What Joshua Bell's experiment tells us

[Yoshiharu Ito]

Hey everyone.

There is a famous experiment: Joshua Bell played in a Washington D.C. metro station, and almost nobody stopped to listen.

It raises a question about the perception of value. How much of what we call "quality" is directly perceived — and how much is mediated by context and expectation?

I find myself thinking about this in relation to Stradivari.

Looking at his work across different periods — particularly the shift from the Amati-influenced models toward the more distinctive forms of his later work — I keep wondering:

Was Stradivari deliberately pursuing improved acoustic performance? Or were the changes driven primarily by patronage, market expectations, or the natural evolution of his workshop?

The changes in arching and f-hole design visible in his later instruments seem too consistent to be accidental. And yet his intentions remain a matter of speculation.

Do you think Stradivari had a clear acoustic goal guiding these changes?

I am genuinely curious how people here interpret the relationship between intention, tradition, and outcome in his work.

[Shunyata]

The fact that the design and performance of violins has barely changed in the 350 years since answers that question.

Aesthetic tastes have changed dramatically in that period.  The violin has not.

[Yoshiharu Ito]

Thank you for your reply.

This is exactly what I have been reflecting on.

https://www.graceandsonsviolins.com/blog/why-did-the-violin-stop-thinking

If possible, I would be honored to hear your thoughts on this.

[Michael Darnton]

The actual Josh Bell lesson is not that people need to know how much he costs to appreciate him. It is that most people think they are experts by birth who can tell S#!√ from Shinola and they are wrong. Listening to music or being a player does not make you an expert on either music or violin quality any more than driving to the store for decades  makes you qualified to . . .

https://youtu.be/0LidF1gF3YQ?si=Pic5D_7SC-fnxkOr

[Yoshiharu Ito]

34 minutes ago, Michael Darnton said:

The actual Josh Bell lesson is not that people need to know how much he costs to appreciate him. It is that most people think they are experts by birth who can tell S#!√ from Shinola and they are wrong. Listening to music or being a player does not make you an expert on either music or violin quality any more than driving to the store for decades  makes you qualified to . . .

https://youtu.be/0LidF1gF3YQ?si=Pic5D_7SC-fnxkOr

In Japan, there is a long running television program where listeners try to distinguish between a Stradivari and an inexpensive modern instrument (wine and wagyu beef as well.)

Once, during an interval at a concert with a performer I deeply admire, I overheard audience members praising not the playing, but the sound of the Guarneri itself.

I understand why this happens. But seen through the lens of Joshua Bell's experiment, these responses seem deeply unreliable. What is authority for, if perception is this fragile? What is experience for?

And perhaps , when we as makers follow the authority of Stradivari in our own work, we are not so different from those audience members.

I am not saying Stradivari copies are nonsensical. That is not my point.

What interests me is the proportion: how many people are actually evaluating sound through genuine historical understanding and considered thought , rather than simply guessing, the way someone might guess the grade of wagyu beef they rarely eat?

Does anyone know of research beyond the Joshua Bell experiment , neuroscientific studies on the perception of beauty in music and sound?

[Don Noon]

57 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

There is a well-known experiment where Joshua Bell played in a Washington D.C. metro station, and almost nobody stopped to listen.

It raises a question about perception of value: how much of what we call “quality” is directly perceived, and how much is mediated by context and expectation?

I think the experiment gives some possible answers, but not to the questions you want to ask.

1)  A Washignton subway station during a morning rush is where people usually are on a well-traveled, tight schedule to get from point A to point B, and don't have extra time for anything.  An airport would likely be vastly different.

2)  What percentage of the commuters cares about classical music, or would be able to tell world-class playing from a decent amateur?  Apparently not much... unless 1) dominates the situation so that it doesn't matter.

1 hour ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

Do you think Stradivari had a clear acoustic goal that guided these changes? Or did the “Stradivari model” emerge more organically through iterative making within tradition?

Strad wasn't working inside a sealed bubble.  Violins had been around for a century, and there were other makers all around him.  Certainly any reasonable maker (like any today) would be aware of these other instruments, what people thought of them, and what they sounded like.  Some would be more preferred than others, and therefore indicate a direction, rather than a final "goal".  I'd probably try to look at the design/construction of the "better" sounding ones for clues about what to try.

In trying out a new idea, you'd first ask yourself and others, "Is this better or worse visually and sound-wise?"  If the result is positive, then it would be incorporated as a change.  

This is the long way of saying:  trial-and-error, including all of the trials of previous and current makers, evaluated as better/worse.  Eventually you get somewhere, even though you might not have known exactly where the endpoint was when you started.

[Deo Lawson]

The actual actual Josh Bell lesson is that... he's a very good violinist but a very bad busker. I used to busk a lot and made a killing frankly, for a young man just out of high school anyway. But if I had also just stood in the corner of the subway and played Bach S&Ps I also don't think people would have paid me much attention.

[Altgeiger]

18 minutes ago, Deo Lawson said:

very bad busker

Exactly. I did the same and made good cash. What succeeds in a concert hall is not what succeeds in the street. People are drawn to a show, something that grabs their attention immediately. Also you have to be where they can hear you, and where they aren't trying to get past as quickly as possible. Bell is a good fiddler, but he did everything wrong. 

 

There was also a principal second violin of the NY Philharmonic who did a similar test several decades ago. He made a pile of money. "Joshua Bell didn't make any money in the subway" is not enough to generalize from.

[Yoshiharu Ito]

1 hour ago, Don Noon said:

I think the experiment gives some possible answers, but not to the questions you want to ask.

1)  A Washignton subway station during a morning rush is where people usually are on a well-traveled, tight schedule to get from point A to point B, and don't have extra time for anything.  An airport would likely be vastly different.

2)  What percentage of the commuters cares about classical music, or would be able to tell world-class playing from a decent amateur?  Apparently not much... unless 1) dominates the situation so that it doesn't matter.

 

Thanks for your comment.

I find myself very much in agreement with you.

A concert works precisely because an audience has chosen to be there. To play Bach on a Stradivari during a Washington rush hour and in front of a population where perhaps only a few percent have any relationship with classical music at all , and then draw conclusions about human perception of beauty seems like a experiment worth reconsidering.

The conditions themselves may have predetermined the result.

But couldn't we also assume the opposite? If a sound has an overwhelming beauty and the brain perceives it, that beauty itself should be enough to make people stop and feel moved, even in a station.

Or, perhaps we are always judging beauty through context, whether we are at an airport or a station. Maybe the environment itself decides how we experience beauty.

1 hour ago, Don Noon said:

Strad wasn't working inside a sealed bubble.  Violins had been around for a century, and there were other makers all around him.  Certainly any reasonable maker (like any today) would be aware of these other instruments, what people thought of them, and what they sounded like.  Some would be more preferred than others, and therefore indicate a direction, rather than a final "goal".  I'd probably try to look at the design/construction of the "better" sounding ones for clues about what to try.

In trying out a new idea, you'd first ask yourself and others, "Is this better or worse visually and sound-wise?"  If the result is positive, then it would be incorporated as a change.  

This is the long way of saying:  trial-and-error, including all of the trials of previous and current makers, evaluated as better/worse.  Eventually you get somewhere, even though you might not have known exactly where the endpoint was when you started.

Thanks for the brilliant comment, Don.

It seems the "Stradivari context" is a huge buildup of subjective trials over centuries. But here is what I’m curious about:
Stradivari’s sound was for the 18th century. Since then, Vuillaume modernized the setups, and music evolved into the more emotional worlds of Rachmaninoff and Debussy.
From your scientific perspective, is the Stradivari model still acoustically rational today? Does his trial-and-error approach hold up as a valid engineering principle, even though what we demand from music has changed so much?

[Yoshiharu Ito]

47 minutes ago, Deo Lawson said:

The actual actual Josh Bell lesson is that... he's a very good violinist but a very bad busker. I used to busk a lot and made a killing frankly, for a young man just out of high school anyway. But if I had also just stood in the corner of the subway and played Bach S&Ps I also don't think people would have paid me much attention.

 

20 minutes ago, Altgeiger said:

Exactly. I did the same and made good cash. What succeeds in a concert hall is not what succeeds in the street. People are drawn to a show, something that grabs their attention immediately. Also you have to be where they can hear you, and where they aren't trying to get past as quickly as possible. Bell is a good fiddler, but he did everything wrong. 

 

There was also a principal second violin of the NY Philharmonic who did a similar test several decades ago. He made a pile of money. "Joshua Bell didn't make any money in the subway" is not enough to generalize from.

I see. So your point is that in that environment, "stimulation" and "entertainment value" matter more than "beauty"?

[Hippolytus Huffmaker]

What it tells me is if your publicity stunt involves slamming the public, and winning a Pulitzer prize for it, people will hate you for the rest of their lives.

[Jwillis]

They blast opera and classical music at gas stations to prevent loitering. Perhaps not all people’s tastes are the same   https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/columbus-gas-station-south-high-street-obetz-road-blasts-opera-music-247-to-deter-loitering

[The Violin Beautiful]

That experiment was more of a stunt than a real experiment, and it was not thought out well. The headline about a concert violinist not making money playing in a Metro station was useful as clickbait for the media, but it certainly didn’t prove anything or make any salient point. 
 

Bell played in the busiest Metro station at peak rush hour time, the most hectic time of the day. At that station, many people are actually running to make a transfer to a different line, and if you’ve ever ridden the Metro regularly, you know just how horribly it’s maintained and how often trains break down or get delayed for any number of reasons. Rush hour on a weekday morning is a mad dash to make it to the office on time  even though you left early enough that you should have had some cushion. The fact that few people paid much attention to a musician in the midst of that chaos was completely unremarkable.

 

Playing in such a crowded spot where there‘s so much train and passenger noise is a mistake that buskers know enough not to make. There are stations and spots that are ideal for playing and have more space and less noise. I used to see a quartet that sang on platforms all the time. They knew just where to set up so that they could be heard but weren’t in the middle of the crowd. They timed their performances so that they could sing numbers in between train arrivals, and they deservedly got a huge amount of attention. And although Bell might not have made much during his appearance, other buskers who play classical music have been much more successful. It’s not about being the best player or using the greatest violin in that setting—it’s about drawing an audience in by choosing the right repertoire for the scene and by making the performance eye-catching enough that people want to stop for a while. Long before Bell played in a DC metro station there was a professional orchestral player who was well known for playing in subway stations as well with more success.

Bell wore a disguise to avoid recognition that he assumed would take place if people could see his face clearly. Given the spot for the stunt, I suspect he could have skipped the disguise and still have gone undetected. But with his choice of disguise, he also did something that tends to work against buskers: he deliberately avoided a look that stood out. Many successful buskers wear costumes that get attention as part of their persona and they make eye contact with people to engage them. Of course a costume is not a necessity for busking, but a visual element that adds to the intrigue or makes a passerby stop to look more closely can make a big difference.

The question of the reasoning behind Stradivari’s modifications and developments in violin design is an interesting one, but I don’t think using the Metro “experiment(s)” as a BELLwether is useful. I’m inclined to think that Stradivari was indeed looking to make some changes to the character or tone of his instruments through experimentation with the forms and arches, but I also don’t think that this was a trait unique to him. In his day the violin was still a relatively new invention, and forms were anything but rigidly standardized. There is an argument to be made for there having been working methods and proportional relationships that were largely consistent in Cremona, but there was nonetheless quite a lot of variation in making, not just when comparing different makers, but looking at the violins from the same maker or shop over time.

[Altgeiger]

29 minutes ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

in that environment, "stimulation" and "entertainment value" matter more than "beauty"?

Yes, in that context. Beauty is what you give them after you've gathered a crowd, if you are lucky enough to do that.

[Shunyata]

@Yoshiharu Ito tor article talks about two things… beauty of the form, and functionality of the form.

The beauty of form has been well-studied and linked to mathematics.  I think it is important to understand the co-arising nature here.  I know beauty when I see it; I study beauty; then I can intentionally design beauty.  
 

It isn’t clear to me whether Stradivari created beauty from internal knowledge, intentional design, or both.   Looking at artists I know, few “design” beauty with geometric constructions, but all have an innate awareness of those underlying principles, through education or experience.  I suspect the same was true of Stradivari. 
 

Another key principle of beauty is a having a similar amount of detail and design at every scale, from the overall profile to the small features.  This is where I think Stradivari really advanced the instrument.  I suspect this came more from general artisanship than design.

On the functionality side, the instrument is so complex that we aren’t able to reliably engineer function even today.  The current form was discovered through an evolutionary process.  There are apparently no other local optima (many variations have been tried) so the form has been frozen.

In this case, the only possible improvement would be a truly revolutionary change in form.  These revolutions are difficult to identify and would probably offend our sense of beauty.

[Matthew_Graesch]

FWIW, I suspect Stradivari was a small-business owner trying to keep afloat in a tumultuous political and social time just like the guy in town who made brooms or pottery or ropes or flour.  As mentioned, I expect that he was motivated most by things that sold the best, and would make whatever he could sell easiest for the best prices.  I suspect pragmatism was much more prevalent than the romantic view many folks have with 300 years of hindsight.  

Potential scenario: he makes a fiddle, sells it to someone famous or important, they love it, and suddenly all the people want to have a fiddle just like the Duke of XYZ so he copies it and sales blow up.  No different than a modern TikTok trend selling tons of a certain handbag or cologne or shoe.

Just my $0.02

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

If a sound has an overwhelming beauty and the brain perceives it, that beauty itself should be enough to make people stop and feel moved, even in a station.

I think we have sufficient evidence from many blind tests that certain instruments can be deemed collectively as having a more desirable sound than others, but that the result is never unanimous, nor do the instruments by Strad and other famous old guys come out on top with unquestionable regularity.  People vary in what sound they think is beautiful or desirable.

Including the player and the musical piece with the sound, that evaluation also rests in huge part with the listener, although you can't discount the musician as a significant factor.  I am moved by a hot fiddle playing a dance piece... but know most folks would be moved farther away from it.  If everything aligns with the listener's experience and tastes, with the right musician, the actual sound is only a small factor.  I can even enjoy the god-awful scratchy sound of Tommy Jarrell.

2 hours ago, Yoshiharu Ito said:

From your scientific perspective, is the Stradivari model still acoustically rational today? Does his trial-and-error approach hold up as a valid engineering principle, even though what we demand from music has changed so much?

Given that the final result is judged by humans and not any quantitative values, trial-and-error is the only logically valid approach.  If you mean "Stradivari model" to be the form and sound of his instruments, yes, that model pleases many players and listeners, so it's rational.  I like some Strads, don't like other Strads, and do like many other violins both old and modern.  There's a lot of variation, much of which shows up no matter how hard the maker tries to repeat things.  And the music, venue, and player in large part determine which instrument is appropriate (I could go into the details of my instrument being chosen for a solo performance over a Strad, but this post is long enough already).

More on the engineering side:  folks (including myself) have been analyzing violin acoustic spectra to try to define "good" for a while.  My conclusion is that in the narrow field of modern classical violin (not Baroque), there's a sortof generally desirable shape to the response curve.  GETTING that kind of curve would have to be by trial-and-error (or forget the curve, and just go by ear).  I intentionally put in lots of sqishy qualifying words since nothing is every really certain every time for everybody.

[Don Noon]

Me:  "There's a fantastic musician in town, I'll buy the tickets.  Wanna go?"

Wife, kids:  "Naah."

[Mark Norfleet]

2 hours ago, The Violin Beautiful said:

That experiment was more of a stunt than a real experiment, and it was not thought out well.

Is it known what his intent was?  Perhaps he just wanted to play in the subway to see what it was like...

[Hippolytus Huffmaker]

"How do you get to the subway?"

"Practice".

[The Violin Beautiful]

4 hours ago, Mark Norfleet said:

Is it known what his intent was?  Perhaps he just wanted to play in the subway to see what it was like...

The whole thing was devised by the Washington Post as a “social experiment” to suggest that people couldn’t perceive value in artistry if it wasn’t presented in the correct setting. Joshua Bell was recruited to be the performer. There was a suggestion that the fact that he had given sold out concerts in major concert halls at $100 a ticket but wasn’t recognized and monetarily rewarded by commuters was a testament that art only has value in how it’s presented and that the public essentially isn’t smart enough to ooh and ahh if you’re not holding up cue cards for them and charging enough for tickets to convince them that they must be paying for art.

As an attempt to “redeem” the public for its reputedly shameful failure to forsake everything to gape in wonderment at a violinist they probably couldn’t hear very well during the peak of rush hour, a second “experiment” was set up several years later. This time Bell picked a better spot and didn’t try to disguise himself. This was presented as a better outcome, although it was still necessary to dumb things down for the public by making Bell’s presence better known. 

[Yoshiharu Ito]

5 hours ago, Don Noon said:

I think we have sufficient evidence from many blind tests that certain instruments can be deemed collectively as having a more desirable sound than others, but that the result is never unanimous, nor do the instruments by Strad and other famous old guys come out on top with unquestionable regularity.  People vary in what sound they think is beautiful or desirable.

Including the player and the musical piece with the sound, that evaluation also rests in huge part with the listener, although you can't discount the musician as a significant factor.  I am moved by a hot fiddle playing a dance piece... but know most folks would be moved farther away from it.  If everything aligns with the listener's experience and tastes, with the right musician, the actual sound is only a small factor.  I can even enjoy the god-awful scratchy sound of Tommy Jarrell.

Given that the final result is judged by humans and not any quantitative values, trial-and-error is the only logically valid approach.  If you mean "Stradivari model" to be the form and sound of his instruments, yes, that model pleases many players and listeners, so it's rational.  I like some Strads, don't like other Strads, and do like many other violins both old and modern.  There's a lot of variation, much of which shows up no matter how hard the maker tries to repeat things.  And the music, venue, and player in large part determine which instrument is appropriate (I could go into the details of my instrument being chosen for a solo performance over a Strad, but this post is long enough already).

More on the engineering side:  folks (including myself) have been analyzing violin acoustic spectra to try to define "good" for a while.  My conclusion is that in the narrow field of modern classical violin (not Baroque), there's a sortof generally desirable shape to the response curve.  GETTING that kind of curve would have to be by trial-and-error (or forget the curve, and just go by ear).  I intentionally put in lots of sqishy qualifying words since nothing is every really certain every time for everybody.

Thank you for the Paris blind test reference.  Are there experiments that actually test how much of our perception of sound shifts based on context, expectation, and the performer? The Paris test touches on this, but I am curious whether anyone has gone deeper into the neuroscience of how we hear beauty in music.

I have a question for you about the acoustic spectrum: when you talk about a desirable response curve, is that goal based on specific neural responses when people hear it  or purely the result of trial-and-error by ear? And does that "desirable" curve vary between makers?

[Yoshiharu Ito]

8 hours ago, Mansfield Piggot said:

What it tells me is if your publicity stunt involves slamming the public, and winning a Pulitzer prize for it, people will hate you for the rest of their lives.

That sounds like an extremely high-risk experiment...

[Yoshiharu Ito]

8 hours ago, Jwillis said:

They blast opera and classical music at gas stations to prevent loitering. Perhaps not all people’s tastes are the same   https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/columbus-gas-station-south-high-street-obetz-road-blasts-opera-music-247-to-deter-loitering

This is a fascinating phenomenon...!

[Yoshiharu Ito]

8 hours ago, The Violin Beautiful said:

That experiment was more of a stunt than a real experiment, and it was not thought out well. The headline about a concert violinist not making money playing in a Metro station was useful as clickbait for the media, but it certainly didn’t prove anything or make any salient point. 
 

Bell played in the busiest Metro station at peak rush hour time, the most hectic time of the day. At that station, many people are actually running to make a transfer to a different line, and if you’ve ever ridden the Metro regularly, you know just how horribly it’s maintained and how often trains break down or get delayed for any number of reasons. Rush hour on a weekday morning is a mad dash to make it to the office on time  even though you left early enough that you should have had some cushion. The fact that few people paid much attention to a musician in the midst of that chaos was completely unremarkable.

 

Playing in such a crowded spot where there‘s so much train and passenger noise is a mistake that buskers know enough not to make. There are stations and spots that are ideal for playing and have more space and less noise. I used to see a quartet that sang on platforms all the time. They knew just where to set up so that they could be heard but weren’t in the middle of the crowd. They timed their performances so that they could sing numbers in between train arrivals, and they deservedly got a huge amount of attention. And although Bell might not have made much during his appearance, other buskers who play classical music have been much more successful. It’s not about being the best player or using the greatest violin in that setting—it’s about drawing an audience in by choosing the right repertoire for the scene and by making the performance eye-catching enough that people want to stop for a while. Long before Bell played in a DC metro station there was a professional orchestral player who was well known for playing in subway stations as well with more success.

Bell wore a disguise to avoid recognition that he assumed would take place if people could see his face clearly. Given the spot for the stunt, I suspect he could have skipped the disguise and still have gone undetected. But with his choice of disguise, he also did something that tends to work against buskers: he deliberately avoided a look that stood out. Many successful buskers wear costumes that get attention as part of their persona and they make eye contact with people to engage them. Of course a costume is not a necessity for busking, but a visual element that adds to the intrigue or makes a passerby stop to look more closely can make a big difference.

The question of the reasoning behind Stradivari’s modifications and developments in violin design is an interesting one, but I don’t think using the Metro “experiment(s)” as a BELLwether is useful. I’m inclined to think that Stradivari was indeed looking to make some changes to the character or tone of his instruments through experimentation with the forms and arches, but I also don’t think that this was a trait unique to him. In his day the violin was still a relatively new invention, and forms were anything but rigidly standardized. There is an argument to be made for there having been working methods and proportional relationships that were largely consistent in Cremona, but there was nonetheless quite a lot of variation in making, not just when comparing different makers, but looking at the violins from the same maker or shop over time.

Thank you all for these perspectives , particularly the observations about busking, which I had not considered at all.

I started this thread because the story of Bell's experiment seemed to suggest that without the right space and framing, beauty simply cannot be perceived. But the responses here have been more skeptical of the experiment itself than I expected, and I find that genuinely interesting.

Perhaps the experiment was flawed , but I wonder if the question it pointed toward still stands because .I feel there is a great deal more to explore here.