might speed understanding.

 

5) Dating wood, dendrochronology, has been a university based discipline for some time.

 

6) There seem to be a number of problems in the violin world that universities are already set up to look at.  If they haven't, it might be because the problems haven't been brought to their attention.

 

7) There are also some issues that universities are currently not prepared to look at because the faculty may be lacking, such as the history of the violin, violin construction, violin restoration.  Having the history of the violin in a university setting seems reasonable, but why, one might ask, would one want to have violin construction in a university setting?  Because if students of violin making knew, for example, the underlying physics and chemistry of the violin and its varnish, they could build with a full understanding of what is actually happening, rather than just "making by the numbers," ie, doing what tradition has established.  I believe that understanding why one is doing something, rather than just how to do something, leads to better results, because one then understands how to adapt to varying conditions.

 

8) Once there are faculty at a university into the physics and chemistry of the violin, violin history, construction, restoration, wood dating, history of Europe from the Renaissance to the present, you have the components for training someone in the beginnings of violin connoisseurship.  It's then up to that student after graduation to take that beginning and turn it into expertise.

 

9) But you may be right.  That may be way too ambitious.  It may be plenty to wring the "conflicts of interest and potential for corruption and rank dishonesty" out of the violin trade, specifically the antique trade.  That would be a very worthwhile goal.  To me, that means finding some independent and separate institution from the violin trade to do authentication and attribution.  That might be achieved by dealers setting up such a separate institution or using an existing institution, such as a university.

 

10) That's absolutely true.  It sounds like there's more of a need to educate players and public about violins.  I can see a role for the university in that, certainly those universities with violin majors.

 

 

 

I really hadn't engaged in this thread until this point, as I have really not felt that we'd moved beyond what was discussed in the last one.

 

I had a similar reaction to Jacob's concerning your statement of intention ("Get used to seeing this topic again when the occasion calls for it.").  What occasion, Ski?  I feel this is a subject that may qualify as your own agenda, not necessarily the board's.  Some may agree with you, but I note that I haven't seen widespread support of those in the industry who post on the board (that is actually an understatement!), nor the support of any/many who own expensive instruments.  I certainly don't object to the ideas being discussed, but I am sensitive to subjects that pass the point of being productive being rehashed to the point of being irritable.  In other words, you might want to save some of your your bullets.  

 

Below is my option concerning 10 points.  Have at it.

 

1) Dishonesty and greed (for money or power) are present in any industry...  including the education industry.  Conflict of interest can be a potential in any venue.  A university based education has little hope of solving this issue.

 

2) Those seriously involved in construction or restoration of instruments have a pretty good idea of the cause and effect of variables of model, pressure, damping, etc.  Those who come from other areas of expertise to violin construction offer a viewpoint that we as trades-people welcome... but this is a TRADE.  Most of what I see "discovered" verifies what I can already see, feel or hear.  Some debunks ideas or assumptions.  Some causes me to experiment further...  but in the end, it's like any other trade.  The trade-person accepts and employs ideas that they can exploit to improve the end product.

 

3, 4 & 5)  Really?  I can think of a number of engineers, acousticians, and chemists who are involved, or more often are consulted, by makers and restorers.  In addition, those with expertise in other industries (coatings, materials) are also consulted.  The trades-person takes the information and applies it.  If the results show promise, they may adopt the procedures, tests, or materials.  

 

I can also think of a number of "scientific discoveries" and "theories" pertaining to violins emanating from researchers in universities that are given far too much weight (more weight than even the researchers intended) by the general violin loving public (knew all the makers should have waited for the next mini ice age!), or just don't hold up when a larger sampling of instruments is examined.  It's far more likely that a procedure for testing that was not intended for violins alone is adopted by the industry/trade and finds practical application within it.

 

6)  By all means, bring it to their attention.  I believe the best that could come out of this is to find an interested grant writer who could obtain finding to research one portion of the subject and was capable of interacting with those in the industry who have experience and information concerning the subject, verifying the information, and then expanding on that..

 

7) I believe this will continue to be so.  I cannot think of any of my colleagues who would be willing to immerse themselves in an environment destined to leave them talking to others who will most likely not apply the information in a practical manner and/or who "simply don't understand".  With respect, I don't believe that you really understand.

 

8) No, I disagree.  Cart before the horse.  If you have someone who is driven to expertise and has the capacity to organize information, they will gain the education and experience required to be effective.  If they come 'round to it in the other direction (after studying history at a university, for example), their studies may be applied to the new chosen field of inquiry.

 

9) Yes...  god knows.  We're all a bunch of bandits.    See point number 1.  Consumers have the tools they require to do this for themselves or can hire a consultant.  Trust but verify... and understand what's being traded, what an opinion actually is, and what the potential risk/reward is.

 

10) Again.  Been down that road.  I'm not the only one who occasionally makes a presentation at a university.

 

Cheers.

[Ron1]

Ski- listen:

 

"Fi~Fie~Fo~Fum".  Methinks the beanstalk is much too high, and the Giants are much too big.  They ain't lettin' go of that goose.

[Ben Hebbert]

Ski- listen:

 

"Fi~Fie~Fo~Fum".  Methinks the beanstalk is much too high, and the Giants are much too big.  They ain't lettin' go of that goose.

 

 

... and the axe has been ground to oblivion

 

(importance of tool skills, methinks) 

[skiingfiddler]

For fun - but a serious point: 

 

I'm a major consumer of coca cola. In my life already I've probably spent enough on Coca Cola to have bought me a reasonably priced fiddle, and it's clear that Coca Cola is not only going to be a constant commitment to my resources, but something that will have unknown effects on my future life. However, I don't know what it's made from, I don't know what the biological balances exactly are, I don't know the health risks, and I don't know where the ingredients are sourced - I don't know what ecosystems are at risk because of the production of it's ingredients, nor if the agricultural policies that are determined by them destabilise small states, and have knock on effects like civil wars or population migration. I don't know if the addictive qualities of Coca Cola are inducing me to other kinds of behaviour - am I more likely to take drugs because this is enhancing an addictive element in my neurological chemistry, or if it is satisfying it, thus making me less likely to other addictions. I find it totally obnoxious that Coca Cola obviously have this kind of knowledge, but are unwilling to share it, or are aware of things that they decide not to research further. Moreover, the cost of Coca Cola is obviously a rip off, because it must have an immorally high margin. Yet I keep drinking it. Not to mention the fakes and frauds, Pepsi! Supermarket own brands... we have a right to know. 

 

I think anyone interested in being a consumer of Coca Cola, and especially anyone who intends to take the moral and ethical responsibilities of selling Coca Cola should be moved to study all these elements in a university, and universities should be moved to establish specialist degrees in CocaColology. Should be possible to do this in a Masters course of two years, or maybe a set of workshops in a week. Let's ignore just for a second that any single part of the syllabus could be a life times dedication for hundreds of people alone. 

 

Syllabus:

 

1) Nutrition

2) Global politics. 

3) Organic Chemistry

4) Geography

5) Agriculture

6) Polymer science (bottles - elective) 

7) Metallurgy (cans) 

8) Glass blowing and silicates (glass bottles) 

9) Glass tinting

10) Neuroscience

11) Marketing 

12) Cultural History since 1892

13) Cooking

14) Physics of bubbles, surface tension. 

15) Pigment analysis. 

16) Analytical chemistry

17) Logistics

18) Ethics

19) Business studies

20) Law

21) Ad infinitum ad absurdum.

 

The fact that the recipe has been kept secret, only known to a tiny number of people, is in itself grounds for the firmest indictment. The fact that it tastes well with Jack Daniels, another firm that holds to it's own secrets reeks of an absolute global conspiracy. We have the right to know, and the obligation to have a university course on it. 

 

By Skiingfiddler's logic, my demands are unarguable. 

 

 

 

Any comment? 

 

Ben,

 

Let's take your Coke example.  Let's say you are an individual who is concerned about the possible personal health effects, personal economic effects, the larger societal effects such as trash and environment, the history of Coke, the domination of Coke in the beverage industry, etc.  Where would you go to get your questions answered?  To the Coke company?  To its distributers?  To the avid consumer?  Yes, you might go to all of those places for the information and data they can offer.  But you'd be foolish to take that information at face value.  All of those entities have a vested interest in Coke. 

 

If you really wanted objective information about Coke, you'd go to the independent entities which could answer your questions without having a financial interest in the answers.  You might well go to a dozen university departments to see what they have to say about what they know.  If they knew nothing directly about Coke, they may know something about something similar, or maybe they'd take your question to get back to you.

 

Everyone interested in something doesn't need to get a degree in that something, but they do need a factual, unbiased place to go for their information.  And they do need to know that the latest and past, accumulated information about that something resides with the entities.

 

I don't believe that the person interested in violins, today, has a place to go for factual, unbiased information.  I think that the university, which is set up to house and create the latest factual, unbiased information, would be the place to go, if it were supplied with the proper faculty.

 

But I'm certainly open to listening to proposals for other mechanisms or institutions for supplying the latest factual, unbiased information on violins.

[Johnmasters]

But there are more shortcomings in the information concerning violins.  On another thread, I asked what I thought was a rather straightforward question about how a violin functions:  If the rocking motion of the bridge is the main manner by which the plates are put in motion, then what would happen if the pressure on the bridge were increased or decreased?  Would the rocking motion increase with increased pressure, or would the additional pressure suppress the rocking motion?  Similarly, what happens if the pressure is decreased? Apparently, that's a rather complicated question that doesn't currently have a clear answer.

 

It looks to me like the physical mechanics of the violin are far from understood after 500 years of the existence of the violin.  What can be done about that?  Maybe more minds need to work on the problem.  Where will we find those minds?  A university physics department would be a good place to loo

I agree.  I said a couple of weeks ago that I would report on my experiments to see if I could find some sort of coupling between static loads and dynamics.   So far, it seems that static loads cause such small deformations (before eventual creep) that any effect on dynamics would be extremely small.  Also, so far I have not seen ANY mechanism that might couple them.  (except for small geometric changes)

 

If the pre-loads do not approach any kind of failure point of the wood,  it seems hard to see that there should be any coupling.  But soundpost tension does seem to make a difference,  and no particular reason for this to happen is obvious.  I will keep looking.

 

I think it was Uncle Duke who asked about whether forces would move the inflectin either in or out.  I found that this was the easiest part to move,  but it does not tell me why this might be important.

[uncle duke]

Yes, guilty as charged......... and if Ken would hurry up and finish we could continue......  

[jacobsaunders]

I don't believe that the person interested in violins, today, has a place to go for factual, unbiased information.

Where does that leave your appraiser, should he know that you don't believe he will give you “factual, unbiased information”. Do you behave like that at your doctors? Perhaps you should have taken those pills after all

[skiingfiddler]

I agree.  I said a couple of weeks ago that I would report on my experiments to see if I could find some sort of coupling between static loads and dynamics.   So far, it seems that static loads cause such small deformations (before eventual creep) that any effect on dynamics would be extremely small.  Also, so far I have not seen ANY mechanism that might couple them.  (except for small geometric changes)

 

If the pre-loads do not approach any kind of failure point of the wood,  it seems hard to see that there should be any coupling.  But soundpost tension does seem to make a difference,  and no particular reason for this to happen is obvious.  I will keep looking.

 

I think it was Uncle Duke who asked about whether forces would move the inflectin either in or out.  I found that this was the easiest part to move,  but it does not tell me why this might be important.

 

John,

 

Your research is rather technical, and I won't pretend to understand it.  But it is clear to me that it is relevant to a question every violin player raises, after some years of experience with the violin: If I change to a string with a higher or lower string tension, what can I expect the tonal consequences to be?  My experience is that the old belief of higher tension equals louder sound is not true.  I have personally found that moving to lower tension strings would have no detrimental effect  in terms of volume of sound.  Indeed, moving to a lower tension string might improve response while not inhibiting volume.

 

But that is my very subjective feeling, and it may or may not accord with scientific measurements you can make.

 

Please feel encouraged that your findings would be relevant to the average player, and are not just esoteric facts that have no direct consequences for the typical player.  That typical player can gain insight into the question about string tension and tone, and better understand what kind of strings to try.  That's exactly the kind of feedback from physics that the typical player needs. 

 

There's no better place for physics than the university, and the information thus gained is readily accessible and at no charge to the violin playing public.

[Carl Stross]

If I change to a string with a higher or lower string tension, what can I expect the tonal consequences to be?  My experience is that the old belief of higher tension equals louder sound is not true. 

 

It depends on the specific violin, type of string, sound post tension and position. 

[martin swan]

I don't think people who have set up hundreds or thousands of violins and who can also play a bit are in any doubt about the consequences of increasing string tension or bridge height or vice versa. I actually broke off from doing exactly that (trying a higher bridge on a violin) in order to post here - the higher bridge did exactly what I expected/wanted it to, thanks very much. Now I have to decide if I consider it an improvement or not.

Though of course I don't "understand" it except through analogy and some kind of well-grounded, widely informed intuition based on repeated results ...

I've actually never felt the need for a scientific "explanation", and I find it comical that a phenomenon cannot apparently be apprehended or observed unless it's substantiated by physics!

Perhaps you find it strange that we haven't nailed down how a violin "works" in a way that makes sense to scientists. I don't - it's very complicated, particularly when you factor in that annoying human interface and the psycho-acoustics of hearing.

 

If you look at some recent forays of comparative scientists into the understanding of violins (for instance the study into how the evolution of violin models mimics leaf morphology) you would piss your pants laughing. There was another recent cross-disciplinary study which was equally risible, wish I could remember what it was.

 

So Stephen, what do you make of Jacob's point about appraisers? We are talking about certified appraisers, such as Jacob himself or Jeffrey. You have to admit that your general thrust is quite insulting to such people. I can't see how you would get anything other than a straightforward appraisal if you took a violin that you owned to such a person ...

 

Or are you concerned about the lack of an independent review body for items you're thinking of buying? That is of course a whole other matter, and I don't think a university is ever going to help with that.

[skiingfiddler]

Where does that leave your appraiser, should he know that you don't believe he will give you “factual, unbiased information”. Do you behave like that at your doctors? Perhaps you should have taken those pills after all

 

I've come to the conclusion that paying for a violin based on its origins and provenance is not worth doing.  On old violins, designated origins and provenance are the most insecure, potentially changeable characteristics of the instrument.  Yet the major determiner of the cost of an instrument is origin and provenance.

 

On the other hand, I can, for myself, judge tone.  I can for myself decide whether I like the appearance.  I can find a large number of makers and repairers within a day's drive even from isolated Idaho whom I trust to tell me if a violin is well made or not and what kind of condition it's in and what kind of repairs it needs.  All of those characteristics are clearly in front of me.  Origin and provenance of an old violin are ephemeral, possibly mythical, in my mind, unverifiable, and I'm not going to pay for it.  I'm not going to put origin and provenance at the top of my list as a reason for buying a specific instrument.  With that frame of mind, the most troublesome part of appraising -- origin and provenance -- disappears, and the group of people who can give me an appraisal that I value is quite accessible.

 

But that's me, and I realize that the violin trade and many buyers aren't of that frame of mind.

 

In Martin Swan's dichotomy of viewing the violin as a tool (a visually pleasing one, well made, in good condition, in addition to pleasing tone) vs violin as an investment shopper, I lean toward looking at it as a tool. 

[skiingfiddler]

I don't think people who have set up hundreds or thousands of violins and who can also play a bit are in any doubt about the consequences of increasing string tension or bridge height or vice versa. I actually broke off from doing exactly that (trying a higher bridge on a violin) in order to post - the higher bridge did exactly what I expected/wanted it to. Though of course I don't understand it except through analogy and some kind of well-grounded, widely informed intution based on repeated results.

I've actually never felt the need for a scientific "explanation", and I find it comical that a phenomenon cannot apparently be apprehended or observed unless it's substantiated by physics!

Perhaps you find it strange that we haven't nailed down how a violin "works" in a way that makes sense to scientists. I don't - it's very complicated, particularly when you factor in that annoying human interface and the psycho-acoustics of hearing!

If you look at some recent forays of comparative scientists into the understanding of violins (for instance the study into how the evolution of violin models mimics leaf morphology) you would piss your pants laughing.

There was another recent cross-disciplinary study which was equally risible, wish I could remember what it was.

 

There's nothing wrong with intuition if it brings you what you want.  However, if it doesn't, then some understanding of science may be helpful in getting what you want.  And for some people, even when intuition works, they want to know why.