How tight should a sound post be

[David Burgess]

4 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

I have NEVER found any advantage for a string player in having perfect pitch. Quite the contrary.

Having perfect pitch gave me terrible problems, when it came to playing with an ensemble that didn't tune to 440, and playing a B-flat instrument. The notes on the page didn't correspond with the notes I was hearing.

Interesting aside: A middle school music teacher at a school I attended was determined to find a connection between perfect pitch and synesthesia, so he made me waste a bunch of time trying to tell him what color I saw, or whether I smelled hot dogs or lilacs when he'd punch various notes on the piano.

[La Folia]

45 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

Having perfect pitch gave me terrible problems, when it came to playing with an ensemble that didn't tune to 440, and playing a B-flat instrument. The notes on the page didn't correspond with the notes I was hearing.

 

I had the same problem learning to play Hardanger fiddle, but I just learned to adjust my head to how the instrument was tuned.  Now I can play a fiddle tuned almost any way.  You learned a 440 A.  It's also possible to learn another.  You probably know this already.

Otherwise, I have to say that perfect pitch is no problem whatsoever.  I don't see how it could be anything but an advantage, or maybe even a requirement.

[Victor Roman]

1 hour ago, David Burgess said:

Having perfect pitch gave me terrible problems, when it came to playing with an ensemble that didn't tune to 440, and playing a B-flat instrument. The notes on the page didn't correspond with the notes I was hearing.

Interesting aside: A middle school music teacher at a school I attended was determined to find a connection between perfect pitch and synesthesia, so he made me waste a bunch of time trying to tell him what color I saw, or whether I smelled hot dogs or lilacs when he'd punch various notes on the piano.

Very probably you grew up in a home with a piano and a pretty good piano player ?? Curious if you can confirm.

[Victor Roman]

29 minutes ago, La Folia said:

I had the same problem learning to play Hardanger fiddle, but I just learned to adjust my head to how the instrument was tuned.  Now I can play a fiddle tuned almost any way.  You learned a 440 A.  It's also possible to learn another.  You probably know this already.

Otherwise, I have to say that perfect pitch is no problem whatsoever.  I don't see how it could be anything but an advantage, or maybe even a requirement.

From what I heard some people can adapt and some can not. I was also told that over time the ability loses it's accuracy and even disappears completely. Some of my school colleagues had perfect pitch and the degree and accuracy varied as far as I remember. I don't remember that it helped them much with their intonation though it got them close enough for government work.... I do not know the reason why but I was told by a "super" Conductor that perfect pitch is most needed by choir masters. I wish I asked why. Many singers acquire a workable perfect pitch and small children can be reliably taught.   

[David Burgess]

1 hour ago, Victor Roman said:

Very probably you grew up in a home with a piano and a pretty good piano player ?? Curious if you can confirm.

Affirmative. However, my sister grew up in the same household and did not have perfect pitch.

[Randall The Restorer]

9 hours ago, martin swan said:

I agree.

"Violin sound" has a lot to do with how a violin responds to bowing. This is why I empathise completely with Michael's fatalism in the face of clients who play notes (generally legato and single strokes) rather than music.

 

Martin,

It is a crying shame that the situation exists wherein someone of your and Michael Darnton’s stature in the field of bowed instruments must waste precious time pointing out the obvious. 
My field of lutherie is steel string guitars and I would never bring a bow to audition guitars (no disrespect to Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin).  I would bring the appropriate plectrums and and play a piece  matched to the type of guitar being played.
   
I am curious, is it possible to have a violin that is better suited to pizzicato  than others?And, are there  music compositions that have so much pizzicato that it would make a difference?
 
Further to Michael Darnton’s experience, I should point out that some of those people he encountered may have had mental health issues like OCD or developmental issues like autism  or an organic brain disorder. If so, they deserve patience and compassion.

Conversely, as a professional cook I have encountered violinists, guitarists, and luthiers who focus too much on  the qualities  of individual food ingredients and fail to enjoy the  overall flavour and aroma of the dish being served.

Yours truly,

Randy O’Malley

[LCF]

15 hours ago, Victor Roman said:

I know. My point is that ( for me ) it is in a musical context. To explain : I want a certain note to sound in a certain way and I test to see if the violin can get close enough. Also, the violin may suggest to me some other way to play that note, if the violin is very good. It is all in a musical context. 

Many of the things that Michael and Martin and co. are discussing can be described as transient behaviours, startup transients mostly and their sequelae whereas you seem to be describing the steady state part of a tone. Even the steady state is complex on violins but to get to the steady state you need to go through at least one attack period.  Attack is a brutal word for description of tone but it is usually a brutal part of the tone production on violins and it conveys a huge amount of information about the specific combination of violin plus bow plus musician plus the note being played.  Sustained tone also, obviously carries important and complex information but it differs in that is a reduced amount of information, a sub-set of the totality ( see below). 

 

I apologise that I cannot remember which one of our two Victors made a remark recently about the student mistake of wanting to have a lovely tone from a violin, under the ear, when what is usually required is something bright and loud and possibly a bit nasty so that it will carry and sound like a lovely tone, at a distance. The attack part of a bowed note exists in a similar relation to the articulated sound. It is intimate with the business of note production but it can be very messy or even unpleasant. 

 

As for the physics of the attack, lots of things going on there. It is possible to spectrum analyse parts of it and get more or less the whole frequency response of the instrument, in the first 5 to 10 milliseconds before continuing tone production settles down to be more strongly influenced by the string's resonance modes together with a regime of cooperating corpus resonances. The modes which are not excited by harmonics of the bowed note die away after the initial transient. 

 

In the early days of synthesizers it became very obvious that different types of instruments could be emulated just by varying the attack of a synthesized tone, without changing much else. A,S,D, attack, sustain, decay, the envelope parameters -- the attack is a significant part of how we identify instruments, voices etc. Try listening again to some of your favourite singers but just listen to how they start their notes. 

 

[Michael Darnton]

I've intentionally avoided using the word transient because though it might be technically correct I don't feel that it describes what players tell to me that they are experiencing when we're working on adjustments. I think most of them who read what LCF just said would say, yeah, give me as little of that as you can, and from my perspective, that's also what I'm trying to do: minimize the undifferentiated noise at the start of the note, turning that into an immediate and emphatic pop of clean, pure note. David B has used the word crunch and said that players at Oberlin like that, but if I said "Let's put some crunch into it" most players I see when using their natural vocabulary would probably say "No, please." I suspect we might agree on what the best result was, though.

[David Burgess]

The attack or initiation transient is an important part of how the sound of an instrument is perceived. When it is removed experimentally, leaving only the "steady state" which follows, many listeners have difficulty even telling what sort of instrument they are hearing.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-20779-005

Playing long sustained notes is certainly an important skill for a player to have, and to practice, but I get very little information about how well a violin is working from that.

[Victor Roman]

15 hours ago, David Burgess said:

Affirmative. However, my sister grew up in the same household and did not have perfect pitch.

Then I will speculate that the musician / piano player was your mother. I read on the Internet that perfect pitch has a strong genetic component. 

[Victor Roman]

1 hour ago, David Burgess said:

Playing long sustained notes is certainly an important skill for a player to have, and to practice, but I get very little information about how well a violin is working from that.

Long notes tell me how close ( or how far ) near notes on the scale are from one to each other from a timbre / color perspective. Personally and many may disagree, I do not like when a violin is too "jumpy". I do not want a connected phrase to sound like I change between a number of different violins. I much prefer to stay within the same color palette and I test and as far as possible memorize the palette by playing long notes. Consider the Introduction for Mozart 5th : one can play it on the E string or on the A string. Which one is "better" ? I prefer the A string as it is for me more musical and allows for larger contrast with what follows right after.

[Victor Roman]

3 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

I've intentionally avoided using the word transient because though it might be technically correct I don't feel that it describes what players tell to me that they are experiencing when we're working on adjustments. I think most of them who read what LCF just said would say, yeah, give me as little of that as you can, and from my perspective, that's also what I'm trying to do: minimize the undifferentiated noise at the start of the note, turning that into an immediate and emphatic pop of clean, pure note. David B has used the word crunch and said that players at Oberlin like that, but if I said "Let's put some crunch into it" most players I see when using their natural vocabulary would probably say "No, please." I suspect we might agree on what the best result was, though.

I think I understand what you mean : you want a sort of a "pop" at the beginning of the note. I call it "PleoP".  This is important  in legato passage work so that the phrase does not turn into mashed potatoes. But in my experience if you want a good "pleop" in the hall you need some degree of "crunch" next to you. The smaller the room, the sweeter the violin and then right the other way around. One of the reasons, I believe, players want to get their hands on famous Stradivarius and Guarnerius violins ( besides marketing... ) is that those instruments are "validated" for large halls through the work of their previous owners, usually some famous player. It is very hard from a practical point to validate a new instrument in proper battlefield conditions. 

[lFred]

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party..  how tight ?  well this seems tigh enough (beleive it or not there was no glue)

[Brad Dorsey]

I had one like that last spring, except the post was fit that tight to the back:

[Marty Kasprzyk]

18 hours ago, lFred said:

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party..  how tight ?  well this seems tigh enough (beleive it or not there was no glue)

Maybe the plate's inside surface finish has too much viagra.

[David Burgess]

It's easy to confuse tightness with stickage.

[Michael Darnton]

I wonder if this is an unanticipated benefit of glue sizing the bare wood.

[sospiri]

On 11/3/2024 at 7:00 PM, David Burgess said:

Having perfect pitch gave me terrible problems, when it came to playing with an ensemble that didn't tune to 440, and playing a B-flat instrument. The notes on the page didn't correspond with the notes I was hearing.

Interesting aside: A middle school music teacher at a school I attended was determined to find a connection between perfect pitch and synesthesia, so he made me waste a bunch of time trying to tell him what color I saw, or whether I smelled hot dogs or lilacs when he'd punch various notes on the piano.

Is that why you don't like Hammond organs? Because the Leslie speaker rotation speed tortures your very soul?

[GoPractice]

Activation is likely a more neutral description but that and the instruments vary. The violin can do what the voice can not.

But we are more familiar with the voice. The activation required is taught sometimes as articulations of harder to softer sounds using toungue teeth lips. The late Jorja Flezannis was the one who commented on the usage and has helped me better clarify to students how to use the string bow fingers to express. After her passing, one of the best tributes? expressions of knowing her were by Stefan Hersh. I have to give her the credit. It was so simple rather than talking durations and grinds and lifts, pinching of specific fingers. 

So what we hear and and what is not might have to do with distance and our own hearing. A player in the kitchen with Dinah, might want "gentle" sensitive while the guy in a 800 seater might want heavier plates.

Long tones/ bows also change. Before Guy Rabut articulated the thoughts in a Strad article, the changing of the vowel sounds within a bow stroke could help drive the musical phrase. ee- to an ahh-, oooh- to an eee-. Though strange, and perhaps kept to ones self, when making adjustments or judging a better players command of bowing, it help to listen carefully. Contours are more interesting than a flat line. Crescendos and whips/ de crescs and chokes also might offer insight. What's that sound before the vibration stops. 

Have been done with louder moments in opera, because as a friend said, " makes her butt tingle, " ( and I like/ hate brass chords ) but those of sensitive moments often lost in the rafters where the pianisissimos are lost to clicks of consonants or the aaaahs of vowels, are what might be the most artistic. Callas might not have been the "best" voice, who is to say, but was heard perhaps the most human/ real/ emotional when necessary. It's also biting. Not always just the vowels. 

On stage we tend to hear different things. It's like asking for more cowbell. It is a little ridiculous, but it is done. And more likely in the lower level orchestras because we want to give the audience what they paid for...

Since the luthier is more likely the professional and the player is most likely an amateur, it is worth educating the amateur if they would listen. Not to be disrespectful of the players in our midst.

[GoPractice]

Better clarify that I use Guy Rabut's abstract of how one might hear instrument. Just bringing up the topic to make the point about how one might think about how a player sounds, using a more familiar language.  

His article was about applying the use of listening to make adjustments.

Training to hear attacks and the long arc of a musical bow is interesting. The crescendo is easier to hear and tonal tricks help to yield a perception of more. Getting quieter is the management of the phrase, sometimes having it die out, disappear or fade into the distance. Since these are far more difficult to assess and quantify, yes, long bows are far more complicated to parse out.

[VicM]

16 hours ago, GoPractice said:

Activation is likely a more neutral description but that and the instruments vary. The violin can do what the voice can not.

But we are more familiar with the voice. The activation required is taught sometimes as articulations of harder to softer sounds using toungue teeth lips. The late Jorja Flezannis was the one who commented on the usage and has helped me better clarify to students how to use the string bow fingers to express. After her passing, one of the best tributes? expressions of knowing her were by Stefan Hersh. I have to give her the credit. It was so simple rather than talking durations and grinds and lifts, pinching of specific fingers. 

So what we hear and and what is not might have to do with distance and our own hearing. A player in the kitchen with Dinah, might want "gentle" sensitive while the guy in a 800 seater might want heavier plates.

Long tones/ bows also change. Before Guy Rabut articulated the thoughts in a Strad article, the changing of the vowel sounds within a bow stroke could help drive the musical phrase. ee- to an ahh-, oooh- to an eee-. Though strange, and perhaps kept to ones self, when making adjustments or judging a better players command of bowing, it help to listen carefully. Contours are more interesting than a flat line. Crescendos and whips/ de crescs and chokes also might offer insight. What's that sound before the vibration stops. 

Have been done with louder moments in opera, because as a friend said, " makes her butt tingle, " ( and I like/ hate brass chords ) but those of sensitive moments often lost in the rafters where the pianisissimos are lost to clicks of consonants or the aaaahs of vowels, are what might be the most artistic. Callas might not have been the "best" voice, who is to say, but was heard perhaps the most human/ real/ emotional when necessary. It's also biting. Not always just the vowels. 

On stage we tend to hear different things. It's like asking for more cowbell. It is a little ridiculous, but it is done. And more likely in the lower level orchestras because we want to give the audience what they paid for...

Since the luthier is more likely the professional and the player is most likely an amateur, it is worth educating the amateur if they would listen. Not to be disrespectful of the players in our midst.

 

15 hours ago, GoPractice said:

Better clarify that I use Guy Rabut's abstract of how one might hear instrument. Just bringing up the topic to make the point about how one might think about how a player sounds, using a more familiar language.  

His article was about applying the use of listening to make adjustments.

Training to hear attacks and the long arc of a musical bow is interesting. The crescendo is easier to hear and tonal tricks help to yield a perception of more. Getting quieter is the management of the phrase, sometimes having it die out, disappear or fade into the distance. Since these are far more difficult to assess and quantify, yes, long bows are far more complicated to parse out.

You ok ??

[GoPractice]

Thanks for caring.

I miss frequently performing. Attending more performances. Studying modern works at a kitchen table is fun but meeting up with a regular ensemble would be great. Need longer legs for Korfkerrest Luna, longer than what is available for the market for at least two students. The current long ones are ok, but do not want a taller chinrest for these growing kids.

Trying to locate more playing opportunities for kids.

My commute changed with new students this academic year; found a great little grocery shop and a delicatessen.

SO many bad drivers!

How about you?

[LCF]

On 11/4/2024 at 5:30 AM, David Burgess said:

Having perfect pitch gave me terrible problems, when it came to playing with an ensemble that didn't tune to 440, and playing a B-flat instrument. The notes on the page didn't correspond with the notes I was hearing.

Interesting aside: A middle school music teacher at a school I attended was determined to find a connection between perfect pitch and synesthesia, so he made me waste a bunch of time trying to tell him what color I saw, or whether I smelled hot dogs or lilacs when he'd punch various notes on the piano.

I have a friend with a synesthesia between pitch and colour eg C#, he says it's a sort of drab brown colour. He's a great musician but has a lousy sense of pitch for tuning! Thank goodness for clip on  tuning meters. 

[David Burgess]

11 hours ago, LCF said:

I have a friend with a synesthesia between pitch and colour eg C#, he says it's a sort of drab brown colour. He's a great musician but has a lousy sense of pitch for tuning! Thank goodness for clip on  tuning meters. 

I suppose that's better than smelling pepper and sneezing every time he hears or plays a C#.

[LCF]

8 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

I suppose that's better than smelling pepper and sneezing every time he hears or plays a C#.

For that the tuning meter would have to be calibrated in scoville heat units.