Five Ways To Increase Response In Your Violins

let's speak about how you can improve the response in your violence levels or cellos in this video i want to speak about five techniques i want to speak about arching i want to speak about tonal setup with the breach in the sound post about string spacing about string tension and about playing it in let's begin with arching as a violin maker or an instrument maker making violins or wheels or cellos of course you understand that the character of the arching is really important for the response of your instruments for the projection for the character for the colors etc etc and you of course understand that it is crucially important to match perfectly the top and the bottom the spruce and the maple these two completely different types of wood must make a perfect couple and you understand this what one factor is frequently overlooked is the distance between the plates and from my previous videos in particular from my three-part training for this years here on youtube you've learned that the ancient masters use the laws of music in designing their musical instruments now what do i mean by the laws of music by the laws of music i mean harmonical riches now what are harmonical races well according to marco polo vitruvius harmonical races are a natural division of a vibrating body resulting in musical instruments and you know from my videos where i shared mara mercen and pablo nasara talking about harmonical wishes and how these guys tell that there should be nothing non-harmonical in musical instruments and vitruvius specifically says that these are the laws used by the skilled working who fashion musical instruments in bringing them to the perfection of their proper concords so let's speak about harmonical distance between the top plate of your violin vinyl cello and the bottom plate of your violin viola or cello and i'm not going to even share with you my opinion i'm going to refer to the primary sources because we are here in this historically inspired historic informed instrument making somewhat similar to the approach to early music so according to pablo nassare and listen to this this is very important maybe even take a note so that you remember this the distance between the top and the bottom of a violin specifically should be pure fifth above octave and then above octave in other words pure 24th so i'm going to explain this on the instrument so that it is easier for you to understand let me plug a pure fifth on the d string so this will be the a let me plug pure 12 on the g string so it will be a above octave and let me plug again this pure 12 above octave it will be again there we go so this is the distance according to pablo nasara between the plates of the vatican let me measure this i believe it should be around 57 millimeters and here's the bizarre thing um let's say pablo nassare specifies the distance between the top arching and the bottom arching in this area in the lower bouts of the upper bouts however uh and that's correct however what you want to do is you want to have these distances harmonical all over so in this particular violin the distance between the top plate and the bottom plate is harmonical also in the center and of course in this area as well now i have just learned a harmonical trick as known to the greatest masters of the 17th century as you have just learned from pablo nasare who wrote this monumental treatise on music escuela and musica sigun la practica moderna and he's been working on it his entire life has been published so many times first time in the 17th century and then in the 18th century as well so the publication that i have here at my workshop is from 1724 and this is where you can learn about harmonical riches in musical instruments mind it is ancient spanish so if you do not speak spanish it might be a little bit tricky and even if you do speak fluent spanish it is still tricky because it is old spanish and on top of this when he talks about harmonical races he uses latin terminology why latin terminology was because latin language was international language back then just a little bit like english today then back then in the 17th 18th century they used latin and instrument makers use these concepts this principle for two millennia at the least this concept unfortunately mysteriously has been lost already by the italians in the 18th century and pablo and antonio bagatella says nothing about harmonical races in his treatise on violin making so that's number one and when you pay attention to this you will see dramatic increase in responsibility of your violence villains are jealous and not only that but you will see that your instruments indeed sound richer just like pablo nazare says proportion i wish you all the best with this method so by the way if you find value in this knowledge that i'm sharing with you now subscribe to my channel so that you do not miss future content from this channel dedicated especially to helping both instrument makers and also musicians to achieve more success in their professional and personal lives let's speak about number two tunnel setup with the bridge and the sound post of course this has massive impact on the speed of the response so play with it just simply play with the thickness of the bridge at the feet at the bottom at the center the distances between the heart and the beans in the bridge play with the type of the wood you are using for the bridge play with the type of the root you are using for the sound pose the thickness of the sound post and where exactly you place the sound post that will have a huge huge huge impact on the tonal qualities of your instruments and responsibility of your instruments when i work with instruments for my clients i it is not unusual for me to spend a good whole day and an afternoon just to optimize tonally their violence because violent sound person violent bridge it just looks really simple that when you really want to do this perfectly it is a really subtle and really time consuming job number three string spacing now what do i mean by the string spacing by the string spacing i mean not just the distance between the strings but also mean the distance from the strings to the fingerboard and that one is very frequently overlooked in so many baroque especially violins with god strings or early classical violence strong with gut strings i see so many for the past 30 years i saw so many musicians who have these violence overviews of chelsea where the distance between the strings and the fingerboard is so enormous that it takes ages for the musician's finger to actually stop the string against the fingerboard and but this is where the response slows down dramatically this is where all these um strange sounds are introduced parasites this unclear not clean sounds are introduced just because it takes too long time to stop the string so you really need to pay attention to this and experiment this really depends on the type of the strings and when we are dealing with baroque instruments or classical instruments it also depends on their pitch so there you go so there is a absolutely unlimited scope for experimentation and finding the ideal uh setup remember as gallatin wrote in the late 18th century that the strings should be as close to the fingerboard as possible just so that they don't buds i hope that makes sense and again with correctly choosing gut strings you can go to the fingerboard really close without losing the dynamic range you can still play really affordably without buzzing you can still play really piano and still have that incredible speed of response on your baroque or early romantic violin strong with god strings now let's speak about the fourth technique which you might want to use in order to improve response in your violence velociracillas string tension some instruments function better with lower tension strings some instruments function with higher tension strings much better and sometimes you just need meet the medium tension strings experiment with that because there is no one size fits all approach to musical instruments and stringing them so just simply experiment with that if you have any questions comment below this video i'm here to help and number five playing it in now as a violin maker maybe you are not a player or maybe you just don't have hours and hours and hours to play the instrument in so that it breaks in and becomes a more responsive instrument just by playing it in well here's the trick you can use i have at my workshop a an electric vibrator which you can attach to the bridge then plug it in at a specific frequency and just leave it for a few hours or overnight or a couple of days that dramatically improves the response in your instrument without you having to play it in well what do i do differently in my workshop i use this technique so i use this electrical device however i will also spend hours playing it the playing the instrument in for my customer before i deliver it because i really want to make 100 sure that the sound is exactly to the liking of the customer and i'm also happy about the sound of the instrument and i learned more about my growth as an instrument maker and that's just really fun to do that so these are the five tips i wanted to share with you in this video how you can dramatically improve the response in your violence in los angeles let me summarize one more time the arching really important harmonical erasure harmonical musical distance between the archings remember respect the laws of music in your musical instruments that's what makes them musical number two tonal set up with the bridge and the sound post kind of obvious and this is really a limitless scope of what you can do with just some post and the bridge number three the string distance between the strings and the fingerboard very very important and very frequently very easily overlooked especially by really good players who have this amazing technique they will adapt to anything and they will even not notice that they could play even better just by fixing this one little thing so pay attention especially to really really really really advanced technically advanced musicians because those are the ones who are more likely to have problems in their instruments okay and number four is the string tension experiment with lower tension strings and high attention strings and of course learn more about correct historical stringing if you are into baroque instruments and number five playing it in so use this mechanical or electric vibrator to wake your instruments up so that they are ready for the performance they are ready for the player's hands so i hope you found somebody in this video i'm dimitri i'm the award-winning author of my best-selling book on fine violin making from the old masters legacy to the future of the craft with a forward by new york times bestselling author if you do not have yet that copy then order it from the books website i will leave a link somewhere below this video and by the way you even don't have to order the book in order to get access to a lot of readers only books bonuses worth more than 1 500 euros and you're getting this completely for free whether you're buying the book or you're not buying the book so go ahead and grab a copy or at least the bonuses and i decide i decided in this video to just let youtube decide which video youtube things might be the best for you so go ahead and watch this video and i see you there all the best [Music]

Channel: Dmitry Badiarov - Author | Luthier | Speaker

Views: 3,082

Keywords: violin maker, violin making, baroque violin maker, viola da spalla, violoncello da spalla, cello da spalla, how to build violin, success as a violin maker, luthier pricing, violin acoustics, violin pricing, violin sales, luthier marketing, luthier presentation, how you find customers, how to double income, musician success, luthier branding, elite luthiers academy, book on violin making, tonewood, violin making techniques, how to make more money as musician

Id: e_2hWTB4NTg

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2022