Violin Forum/Message Board

[ctviolin]

[Dave Chandler]

But we do need to start from a basic point of reference, and control those things that we can, and those we can't control just add drama to the creation.
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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm" Winston Churchill

"I took the road less travelled, and now I don't know where I am." Marco Polo

[Michael Darnton]

It's a popular concept among amateurs to follow ideas that sound good and promise instant success without too much effort--just the right numbers--but among my professional maker friends, people who've individually made 500-1000 instruments and more, the things that are important to them are the things that could have actually been done and tracked 300 years ago, that are proven to work. Arching and setup, especially.

A friend of mine called plate tuning "the appealing myth that the parts of a musical instrument need to be musical". It's also the slow path to failure because it distracts you from learning the things that really are important.

You need to take a serious look at plate tuning: decades, perhaps hundreds of years (starting with one single declaration by a amateur violin making priest around 1850 that plates should be tuned), of tests, readings, improving equipment, more electronics, more computers, changing ideas; still no solid results. That's because there aren't any to be had.

The guys at the Oberlin summer camp have been working for some years to try to define what a good violin is, and they don't even know that--how are you going to build one with a couple of tuned and weighed plates?
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[L P Reedy]

Agreed. The only thing I'm serious about these days is arching. I try to get the weights within reasonable ranges, but it's hard to even know actual plate weights because I trim and purfle after gluing to the ribs. I make rough determinations of flexibility (mainly belly) but my hand is not calibrated. I try to keep thicknesses within ranges that I consider reasonable for the wood involved. I tap a little to see if the two plates are close to each other. IMHO (and those of some good players) I've gotten some pretty good results now and then. I'm 72 now and may not have enough years left to study plate tuning AND make fiddles.

[Cliff Green]

A lot of violin discussions remind me of a bunch of 12 year old boys debating the way to get to 3rd base with a girl.

[Michael Darnton]

When I'm with my violin making friends, we rarely talk about violin making, probably like how married men usually don't talk about how to get a girlfriend. :-) That's natural, probably. When I was a kid, I didn't listen when my father gave me tips about girls. I should have listened, though I'm pleased to have muddled through it in a way that turned out nicely, on my own.
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[Cliff Green]

When I was 12 one of my friends was the son of a physician. Denison meticulously hand copied pertinent sections some of his fathers library. The posse now possessed scientific explanations of our desire but we still didn't know how to get there. Fortunately, as in violin building, curiosity, perseverence, and nature eventually brought success.

[John Schmidt]

Michael,

I would sure like to see your future book that tells us how to correctly arch and thickness a violin. That would be a great leap forward for all of us.

[Mat Roop]

John... Just in case you missed it, Michael's book in draft and partial form is here....
http://violinmag.com

Unfortunately the chapter on arching and graduation is not on line yet... but there is lots other to digest! I keep checking to see if anything has been added!
Cheers, Mat

[John Schmidt]

[Cliff Green]

Here is a link to previous arching discussions

https://www.violins.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?t=841&highlight=arch

https://www.violins.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1275&view=next&sid=07ab1c3c7513f18e15d1eb3aec1c1db5

[ctviolin]

Well, arching is a separate and interesting thing to contemplate...

If the arching is that important in voicing the violin, then the arching might reflect the choice of wood(s) used also. I have always wondered at the choice of arching and the properties of various qualities of wood choice. For example - Sitka versus Englemann Spruce... The properties of the woods are extremely different in general - meaning that they exhibit very different densities, qualities, or weights in the weight per square whatever you want to measure.
Plus their gaining is radically different. And that's just using two popular spruces for an example, and there are many different species of spruce and maple being used today, from very different places and very different trees..

I would imagine that the thickness MUST be altered, in order to accommodate whatever wood is being used in order to accommodate the requirements of the violins voice...
so - would the arching, the curvature itself, also differ?

Yes, it must. So thinking along the lines of " there must be an arch that works for all violins" I'm thinking, is in error.
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Look,
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[ctviolin]

Most "formulas" don't work universally.
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Look,
Listen,
Learn.

[Michael Darnton]

Most violins aren't universally the same, either, but some are consistently better.

As far as I can see, the Industrial Revolution both ruined violin making AND also destroyed the mindset necessary to be a successful violin maker.
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my work sites: http://darntonviolins.com and http://darntonhersh.com

[Chet Bishop]

Can you describe the necessary mindset? And, have you any ideas as to how to reconstruct it from the scraps left to us?

Both serious questions.
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Chet Bishop
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