Violin Forum/Message Board

[John Cadd]

I lost the direction with metal pins under the fingerboard . Did that odd feature really mean anything ? What small details ? I`m lost again .

[John Cadd]

Just the main essence of the Sacconi book that tipped the balance for you .You must remember what that was . I used to say ;One line of Poetry can change your life . Was it like that ?
You can`t leave us in suspense any longer . Amnesia is no excuse . Spit it out .

[Michael Darnton]

OK. Might be a couple of days while I organize something.
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[John Cadd]

Almost academic really as I had a hearing test 2 days ago and they have lined up an appointment heading for a cochlear implant. The 2 audiologists were unable to communicate until my wife handed them a pen and notebook . What was left of my aid setting was ramped up without it being tried properly so almost any noise hurts my only working ear .

[John Cadd]

My hearing has returned partially to thin scratchy sounds with some pitch which is a major plus already . About the Sacconi book .I remember reading it and got the feeling a lot of it about varnish was exasperating and the whole varnish subject was a huge waste of time. He mentions thicknesses of plates and nowadays Michael Darnton pours scorn on that. Arching does not get much attention . So whatever is mentioned seems to be refuted ,denied and ridiculed ,but the book has become famous . The sentences about altering the acoustic centre (not defined in writing by Sacconi )clearly state that he altered Stradivarius violins to "correct " that as often as he could .It`s written in the book but not in the chapter you would expect . One expert maker thinks the book is overpriced and has nothing extra that you could not find in many other books . Bottom line is why is the title about "Secrets " when no secrets are revealed ? That alone should provoke derision from the ultra sceptical making community .

[Michael Darnton]

I have realized that my promised response is going to be long, a chapter for my "book", so it will be a while. Check the book if you haven't, at https://violinmag.com

The reason Sacconi is respected is because he was the first to think about these things. Virtually every early book written in the violin field has a lot wrong with it and the people who were inspired by it got more sophisticated in their understanding thanks to that book, viewing the whole topic with a clearer vision and better understanding. I think that most authors would be pleased to have had that effect on their readers.

The only book in the field that I know of that remains nearly 100% correct long after publication is the Hills' Antonio Stradivari volume written in 1902. They they knew a lot and were careful about what they said, not stepping a bit outside of what they were sure about.
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[John Cadd]

What I wrote in the last post describes what I thought when I read the book before I had a computer .Long before forums etc .
Some people criticise the book for averaging out Strad data but if you get an up to date poster the averaging is irrelevant . Looking at makers who copy we cannot dismiss Vuillaume who made a copy that Joseph Hassid played in a few short recordings . It was " only "a copy . Nuff said .
His Meditation splendidly avoids mawkish sentimentality . But it did not stop the bad habits of most players .
So what were the Secrets of Vuillaume ? We need another book now .
If you want to discover something , pick a simple subject and study the Hell out of it .

[John Cadd]

Disregarding slightly the topic restriction about "first books for learners " I found another Expensive book about Vuillaume generated from the Hill organisation . It`s about £350 .But it`s got a leather cover and a slide in box for protection.The title is in French but mercifully the book itself is in good old fashioned English .
Not as expensive at £250 is a book about Vuillaume from the Strad people . The introduction mentions when Vuillaume (already trained up as a violin maker by his father ) turned up at 19 years old to begin an association with two well known makers .One of them sounds familiar. Francois Chanot . Where have I heard that name before ? Oh yes ,he was the one advising Heron Allen when His book was being prepared . What a small world we live in indeed .
Back to the beginners stable now with young makers thirsting for knowledge. There is a CD on ebay which contains numerous books about violins and makers ,bow making and violin playing . It said "about" 70 books altogether for about £6. Don`t mind the "about " estimate . It will still save you time and petrol to find them all
Enjoy !.

[John Cadd]

In the Corilon Violins site there is an account of the Chanot violin making family history . If I have confused the names of Francois Chanot or Georges Chanot it`s hard to follow who did what exactly .I`m sure they all agreed and talked to each other ,more or less ,on the best ways to make violins.This was an era where eleven children per family was average and outside of the family the same could apply .If you worry too much about the exact first names you might like to see the copy of War and Peace which contains a facial index of the characters in the story to reduce confusion .
Vuillaume made a huge contribution to the sounds of violins for the reason that he encouraged and nurtured the finest French bowmakers. No self respecting virtuoso would deny the vital influence of French Bows .

[Michael Darnton]

Without a lot of digging beyond a surface google, I think Vuillaume's friend was Georges Chanot I and Heron-Allen's Georges III. Vuillaume's friend in 1825 was probably dead by Heron-Allen's 1880 involvement. The Chanot family was hugeish. But yes, the tradition was probably the same.
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[Michael Darnton]

A lot of the books you can buy on an Ebay CD came from archive.org's stash. At least there are enough there to keep you busy for quite a while! Finding them in the archive's trillions or so of documents is sometimes a problem.
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[John Cadd]

The over £300 Hill book might be worth exploring. They seem to be the most trusted and reliable source about violins . If I got the christian name of one of the Chanot tribe wrong it`s not a disaster . That would like confusing two famous French bow makers from the Vuillaume juggernaut . It was a big well organised organisation and is a good stepping stone back into the past by close on 200 years . Imagine in 400 years from now , if any humans are still alive , and NASA being dismissed as unimportant .
Any rich volunteers here to get the expensive book ? Come on ,Violins and Violin Playing is a Rich Man`s game these days . I saw a mention of the Russian bowmaker Kittel while reading about Vuillaume. I don`t know the connection but it reminds me that Russian culture will endure past the current insanity . I hope so .

[John Cadd]

All this information from various sources needs to be either considered or rejected as you learn more .Don`t always reject totally or slavishly follow .A book about sharpening tools would be useful as well .If you go the Japanese way you might spend half your life flattening a water stone because it`s the traditional way . Before you know it you are too old to make a violin . Don`t get bogged down . By the way if you get one of the cds with books it needs a computer to play it or a plug in disc player , Home cd players will not play them.
So what do you do with all the written statements in all those books . You need to work out what is reliable information . That reminds me of a comedian playing the part of a Historian in a lecture . After one bold statement he says " Now , how do we know that ? Well I`m a Historian and I`ve just told you". See what I mean ? You will need to find a way to test what you read .Not many can conclusively prove their own theories . Mainly I would experiment on bellies because that influences the sound the most and bellies are easy to change. If you make one good violin and sell it you lose the chance to make a good comparison with the next one .

[John Cadd]

Understanding violins ( in your mind) has a parrallel to a simple thing like I saw on a Watch forum in a debate about which watch bracelet was the most comfortable . Quite a simple theme but look at the answers received . Each contribution mentioned the maker`s name .Hardly anything else. eg "I prefer the Rolex type". Other names were mentioned in a similar way. Nothing about the bracelet moving out of position or being scratchy or too tight .Springs or not making it uncomfortable .
Now transfer that to Violins.Strad this --Strad that .Guarnerius etc . Names and names and names. Nothing really specific apart from Tone. Maybe what it looks like. Colour. Varnish.Rough edges on a scroll .It`s very like a watch forum if you think about it . I like it so believe me . Be an expert on watch straps too .

[Michael Darnton]

This is where the skill taught by Sacconi comes in. Look at something written in Thai. To us it doesn't look like anything. Look at it, close your eyes and write it. You can't because you don't have any context or experience.

It's the same with violins. Someone asked me the other day how I can ID a maker. I carry hundreds of small details in my mind, grouped by different ways to do the same thing. When I see something new, I can do a nearly instant checklist in my mind. The other day someone showed me a violin and I knew the maker in about three seconds. Flipping it over, I noticed that the top didn't fit that maker and another couple of seconds later had that maker in mind. Yesterday someone showed me a more scarce maker and I recognized that the data set was a certain maker, but I couldn't remember his name. But I "knew" the violin.

But you can't expect me to tell you how to do that in minutes or hours--it's a skill that's taken me decades to collect and built into a useful structure. The method of thinking that way came directly from Sacconi, however.

When I was getting into this Bob Bein (who taught this skill to people in the shop if they were interested) said the first step was to fully understand a Strad, how he solved every single problem, and then begin comparing those details with other makers' solutions to those same problems. The more small details you can classify the more sophisticated your understanding. If you know more details than any copyist, then copies can't fool you. The greatest experts know more finer details than anyone else. Then built from that. I still carry a Strad in my mind as the prototype, and each deviation from that is a separate marker in each category.

For instance---

Purfling corner junction:
. -Strad method
. -Amati method
. -Del Gesu method
. -German factory method
. -Backwards amateur method
. -No method evident, chaos
. -(etc.)

Another idea--using details like this, I can consistently pick out at least four different people in the shop cutting Strad f-holes. Antonio and his two sons are the obvious ones. There's another person for a short period of time, less than 10 years, who I haven't figured out who he could be, but seeing that person's f-hole helps narrow down the date of what I'm looking at. His work *never* appears outside of that period, so he's probably not someone who got assigned to a different task in the shop and comes in and helps cut an f-hole once in a while over the whole period. I have discussed this with others; I'm not the only person who sees this. But at this point there's not much to hold onto to suggest a definite person, so it doesn't matter too much in the overall picture beyond making for an interesting 5-minute discussion. The most interesting thing is that this person obviously understood the Brothers Amati model of 100 years previous (the obvious originator of the Cremonese f-hole model) a bit better than his contemporaries, and he's trying to do that with the Strad-pattern hole. An early expert! :-)

Do that with every possible feature, keep them organized so you know which method each maker uses under a several hundred headings, remember the names, and you're an expert. Learn how a maker changes these subtle details in small ways over time, and you're a better expert.

So I'm absolutely sure there's a bunch of persons who can tell you each specific point of a Rolex strap and can identify a real one vs a pretty good fake using a similar checklist of dozens of small details, but just like I can say "1715 Stradivari" as a shortcut, they say "Rolex" If they told you the radius of the curve on the corner was a bit off on one and showed you two examples, real and fake, next to each other you'd understand, but it's more than you wanted to know. They also understand the differences in functional details between the different brands, but again, that level of understanding isn't necessary to knowing which strap you personally like the feel of on your wrist.
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