Violin Forum/Message Board

[John Cadd]

One of the things I was partially assuming was that the wave through wood will change it`s speed as the wood thickness alters.
This seemed to be the only way that both "Strad" and "Del Gesu" style thicknessing could both be successful.
On another site,Charles Woods , a member of the S.California Association of Violin Makers ,shows how he calculates the Elasticity of wood when choosing his materials for a violin.

An important calculation for Elasticity includes the letter "t" which is the thickness of the sample being tested.
The other calculation is for the Speed of sound through the sample.
Speed of sound (through the sample)C =Sq root of (498.070xE)/d
As t alters the value of E
So E alters the value of C
Therefore changes in thickness alter the speed of the waves through the wood .
So changes in speed through the wood will also give rise to defraction of the waves as they impinge on different thicknesses and also effectively alter the phase of the wave.
When I talk about the phase of the wave I refer to the wave moving from the bridge foot through an evenly thicknessed area of wood .This will be matched by the alternating waves from the other bridge foot.

[Michael Darnton]

How many violins have you made?

[John Cadd]

You go first!

[John Cadd]

Continuing the theme of deflection of wave direction,the property of belly wood should be remembered. Sound travels along the grain approx ,4 times faster than across the grain.Any increase of speed through the wood will accelerate the wave along the grain in the same ratio,Rather like shining a torch along the wall.
The main reason to work through these ideas is to see if there have been any theories covering all this.Put it this way,if I had sent some designs ( like the ones already shown here on this site) to some important makers they would have ended up in the wastepaper basket.
One of the diagrams I look forward to seeing is a map tracing the wave directions through the belly with all the distortions .It`s a good subject for some computer trials.If I get proved wrong it wiil not be a disaster as it will mean the new answer has moved us forwards.

[Michael Darnton]

About 200. Your turn. I get the sense that you are speaking mostly from your mind, and haven't done a lot of research to see what others have worked out about how the violin works, nor do you have any hands-on understanding.

The most coherent stuff about current directions in the way that the science-minded guys are looking at it are on Martin Schleske's site: http://schleske.de That's not the way I think of it, being more anchored in 17th century process and thought, myself, but the models he talks about, being based completely on reality, are hard to ignore or deny. If you look his site over, I think you'll have a hard time integrating what you've been talking about with the information presented there about the way that vibrations in violins really do move around. I especially recommend looking at the wire-frame animations, http://www.schleske.de/en/our-research/introduction-violin-acoustics/modal-analysis/animation.html , which are taken from one real violin, not theory.

[John Cadd]

To Michael Darnton
Yes ,good guess I have never managed to get my hands on a truck load of "used " Strads and Del Gesus.I am one of those strange creatures that plays and makes violins.I have only made half a dozen and none since the Strad magazine maps .I always end up being drawn to the awkward problem areas and looking for better solutions.Just the way I was made unfortunately.
This collection of maps is red meat to somebody like me.
I can see you dragging razor wire around the subject and big Keep Out signs going up.
Your very short question asking how many violins I had made----- ----made me a little wary of the tone of the question.
I shall have a look at Mr schlieske`s site.I did send him an e mail earlier but it either got into spam or deleted as nothing came back.Probably not worth answering.
Go on --Say it----The secret lies in the Varnish!---YAWN.
You do seem to be a bit prickly on this topic though.Don`t knock thinking it`s free.

[Michael Darnton]

What I see from your posts is that you are philosophizing on some complex issues that you don't understand, either in the book sense or in the experiential perspective. I'm suggesting, then, that you should do your homework so that you can discuss this in a way that conforms with some of the realities that have already been worked out. There's a reason that in this discussion you are essentially talking to yourself. I'm not putting a wall around the topic; I'm inviting you in from the wall that you have erected, yourself by not researching the topic thoroughly. At this point, though, you're reminding me a bit of the timecube guy: http://timecube.com/

It's not about the varnish: it's about understanding how a violin works. You can't get there by just making stuff up that sounds good to you.

There's plenty of stuff on Schleske's site to keep you busy for a while. If you haven't read it, you should, especially if you expect him to dialogue with you.

I'm not trying to put up the razor wire, but I also am not willing to nod my head pleasantly and politely while you pontificate about a topic you obviously haven't made the effort to collect the basic information about. One doesn't have to agree with everyone who's ever written anything about the violin, but it's good to at least know what the past has revealed, how it fits together or doesn't, and where you're standing relative to all of that.

[violinarius]

[John Cadd]

So far you have offered me no ideas of your own.
Your first (vaguely irritated )comment was "Anything is possible".
Then the Coup de gras"How many violins have you made?"
Followed by phrases like "know nothing about" ------Before I had answered your question. And then---- " Pontificating ".
Calm down it`s only a discussion.
I have read these Schlieske articles before and can`t help feeling they are very like sales pitches.At least I haven`t described my ideas as "Impressive."--as in the Schlieske headlines.
Just start again and look at the maps and then tell me in yor own words why these "random" patches are all over the violin plates.Don`t lean on somebody else`s ideas.
How many --violins---cars -- women----No .Not the way to use your brains.

[Michael Darnton]

"Just start again and look at the maps and then tell me in yor own words why these "random" patches are all over the violin plates."

In my opinion, because they didn't view precision the same way we do, nor did they have the tools to enforce any type of precision in that aspect of their making. I do not believe that those graduation variations contribute to the tonal aspects you have linked them with. In my opinion. I would attribute those aspects to model and arching, in particular, in ways that have been well explained by others, with whom I happen to agree because I have experimented with those things (and graduation as well) and seen what they do when put into real violins.

[John Cadd]

to Michael Darnton Well you have really surprised me today.I never expected that answer.I`m sorry we got off on the wrong foot earlier.
I never felt there was a clash between Mr Schlieske`s theories and what I was looking at.They didn`t seem to be dealing with the same thing. Well I shall do what you advised and dig into Mr Schlieske`s theoriesand see what occurs to me (if anything).

[Geemac]

As I carve I tend to think of the violin top being divided by the bass bar and the waist, resulting in four distinct areas that become four speakers for four strings. Therefore, the thickness of each area becomes very important to the performance of the instrument. Also to be considered is the area under the bridge and the sound post. But, what do I know? I'm only a beginner.
_________________
GeeMac

[John Cadd]

Geemac I like the "intuitive " feel of what you say.The maps showing thicknesses between the soundholes is interesting as the thinner centres make me think that the waves are being guided away from that centre towards the larger areas above and below.
One of the "theories" I have is that a thinner area will "push a wave away rather like two magnets repelling each other.
I regard thicker areas as islands in the ocean ("Attracting waves"). I saw the wave behaviour that reacting like this demonstrated very clearly during the Christmas Tsunami.Maybe there are films of this that might be interesting.It`s not for me to argue with Science.Waves do not suddenly do something "off the wall" because a violin has been glued together.
Could you really imagine Stradivari cutting loose with lots of sloppy thicknessing inside his instruments?It would be completely out of character.If the thicknessing meant nothing you have to admit that the two makers did some suspiciously similar things in this area.
This way of looking at the question may not be technically correct but I am trying hard not to say anything unscientific.

[Michael Darnton]

There are some peculiarities of grain direction against arching, combined with access that do a lot towards making this type of inconsistency in graduations by forcing certain directions and styles of tool use. If you're not paying attention, a lot of it happens on its own. When I started, I tried to work around that, but now I use a punch gauge like Stradivari's, and just let it happen, and it does.

[CT Dolan]

I’ve had more than my share of crazy ideas over the last year or so, since having become enveloped in the subject, and it is quite easy to speculate, as well as being a good thing, to think. However, there does come a time when one has to put their thoughts up against reality, to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is also then one usually finds (as I have) that they’re reading far too much into the subject, making it more complicated than need be (or, at least making it more complicated where it need not be, as there’s already enough genuine complication to go around).

I ought to premise what I am about to say by stating that I have just acquired wood for my first instrument (so now you know my qualifications), but in my opinion arching and the general from of an instrument are basic and foundational (and obviously inter-related), and graduation (which receives so much attention it seems, maybe because it is relatively easy to measure and display in text form) is more so something that, while following a basic concept (for the belly and the back), is tailored to the wood in hand (the wood telling where to needs to be made it a little thinner, or left a little thicker, all the while striving toward a goal). This is my distilled notion of where each stands in relation to the other.

One thing I do find it very interesting is that so many great instruments were made so long ago, made by people who had nothing like the kind of information floating around as we have today. What they did have, however, was very good training and a system that very obviously worked (and worked well). It is this system that I seek to know better and to understand, and in this I think we will find all we need to know about the remainder. Indeed, we already do (and then some).