[♪ INTRO] Thank you to Cometeer for sponsoring today’s
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for just $1 a cup! Even if you have never touched a violin before, there’s a pretty good chance you have heard
of the violin maker Stradivarius. For many in the music world, it’s a name
synonymous with unparalleled quality. Stradivarius instruments have a sound that’s
supposedly impossible to find anywhere else. For centuries, musicians, instrument makers,
engineers, and scientists have been trying to understand and reproduce the “Stradivarius”
sound. They’ve investigated everything from the
materials their maker used to how he crafted the violins. But the mystique is still there. So, let’s take a look at what sets these
instruments apart, from the maker’s techniques, his materials,
and the chemistry and physics of string instruments, to understand why Stradivarius violins have
been so hard to recreate. Antonio Stradivari was a violin maker who
lived in the northern Italian city of Cremona in the late 1600s and early
1700s. His name was often Latinized from “Stradivari”
to “Stradivarius,” but people in the know call his instruments
“strads.” Today, only around 650 strads remain, and they are among the world’s most sought-after
instruments. They’ve been described as having a “silvery”
quality to their sound. Which is easy to say, but it means nothing
to me, but much harder to describe scientifically. But that doesn’t mean scientists haven’t
tried. From chemistry to physics, forestry, and psychology,
scientists from all sorts of disciplines have tried to uncover the “mysteries
of Stradivari.” To understand the Stradivari sound, let’s
start with how any violin gets its sound in the first place. Four strings are kept tight between tuning
pegs on one end and a tailpiece on the other. The strings are suspended between the nut
and the bridge, which are both attached to the body. The tuning pegs can be twisted to adjust the
strings’ tightness. Drag a horsehair bow across the strings, and
they vibrate. That vibration is then transferred into the
body by the nut and the bridge. And it’s the body that makes a violin sound
like a violin. The body and the air can vibrate at the same
frequency, say, for example, 440 times per second for
an “A.” But not everything in the violin vibrates
at the exact same frequency. Some parts vibrate at multiples of the frequency,
like 880 or 1320, and those are called harmonics. The shape and material of the body can amplify some harmonics while dampening others. The shape and material also contribute to
the violin’s resonance. Like any object, there are certain frequencies where the violin body vibrates most easily. If you then vibrate the strings at the same
pitch that the body vibrates at, it produces resonance. And what makes a violin sound different from
a piano or a trumpet, or even different from other violins, is the
precise balance of harmonics and resonances it produces across the range of
possible frequencies. There have even been studies that tried to
find differences in the way Stradivari violins vibrate with 3D scans, but they couldn’t
detect much that was special. On top of that, strads have a lot of variety
in shape, and yet they all reportedly produce the highest quality sound, so that
attribute alone can’t explain the Stradivarius sound. So how about the material the body is made
from? Violin bodies usually consist of a combination
of different woods. The bottom and sides tend to be made of maple, while spruce is preferable for the top. But not just any bit of wood will do. The best violin woods are stiff and strong
to hold up against the tension of the strings, yet spring back to shape after being
bent, to create vibration. Stradivari famously used alpine spruce for
the tops of his violins. It grows slowly, resulting in grain that is
close together and straight. And that tends to make it strong, but still
light and elastic: exactly what violin makers look for. Stradivari also happened to live at the edge
of Europe’s Little Ice Age, a 70-year period of unseasonably cold weather that lasted
from 1645 to 1715. That slowed tree growth and made for even
more consistent wood. A group in Switzerland tried to replicate
this with an unusual tool: fungus. By treating spruce and maple with fungi that
altered the wood’s cellular structure, they created materials similar to those Stradivari
used. The fungi would eat some of the cell walls
in the thicker parts of the wood, evening out the density overall. They even made violins out of the fungus-treated
wood, which they call “biotech Stradivariuses.” These biotech violins apparently sound great,
and some think they are comparable to the real
deal. There’s also a theory that Stradivari treated
his wood with salts and smoke. Chemical analysis shows that the Stradivari
violin wood really is different, but because Stradivari never wrote down his process,
researchers can’t quite tell why. They can only try to reverse-engineer it based
on what the wood looks like today. After testing maple from three different strads,
they found normal chemical changes due to age, but also elevated levels
of metals like aluminum, calcium, and copper. Which hints at some kind of special treatment. The researchers believe Stradivari’s chemical
treatment, whatever it was, might have been unique. On top of their material advantages, though,
strads also have the benefit of age. Among other things, wood dries out with age,
subtly altering its characteristics. As wood gets older, it’s less able to stop
itself vibrating, a property known as dampening. But Stradivari had competitors, like Giuseppe
Guarneri, who would have had access to the same wood,
and their violins are just as old. So the age of the wood isn’t the whole answer,
either. So where does that leave us? Here’s what we know: Stradivari was undoubtedly
very skilled at making violins, had access to some great materials, maybe
used some secret chemistry, and perhaps a fine violin just gets better
with age. But what makes Stradivari violins sound unique? But wait, we haven’t asked this question,
are they actually unique? Do they really sound better than anything
we could make today? Scientists set up double-blind tests in 2017,
in which players who didn’t know whether they were playing a modern violin
or a strad played for an audience that didn’t know
either. And, when asked which sounded better, neither the players nor the audience could
reliably tell them apart. In fact, many actually preferred the sound
of the modern instruments. So, maybe the answer in the end lies with
psychology. When musicians know they’re playing a one-of-a-kind
instrument, passed down through generations of the world’s
greatest players, they might feel special and important, and
maybe that helps them play better. And, when we listen to someone who we know is playing a million-dollar Stradivarius,
we feel special and important, so we might think it sounds better. Like how if we know a wine is expensive, we’ll
think it tastes better. After 400 years, we might have uncovered some
of the chemistry, physics, and biology that go into
making a violin a strad, but ultimately, maybe the magic of a Stradivarius
really comes down to the shared experience of music, history, and science. Thank you to Cometeer for supporting this
episode! If you really enjoyed this episode and you
love learning how science can help us solve mysteries, why not watch more SciShow
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u/Seemseasy's comment has a typo, or misunderstood the video.
The real TL;DW is the video author spends 8 minutes of advertising fluff saying he doesn't know how these violins were made.
But more importantly, when talking about modern vs. Stradivari violin: (quoted from 6:09)
Interesting topic, but the real answer seems to be at 6 minutes that there's no discernible audio difference between modern and super expensive old violins.
what a boring video