Copying the Titian; TheStrad Jan2022

[Don Noon]

I see there is an article in The Strad this month about copying the Titian.  Could be interesting.

[Jim Bress]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll look for the issue at the bookstore. 

[scordatura]

This may also be of interest. https://youtu.be/leRTaPfEE68

Same author as the Strad article.

 

[Andreas Preuss]

9 hours ago, Don Noon said:

I see there is an article in The Strad this month about copying the Titian.  Could be interesting.

While this might be very interesting in the sense of if we are able to clone the sound of an existing instrument, I am seriously asking myself if this is  the future of a living craft.

[Don Noon]

6 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

While this might be very interesting in the sense of if we are able to clone the sound of an existing instrument, I am seriously asking myself if this is  the future of a living craft.

In this case, 3 different densities of wood were used, and I'm VERY interested in the influence of wood properties on the sound.  

I am not aware of any attempted clones of great old instruments that sound very much like the original.  I attempted it once, and although there were some acoustic features that were vaguely more like the original than other random violins, there was still a world of difference.  I have also heard a Curtin/Alf "copy" and the Strad from which it was copied, and there is no acoustic similarity whatsoever.  However, I understand that there was no attempt to match the graduations and wood properties... just the outline, arching, and appearance were copied.

[glebert]

I always wonder about copying repairs and alterations. Would they cause a crack and then put in a patch just to match the original? 

[scordatura]

Screenshots from Jesus Torres’ presentation. Not sure what is represented in the material properties pic. Can someone clarify?

 

[Michael Darnton]

On 12/28/2021 at 10:06 PM, glebert said:

I always wonder about copying repairs and alterations. Would they cause a crack and then put in a patch just to match the original? 

On a really fine repair the crack wouldn't be visible and I doubt most makers would bother to replicate that. Maybe if they were trying to sell their work as the real thing it would be different.

[Michael Darnton]

On 12/28/2021 at 9:17 AM, Don Noon said:

I am not aware of any attempted clones of great old instruments that sound very much like the original. 

I once worked alongside a maker who did a very good unsung job of making tonal copies. At the time I had one foot in that shop and a foot in the shop that sold them, so I was able to see the long term results. As time went on they unavoidably changed away from their origin in a direction I would call "hardening". A friend and I convinced him to make one violin more like the original, and off the block he didn't like the way it sounded (we did) and wouldn't repeat it, but we didn't get a chance to hear that violin later. I would have liked to know how it aged and suspect in the end it was quite nice. Anyway, I can't imagine how you'd make a new violin copy of a 400 year old one and lock in the sound so that it was still a tonal copy some years later. Not a problem for those who believe that violin qualities don't age. :-)

[Don Noon]

56 minutes ago, scordatura said:

Screenshots from Jesus Torres’ presentation. Not sure what is represented in the material properties pic. Can someone clarify?

Looks like density, some modulus (stiffness) data, and the last column is radiation ratio.

This looks very strange to me, in that the "hi" and "lo" properties are essentially the same for the actual wood plates.  In the FE model, it appears as if the density was varied quite a bit, but modulus compensated to keep RR about the same.

This project, at superficial glance, looks very much like a black hole for time to try and figure out what they were doing and why, and then look at the data to find anything useful.  That last part (finding something useful) my gut says would be better accomplished by just building more violins with the wood that I have, and seeing how they turn out.  And it would be far more productive, assuming I want to build instruments for clients rather than research and write papers.

[Don Noon]

39 minutes ago, Michael Darnton said:

Anyway, I can't imagine how you'd make a new violin copy of a 400 year old one and lock in the sound so that it was still a tonal copy some years later. Not a problem for those who believe that violin qualities don't age. :-)

Using artificially aged wood might get a step closer... if the artificial aging matches what happens in real aging.  There are certainly some changes that happen in an assembled instrument that can't be aged into the wood (varnish, stress relaxation effects, and -maybe- the controversial "play-in").  Even with torrefied wood, I can measure/hear tonal changes over time, whatever the cause.  "Normal" wood changes more... but I think that over time, they both would end up about in the same place, just a jump-start for the artificial aging.