Can a good violinist always sound good?

[David Burgess]

1 hour ago, FiddleDoug said:

That's pretty much what I was getting at in my earlier post on this thread.

" If a very good violinist picks up one of your violins, and plays it for a good long test (more than a few minutes), you can be pretty sure that they are enjoying the instrument and the sound."

In a case like this, the player isn't having to fight it to get the sound that they expect.

If a violinist doesn't have the skillset to get beyond what worked with the few instruments they have played in the past, I'm fine with that.
I would rather that this be someone else's problem. 

[Carl Stross]

2 hours ago, Violadamore said:

The largely obscure horde of competent violinists doing violin sales live demonstrations and demo videos comes to mind.  They must be a highly adaptable lot.  The substantiation for this can be found in profusion on YouTube and Vimeo. 

Not quite my experience but let me try not be negative : Please, next time you hear a typical example of the above PM me the link. I am genuinely curious.   

[Bill Merkel]

^This is one of my favorites from that genre   This one happens to be viola though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imrv_wB17CY

[David Burgess]

1 hour ago, Carl Stross said:

Nathan is in my opinion one of the most talented violin players of today - absolutely wonderful !  I heard him a year or two ago and wondered what is he playing on. Guad ?

Probably a Zygmuntowicz (since that's what he owned, and said was his primary fiddle the last time I talked to him), but he has expressed a fondness for many other instruments too. Neat guy, not a "broomstick-up-the butt" guy by any means.

[Carl Stross]

41 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

Probably a Zygmuntowicz (since that's what he owned, and said was his primary fiddle the last time I talked to him), but he has expressed a fondness for many other instruments too. Neat guy, not a "broomstick-up-the butt" guy by any means.

That's a very good violin and Nathan keeps that G string in check very nicely. Wonderful player !

 

[Carl Stross]

55 minutes ago, Bill Merkel said:

^This is one of my favorites from that genre   This one happens to be viola though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imrv_wB17CY

Isn't that a bit too nasal ? If that's possible on violas.... 

[Stringy]

Watch this, he starts actually playing at 12.31 I think it answers your question completely 

He is a great violinist who has given me a lot of good advice and I hope in about a hundred years I am a tenth as good as he is

[Bill Merkel]

1 hour ago, Carl Stross said:

Isn't that a bit too nasal ? If that's possible on violas.... 

Could be.   I watch it without sound.

[Carl Stross]

5 minutes ago, Bill Merkel said:

Could be.   I watch it without sound.

As one should.

Respect !

[David Burgess]

11 hours ago, Stringy said:

Watch this, he starts actually playing at 12.31 I think it answers your question completely 

 

I wouldn't say that is comes anywhere close to answering questions completely, but it is a good example of what a good violinist, with a lot of experience playing lots of different violins, can do.

[Stringy]

5 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

I wouldn't say that is comes anywhere close to answering questions completely, but it is a good example of what a good violinist, with a lot of experience playing lots of violins, can do.

I think he makes an 80 quid violin sound superb, you can pay more than that for a set of strings. I thought your question was can a good violinist make a cheap instrument sound good, and for me he answers that question. Someone once said to Heifetz after a concert ‘your violin sounded superb tonight’, Heifetz held it up, shook it and said ‘I don’t hear anything’.

[Carl Stross]

15 minutes ago, Stringy said:

I think he makes an 80 quid violin sound superb, you can pay more than that for a set of strings. I thought your question was can a good violinist make a cheap instrument sound good, and for me he answers that question. Someone once said to Heifetz after a concert ‘your violin sounded superb tonight’, Heifetz held it up, shook it and said ‘I don’t hear anything’.

But he did not make the instrument "sound good".  He played on it well enough and showed it can be used to produce comprehensible sounds. The instrument still sounds rubbish. Not even Paganini can change that.

[Stringy]

16 minutes ago, Carl Stross said:

But he did not make the instrument "sound good".  He played on it well enough and showed it can be used to produce comprehensible sounds. The instrument still sounds rubbish. Not even Paganini can change that.

In my opinion he did make it sound good, if I played on it it would sound crap because I can’t play, I bet if you asked any layman on the street if it sounded Good they would say yes, the fact is the vast majority of the populace couldn’t tell the difference between a great violin and a rubbish one, showing it can  be used to make comprehensible sounds is actually showing that a good musician can make a bad instrument sound good, which is what the question was. 

[Rue]

7 minutes ago, Carl Stross said:

...The instrument still sounds rubbish. Not even Paganini can change that.

?

Good heavens! You can't be THAT old!!! 

[GeorgeH]

1 hour ago, Stringy said:

In my opinion he did make it sound good,

He played it well, but that violin sounded awful.

Any good violinist can play a violin well that is set-up properly, but they cannot make the core sound of a bad violin good. That video is an excellent example of exactly that. 

[Stringy]

15 minutes ago, GeorgeH said:

He played it well, but that violin sounded awful.

Any good violinist can play a violin well that is set-up properly, but they cannot make the core sound of a bad violin good. That video is an excellent example of exactly that. 

I beg to differ, maybe your ears are much better than mine,  We are not talking about ‘core sound’ the discussion is can a good musician make a bad instrument sound good,  but if I was asked how much the violin had cost I wouldn’t have had a clue. I could if you want to, ask him to review several different violins all of different prices and see if you can tell the difference. Don’t know if he would because I don’t know him personally, but it would be a good test of being able to discern  relative quality don’t you think?

[David Beard]

To OP:

No.  They can be dead, have a hurt hand, be handed a violin with a viola C string where the e should be, be handed a soaped bow, or be challenged to play the Erlking holding the fiddle in the wrong hand.  

[David Beard]

On 8/20/2020 at 12:47 PM, Garth E. said:

I wonder if a player puts mental blocks up that hinder acceptance of an instrument. Like Eugene Drucker in "The Violin Maker". I've also seen it with guitar players too.

Yes. And setup people also.  Good setup and ideal adjustment can be a lot of work.  When do you give up and say enough?  The reputation of a maker probably very often influences that answer.

But I wouldn't underestimate how well some players can size up the potential of an instrument in its current state.

But that's different that getting the most it has to offer. As Burgess says, that can be slow.

[GeorgeH]

37 minutes ago, Stringy said:

We are not talking about ‘core sound’ the discussion is can a good musician make a bad instrument sound good,

That is exactly what we are talking about. Imagine an expert race car driver put in an underpowered race car. Will the driver still be able to get the most from the car? Sure. Will he win any races with it? No, because the car is intrinsically inferior.

A good player will be able to play an inferior instrument well. Will it sound good compared to better instruments? No, of course not, because the core sound is intrinsically inferior to a fine instrument.

[David Beard]

So yes, good players can sound good on questionable fiddles that are reasonably setup.  And yes, audiences and get confused trying to distinguish playing on one violin compared to another.

But, old or new, each instrument presents the player a different experience.  Different opportunities, struggles, and comforts.  How things end up sounding matters, but the player's experience while making that sound matters even more.

Instruments really aren't so interchangeable.  They're all different. Some are also better.  And they really are better. (Even though setup and player can never be separated out.)

[Garth E.]

22 minutes ago, David Beard said:

To OP:

No.  They can be dead, have a hurt hand, be handed a violin with a viola C string where the e should be, be handed a soaped bow, or be challenged to play the Erlking holding the fiddle in the wrong hand.  

Ha...thirty or so years ago I had 3 teenagers that used logic like that against me all the time. Same answer here, ok ok ok ok.

[David Beard]

41 minutes ago, Garth E. said:

Ha...thirty or so years ago I had 3 teenagers that used logic like that against me all the time. Same answer here, ok ok ok ok.

It's a good way to narrow the domain of a query.  I try to apply this with my own ideas too. Flush out the laziness in our initial statements by considering extreme versions. 

[Bill Merkel]

11 minutes ago, David Beard said:

It's a good way to narrow the domain of a query.  I try to apply this with my own ideas too. Flush out the laziness in our initial statements by considering extreme versions. 

Not lazy, just good shorthand

"Where is the Atlantic Ocean?"

"On Earth" doesn't get credit

[David Beard]

34 minutes ago, Bill Merkel said:

Not lazy, just good shorthand

"Where is the Atlantic Ocean?"

"On Earth" doesn't get credit

Sure.  Of course.

But, when a subject is subtle, also sorts of ills can hide in the framing of the idea.  Certainly overkill in the normal course of things.  

[l33tplaya]

5 hours ago, Rue said:

?

Good heavens! You can't be THAT old!!! 

Smart Benjamins say yes.

As far as making good or so-so violins sound great - not crappy - one only has to review Metzler's American violin exhibition, where in one night, over the years that Tom has run this amazing event, a variety of professional players made all these violins  (usually more than 30) sound good. It seems that most years it's a different pro... Those pros included the Asst Concertmaster of the LA Phil, who was amazing.  He really tried to accent the differences by pushing violins that would respond. 

IMHO, all players were way better than Fiddlerman. One year, a very good player, who shall remain nameless, made many of the violins sound nearly identical, such that any differences were either imperceptible or largely lost on the audience, included myself.  We were disappointed that they sounded so similar... OTOH, many of the players let slip how hard they hard to work to obtain the sound they wanted.  That was telling. Of course, considering the rules of engagement, they usually only said positive things like, "this violin really responded," or, I didn't have to work very hard, or,, " that violin might be better in a quartet..."

So the ability to make decent violins sound either very good or great is not a rare or unusual ability. Sure, they didn't play Wieniawski, but they did play somewhat challenging repertoire, more so than Czardas. It really depends on what you maen by a "crappy" instrument.  These violins typically ranged in price from ~ $9,000. to ~ $45,000.