THE SOUND STRUCTURE

Before introducing this week's topic,  first of all I would like to thank all of you for visiting our booth at Mondomusica: we really had many visitors, thanks!

A heartly thank to my four friends-musicians who gave their availaibility for the concert which was held on Friday, October 1,  during the event.

Yuri Zhislin - first violin; Maria Kouznetsova - second violin; David Abrahamian - viola  and Jakob Ludwig - cello, with only three hours of soundcheck, they have staged a miraculous concert ! The record of it is under editing and  will be published in a short time.

Thanks as well to my colleague, M°  Navea Vera, of course, and our friend Fabien Gram violin-maker, for the bows and instruments played during the concert, which gave the group a very special sound, it was heard as four voices of different pitch but sharing the same setting tone.

And, least but not last, Petra Zari, graphic and artist who created the image of our new site, hoping you like it, and Simone Bianchi for everything.

Group shot : from the left Jakob Ludwig, Maria Kouznetsova, Daniel Navea Vera, Fabien Gram, Yuri Zhislin and David Abrahamian.

And after these dutiful thanks, let's proceed with the topic of this week: the sound structure.

Everybody working in the bow making field knows that often, or better almost always, the mounting that is carried out when the violin is finished, is absolutely a temporary one. In the early months of use, an instrument is subject to a constant transformation and, I would say that the change of the audible sound changes even minute by minute, in the very early hours. That is why the set up should be done frequently, at least in the early years. Although a little bit more complicated, it is possible to carry out a set up on the bows as well.

D.T.Navea Vera violin in ebony, gold, tortoiseshell, and "heart shaped mother of pearl

Obviously, in the bows there are no soundposts, chains, or bridges to be moved or replaced. The only additional parts are represented by frog, button and winding, and by adjusting them you can modify the sound structure of the bows.

It happens quite frequently that musicians require us to replace some of these parts, and we, like any careful craftsman who knows his job, always give a negative answer to these requests. The reason for this reticence is not to be found in the bad character of the craftsman, but in his awareness , that changing the structure of a a finished bow by replacing some parts is not only unproductive, but often harmful.

In addition, when the musician is seeking this type of changes he always attempt to change the balance of the bow, not taking into account how significant changes may affect both sound and tone.

Maybe some of you, perhaps the most prone to the rigors of logic, will know that even just replacing the button of a bow, may change the tone but you ignore how relevant this change might be. Some years ago, at the beginning of this job, I could personally realize this problem.I had a nice cello bow made with a stick owning a very high propagation velocity in the fiber and very low density. At that time I was not so expert , and I made a youth mistake, making it with a "light" mounting.

Despite the bow weight was of only 77.5 g it had a huge sound and force, but unfortunately the tone was not among the softer ones, so it was difficult for the customers to appreciate its other qualities until a cellist friend of ours came into our workshop looking for an exceptional bow. Being a professional with clear ideas, as soon as he started to play it, he realized the properties owned by this bow such as clear emission and quick mechanic but he was not at all convinced about the tone. Then I got an idea and I told him that if he could be patient for few minutes, I would have tried to improve the tone. At first it seemed reticent, because he thought that changing the tone of a bow would have required lot of time and effort, but when I told him that it would have been enough to replace the button, he almost laughed. In a nutshell, I managed to find a full button, which weighed three grams more than that one in three parts mounted on the bow and just one minute was enough to replace and remove the wry smile from the lips of my friend.

As I explained last week, buttons, windings or frogs, have often very different weights , and just as in the case above, changing these parameters not only modify the balance of the bow, but also its sound and tone. This is because making the structure heavier or lighter, we change the specific resonance frequency of the stick (ref. SOUND VELOCITY, RESONANCE AND BOWMAKING-SENSIBLE EXPERIENCE AND PHYSICAL PARAMETERS) Remember that you can express the sound speed as Young's modulus divided by density, all under the square root. Therefore, being in close relationship with the mass, if you increase the weight of the mountings d , the sound speed will decrease and consequently the tone will be softer, on the contrary, by decreasing it, you will get an opposite effect.

Of course, as I said at the beginning of the post, any set up carried out after the bow is finished, is practically impossible. Before starting to work, the the craftsman measures and weights the stick in order to understand which mounting will play better and, once decided, he will not come back. Furthermore the bow is worked and then balanced with the definitive frog already mounted on it. Except for rare cases like the one I told you, to replace arbitrarily one of these parts means, nine times out of ten, serious changes in the balance.

So long

Paolo.