Author: JRC
Date: 2011-06-19 10:08
Just came back from meeting new musical friends in Italy. Met some string players and pianists. One of them was in business, selling restoring and ... violins and the concertmaster of a major Italian symphony orchestra. He told me a very interesting story that is very much related to the subject.
Violins change the playing characteristics based on who's been playing the instrument. He knows a famous violin repairman and restorer in Italy who is also very much sought after in NY as well. He often gets requests to tune up a violin that is perfectly repaired and adjusted, and usually very expensive one, because it just does not respond "just right". It sounds much like voicing of an oboe; touching up here and there to improve the instrument's responses to delicate musical expressions like intonation, playability, dynamics,....
Often, that famous repairman does nothing to the instrument but just lend it to a good player to try it out for couple of weeks. Then give it back to the owner. He told me that this works magic every time. The violin improves! The customers get satisfaction and make the repairman more precious and sought after!
The story is that a violin does change its musical responsiveness based on who has been playing upon it. Good players do improve the instrument's responsiveness and bad players do suppress the instrument's musical responsiveness. Some violinists would not let any one touch his/her violin, especially a bad player, for that reason. I do have similar experience with oboe in the past, not to a degree that violinists are talking about. But indeed have the similar affects.
I hope to put together a list of measurable physical parameters that may have affects to this phenomena, such as looking at the sound in frequency domain before and after in some sort of controlled manner. It appears that I will need to parameterize "musical responsiveness" into measureables. Another words, what do we mean when we say this instrument is better than the other when we play on it, and answer it with something we can measure, like pitch, intonation, loudness, tone color, etc. If any of you folks have any idea, please post. I would like to learn.
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