how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've always wondered why fiddles sound better if they have been played, opposed to sitting in a box for fifty years. I have been looking at fiddles and I was looking at one that the owner said hadn't been played regularly in more than fifty years (He inherited it from his great aunt who died at 103, fifty years ago).
My dad: "well does that make a difference?"
Me: "Of course!"
My dad: "How come?"
Me: "because it just does"
My dad: "I need a scientific answer"
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
The same is true for every wooden instrument.
I was always told it was because the molecules vibrate with the sound and that "opens them out"
There must be a more scientific explanation somewhere.
Guitarists used to lean new instruments on loud speakers to hasten the process.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
My fiddle sat dormant for a bit more than 50 years, in its'case and I can't really say that the sound is any worse than it was when I was taking lessons on it. However, the luthier who I took it to for resurrection ,commented that it did have a nice tone to it and was worth more money than I would ever have expected. It was built in 1949.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Have your dad read this, about a guy in Cremona who plays the museum's collection of Stradivaruises and del Gesus and Amatis every morning, just to keep them sounding their best (not a bad job, eh?):
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Yes, fiddles do sound better if they are played. This is not in question.
Here's the theory:
It's about vibrations of particular frequencies aligning tiny particles (right down to the molecular level I think) into arrangements that make these particles more efficiently stimulated. It's about resonance: Where if a system's fundamental natural frequency is the same as the system's stimulated frequency (or rather sets of harmonics), a self sustaining feedback loop occurs.
The maths is complicated, differential equations and that, I remember doing it 25 years ago but couldn't recall the specifics. Basically, if you can regularly stimulate a system over a specific frequency range of vibrations, the system tries to align its fundamentals to the stimulation because there is less stress on the system.
Try it next time you are in the bath. Wobble your knees in and out to make some waves. Feel the speed of the waves and try to match it with your legs. When you get the match, you feel you are no longer putting any effort into it.
Various things (moisture? lack of moisture? gravity, static? I'm not sure) will effect the alignment of particals that make up a fiddle and these will predominate if the fiddle is not played. Hopefully, and this is the theory, if you play the fiddle, these stimulated vibrations will predominate.
Hannah, is your dad a scientist? His take ont this would be interesting.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I was once told something along the lines that playing an instrument gradually loosened up the grain of the wood, making it vibrate better. Is there anything to this? Is it contradicted by or complementary to llig's post?
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've often wondered if it's possible to get a fiddle into a played-in condition by putting it beside a speaker playing music. No, not being lazy - just curious. Anyone know of anything like this ever being done?
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
It miught work if you lay the speaker on it's back and balanced the fiddle upside down with the bridge resting right on the speaker cone. Give it a go.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've heard of leaving fiddles on a well-played piano. They like the vibrations. Makes sense to me, especially when I know how my fiddle vibrates just being nearby another fiddle being played.
My old fiddle hadn't been played for 60 years before it came down to me. It needed refurbishment to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds before it was playable again, but a few years later after a lot of playing its tone has got back at least near to what must have been its former level, as a couple of experienced violinists have assured me.
Many years ago my classical guitar teacher (also a luthier) told me that if you have a new guitar you should play it as strongly as possible in the first couple of years otherwise the tone won't develop properly. The same doubtlessly applies to a new fiddle but the problem there is that it is likely to be in the hands of a beginner who, by definition, won't know how to play it strongly with a good bowing technique - and in tune. I suspect (although I can't prove it) that playing the instrument in tune also helps to develop the tone and resonance, perhaps because of realignment of the wood on a molecular level.
Carbon-fibre bodied cellos (and perhaps violins) are now being made. It's an interesting question whether the tone of such instruments will develop with playing, or is it going to remain static as when it was made.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've several fiddles and a couple I use regularly and the others sometimes go a few months unplayed. It usually takes playing every day for a week or more for them to sound good again. I keep meaning to rotate my practising more evenly across the fiddles but I have a favourite acoustic and a favourite electro acoustic - and the octave fiddle I use mainly for accompanying which I do less frequently.
But I can't complain when I'm spoilt for choice!!
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
"lay the speaker on it's back and balanced the fiddle upside down with the bridge resting right on the speaker cone"
Michael, what you've described could also be a good way of testing the fiddle for assorted rattles and buzzes, and to spring any joints that are about to
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
To add to the "new guitar" story, I did hear of a guitar-maker who visited a lady he had sold one of his instruments too, and found it had almost no response. Then he asked her to play it, and she played as if her baby was asleep in the next room. She had never given the neccessary stimulus to the instrument, so it had not developed.
I've heard it said that you should play every string strongly, at every position, six times a day for a new instrument. Never did it myself.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
My old fiddle vibrates hugely to the stereo - and it doesn't need to be loud. I can just hold her up by the neck and she plays away herself, very strange when I accidently discovered it. Unfortunately she's at the luthier getting her pegs re-bored at the moment (and I am missing her dreadfully ) All she needs to be is in tune and she's ready to dance to anything! Maybe she had been played right for a couple of hundred years before I found her and her wood cells are dominantly alighned right. Wish i was good enough to play her right myself - one day. ... but I recently bought a new fiddle that's got nice tone right from the start (hardly, if ever played), so .... I'm not too sure.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Sorry for the barrage of links, but this in an interesting topic
Here's a link to a study in Australia that showed no significant difference between twin violins - one of which had been played regularly for 3 years and one which wasn't played at all. 3 years is not a long time in the life of a good violin, but it's an interesting article. There's a link at the bottom to the actual published paper.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
While the change was so slow tjat I didn't know it was happening at the time, my rather cheap (but solid wood) guitar has become quite boomy in the midrange and but is still downright quiet in the it's high end. I suspect that it may have something to do with being almost strictly used for backing rhythm to folk music.
Also some guitarists swear that the instrument hasn't "seasoned" until the finish on the soundboard develops natural cracks. I suspect that they feel it allows it to vibrate more freely. It took about seven years for that to happen to my guitar, without actually damaging the instrument. It was played quite heavily and loudly, and mostly basic first position chords. it being my first guitar, and being in groups of ten or so musicians (and always too many drummers) at folk festivals.
So I suspect that the reason the midrange is so strong is that it's what the instrument did loudly and almost exclusively for about ten years.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I can convince myself from several theoretical angles that a wooden instrument *should* sound better if it’s played vs not played, but (ever the empiricist) I doubt that anybody has actually done a scientifically/statistically valid comparison, which would be an expensive and labor-intensive undertaking, and would obviously take at least a few years to complete.
The “Powerhouse Twins” experiment that Pete linked to is very interesting, but can only be considered a pilot study, useful for generating hypotheses and further research. If there had been maybe fifteen or twenty “Powerhouse Twins,” then some general conclusions could possibly be drawn. Or not. Three years may not be enough.
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I find it sad that what is considered Stradivarious' masterp The Messiah sits in a case in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and has been rarely been played. It's like entombing someone alive.
My new old fiddle was a gift from a friend. It was her mother's. It's a German copy of a Strad. One of the factory built ones made between 1921 and WII. It had been sitting in its case for 50 years in a farmhouse in the Midwest. The case that it was in was so good that the fiddle was in great shape. Even the bows still had hair!
After my luthier refurbished it I started playing it. There difinately a differnce in the sound from when I started playing it and now 6 months later. It's fuller, warmer and richer.
Sadly I've negelcted my Chinese made fiddle because I enjoy playing my German made one so much. Well there also a problem with the D string on Chinese fiddle I haven't had fixed yet.
how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've always wondered why fiddles sound better if they have been played, opposed to sitting in a box for fifty years. I have been looking at fiddles and I was looking at one that the owner said hadn't been played regularly in more than fifty years (He inherited it from his great aunt who died at 103, fifty years ago).
My dad: "well does that make a difference?"
Me: "Of course!"
My dad: "How come?"
Me: "because it just does"
My dad: "I need a scientific answer"
I would be very interested to know.
Thanks,
Hannah
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by keelin
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
The same is true for every wooden instrument.
I was always told it was because the molecules vibrate with the sound and that "opens them out"
There must be a more scientific explanation somewhere.
Guitarists used to lean new instruments on loud speakers to hasten the process.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Bren
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
My fiddle sat dormant for a bit more than 50 years, in its'case and I can't really say that the sound is any worse than it was when I was taking lessons on it. However, the luthier who I took it to for resurrection ,commented that it did have a nice tone to it and was worth more money than I would ever have expected. It was built in 1949.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by billcampbell
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Have your dad read this, about a guy in Cremona who plays the museum's collection of Stradivaruises and del Gesus and Amatis every morning, just to keep them sounding their best (not a bad job, eh?):
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/world/europe/03cremona.html
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by kennedy
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Yes, fiddles do sound better if they are played. This is not in question.
Here's the theory:
It's about vibrations of particular frequencies aligning tiny particles (right down to the molecular level I think) into arrangements that make these particles more efficiently stimulated. It's about resonance: Where if a system's fundamental natural frequency is the same as the system's stimulated frequency (or rather sets of harmonics), a self sustaining feedback loop occurs.
The maths is complicated, differential equations and that, I remember doing it 25 years ago but couldn't recall the specifics. Basically, if you can regularly stimulate a system over a specific frequency range of vibrations, the system tries to align its fundamentals to the stimulation because there is less stress on the system.
Try it next time you are in the bath. Wobble your knees in and out to make some waves. Feel the speed of the waves and try to match it with your legs. When you get the match, you feel you are no longer putting any effort into it.
Various things (moisture? lack of moisture? gravity, static? I'm not sure) will effect the alignment of particals that make up a fiddle and these will predominate if the fiddle is not played. Hopefully, and this is the theory, if you play the fiddle, these stimulated vibrations will predominate.
Hannah, is your dad a scientist? His take ont this would be interesting.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I was once told something along the lines that playing an instrument gradually loosened up the grain of the wood, making it vibrate better. Is there anything to this? Is it contradicted by or complementary to llig's post?
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by jasonb
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've often wondered if it's possible to get a fiddle into a played-in condition by putting it beside a speaker playing music. No, not being lazy
- just curious. Anyone know of anything like this ever being done?
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Ron P
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
It miught work if you lay the speaker on it's back and balanced the fiddle upside down with the bridge resting right on the speaker cone. Give it a go.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've heard of leaving fiddles on a well-played piano. They like the vibrations. Makes sense to me, especially when I know how my fiddle vibrates just being nearby another fiddle being played.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by kennedy
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I see where you're coming from Michael - I must do some googling here.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Ron P
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've actually heard the tone of a fiddle improve over a couple of hours by some really strong playing. See this link,
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/16053/comments#comment332974
My old fiddle hadn't been played for 60 years before it came down to me. It needed refurbishment to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds before it was playable again, but a few years later after a lot of playing its tone has got back at least near to what must have been its former level, as a couple of experienced violinists have assured me.
Many years ago my classical guitar teacher (also a luthier) told me that if you have a new guitar you should play it as strongly as possible in the first couple of years otherwise the tone won't develop properly. The same doubtlessly applies to a new fiddle but the problem there is that it is likely to be in the hands of a beginner who, by definition, won't know how to play it strongly with a good bowing technique - and in tune. I suspect (although I can't prove it) that playing the instrument in tune also helps to develop the tone and resonance, perhaps because of realignment of the wood on a molecular level.
Carbon-fibre bodied cellos (and perhaps violins) are now being made. It's an interesting question whether the tone of such instruments will develop with playing, or is it going to remain static as when it was made.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by lazyhound
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Great discussion Hanna!
So what some of you are saying is that a fiddle could be worth more because of its previous owners who had good technique?
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by jfiddlerh
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I've several fiddles and a couple I use regularly and the others sometimes go a few months unplayed. It usually takes playing every day for a week or more for them to sound good again. I keep meaning to rotate my practising more evenly across the fiddles but I have a favourite acoustic and a favourite electro acoustic - and the octave fiddle I use mainly for accompanying which I do less frequently.
But I can't complain when I'm spoilt for choice!!
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Tarrantella
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
"lay the speaker on it's back and balanced the fiddle upside down with the bridge resting right on the speaker cone"
Michael, what you've described could also be a good way of testing the fiddle for assorted rattles and buzzes, and to spring any joints that are about to
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by lazyhound
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Interesting article: http://www.acousticguitar.com/gear/advice/vibration.shtml
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Reverend
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
playing lots of double stops will help the fiddles tone along, too, especially with a viola bow
and don't neglect the higher positions
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Sunnybear
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Interesting article Reverend, but it dates to 1997. I'd like to know what happened with that MIT research these past 10 years.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Ramiro
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
To add to the "new guitar" story, I did hear of a guitar-maker who visited a lady he had sold one of his instruments too, and found it had almost no response. Then he asked her to play it, and she played as if her baby was asleep in the next room. She had never given the neccessary stimulus to the instrument, so it had not developed.
I've heard it said that you should play every string strongly, at every position, six times a day for a new instrument. Never did it myself.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Guernsey Pete
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Another interesting article, although, not directly related to how wood changes over time: http://chambermusictoday.blogspot.com/2007/05/violin-physics-chladni-patterns.html
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Reverend
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
My old fiddle vibrates hugely to the stereo - and it doesn't need to be loud. I can just hold her up by the neck and she plays away herself, very strange when I accidently discovered it. Unfortunately she's at the luthier getting her pegs re-bored at the moment (and I am missing her dreadfully
) All she needs to be is in tune and she's ready to dance to anything! Maybe she had been played right for a couple of hundred years before I found her and her wood cells are dominantly alighned right. Wish i was good enough to play her right myself - one day. ... but I recently bought a new fiddle that's got nice tone right from the start (hardly, if ever played), so .... I'm not too sure.
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Clear Drops
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Sorry for the barrage of links, but this in an interesting topic
Here's a link to a study in Australia that showed no significant difference between twin violins - one of which had been played regularly for 3 years and one which wasn't played at all. 3 years is not a long time in the life of a good violin, but it's an interesting article. There's a link at the bottom to the actual published paper.
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/powerhousetwins.html
# Posted on December 31st 2007 by Reverend
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
Hey Reverend, thanks for the barrage of links - you must have more spare time than me! Very interesting.....
And... A Guid New Year Tae Ane and A'......
# Posted on January 1st 2008 by Ron P
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
While the change was so slow tjat I didn't know it was happening at the time, my rather cheap (but solid wood) guitar has become quite boomy in the midrange and but is still downright quiet in the it's high end. I suspect that it may have something to do with being almost strictly used for backing rhythm to folk music.
Also some guitarists swear that the instrument hasn't "seasoned" until the finish on the soundboard develops natural cracks. I suspect that they feel it allows it to vibrate more freely. It took about seven years for that to happen to my guitar, without actually damaging the instrument. It was played quite heavily and loudly, and mostly basic first position chords. it being my first guitar, and being in groups of ten or so musicians (and always too many drummers) at folk festivals.
So I suspect that the reason the midrange is so strong is that it's what the instrument did loudly and almost exclusively for about ten years.
# Posted on January 1st 2008 by PJMcGorvin
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I can convince myself from several theoretical angles that a wooden instrument *should* sound better if it’s played vs not played, but (ever the empiricist) I doubt that anybody has actually done a scientifically/statistically valid comparison, which would be an expensive and labor-intensive undertaking, and would obviously take at least a few years to complete.
The “Powerhouse Twins” experiment that Pete linked to is very interesting, but can only be considered a pilot study, useful for generating hypotheses and further research. If there had been maybe fifteen or twenty “Powerhouse Twins,” then some general conclusions could possibly be drawn. Or not. Three years may not be enough.
# Posted on January 3rd 2008 by Bob himself
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
You're right Bob.
# Posted on January 3rd 2008 by Ron P
Re: how come fiddles sound better if they have been played?
I find it sad that what is considered Stradivarious' masterp The Messiah sits in a case in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and has been rarely been played. It's like entombing someone alive.
My new old fiddle was a gift from a friend. It was her mother's. It's a German copy of a Strad. One of the factory built ones made between 1921 and WII. It had been sitting in its case for 50 years in a farmhouse in the Midwest. The case that it was in was so good that the fiddle was in great shape. Even the bows still had hair!
After my luthier refurbished it I started playing it. There difinately a differnce in the sound from when I started playing it and now 6 months later. It's fuller, warmer and richer.
Sadly I've negelcted my Chinese made fiddle because I enjoy playing my German made one so much. Well there also a problem with the D string on Chinese fiddle I haven't had fixed yet.
# Posted on January 10th 2008 by Pirate-Fiddler