Have a gander at this, then; not content with playing in instruments the traditional way, or sitting the lucky devils in front of speakers day and night, these chaps propose a short-cut:
I've certainly heard of a guitar that didn't mature because the owner played it as if there was a baby asleep in the next room. I used to play my guitar to the kids to get them to sleep ! I've also heard of a guitar-maker, who felt that the individual components of the soundbox must resonate to different notes, otherwise you will have dominant frquencies of response, and would actually tune the seperate pieces before assembling the instrument.
How this applies to wind instruments I have no idea.
Many years ago, my guitar teacher, who also made and repaired guitars, told me that how you played a new guitar in the first two years of its life would determine how it turned out. Basically, he said to play it strongly whenever possible, and then the tone would develop as the instrument matured. This confirms what has been said in previous posts.
Another thing my teacher said, and I'd like some input from other players on the matter, is that over a long period of time (i.e. many decades, a century or so) the tone of a guitar will gradually deteriorate, as it does indeed with the piano, whereas it is well-known that the bowed instruments improve in tone as the years go by, as long as they're played regularly.
BTW, it is sad to see great instruments on display in museums or collections and never played. For instance there is one of the world's greatest Strads (the "Messiah") in the Ashmolean in Oxford, and, I understand, was donated on the condition that it was never played. At the other end of the scale, though, I've been told there is in Cremona a museum of the greatest old fiddles in the world, and a professor at the local college of music has the best job on the world - playing all those instruments every day so as to keep them in good playing order.
I've had a look at the website Nasty posted at the beginning of this thread. It doesn't give much detail about what is being done to the instruments other than that, broadly speaking, vibrations appear to be applied to the fiddles etc by mechanical means.
There is also a passing reference to patent protection. A properly drafted patent specification should include enough detail for someone "skilled in the art" to be able to carry out the invention claimed in the patent, otherwise its validity could be challenged in court on the grounds of insufficiency. Emil Weiss's patent should therefore give an adequate description of the invention. I've carried out a brief search for any relevant patent(s) in the name of Emil Weiss using Google and one of the public websites of the European Patent Office, but with no luck. Does anyone have this information?
BTW Nasty, you mentioned in your second post that there is a price for the service provided by Emil Weiss. That's nothing to worry about, because,
(a) he naturally wants to make some sort of living out of his invention and recoup his research costs, and
(b) if he has a patent (or more than one) relating to his invention then he's going to have hefty patent office and attorney fees to pay!
A while ago, I visited a local luthier who explained to me what I suspect is going on with this technique.
An instrument with a solid top tends to have a bright, brittle, trebly sound when it's new. The warmth and depth that develops is a result of the cell walls in the wood fracturing. The ways to make that happen are manyfold, but the technique essentially involves moving and flexing the top of the instrument. You can do this by playing the instrument long, loudly, hard, and often; by placing it in front of speakers (as my informant told me that Jean Larrivée, a noted Canadian luthier used to do--word has it that he used to crank up the Led Zeppelin on his way out of the workshop); or by some other mechanical means. Maybe Emil has a machine that flexes the top gently. If that's so, he can patent the gizmo, but not the general principle.
Note that laminate tops aren't supposed to exhibit the phenomenon; the whole purpose of a laminate top is to make the instrument sound as good as possible from the outset, and to hold it there. On the other hand, both my laminate-top instruments seem to sound better than when I bought them, but that might have something to do with improvements in the player. Well, I hope so, anyway.
If guitars deteriorate over time, I would suspect something other than the flexion of the top to be at issue. The usual problem is the neck, but on a good (expensive) guitar, that can usually be done relatively easily.
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
At a session the other evening I was talking to one of the musicians, Chris Caton, about playing in fiddles and guitars, and mentioned the idea of exposing the instrument to Led Zeppelin at 300W for several hours. Chris wondered if it would be feasible to make an instrument using wood from old loudspeaker cabinets - such wood would be expected to be sonically well "played-in". Do any luthiers on this site have any comments on this idea?
Trevor
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Hmmm ... but there aren't that many speaker cabs made of solid woods, are there? Wouldn't such an instrument generally end up being made of well played-in veneered chipboard?
I did see a comment by a mando player on the web somewhere who said that one his favourite instruments (in terms of musicality per dollar) did turn out on closer inspection to be made of Chinese tea chests, but we're back there to Michael B's laminate top scenario.
Alan makes fiddles on the remote peninsula of Scoraig in Wester-Ross, just south of Ullapool. He has researched the use of humidity cycling to accelerate the "playing in" of new instruments.
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
I've had a look at Alan's website. Looks like he's doing some good useful research in a difficult area. He makes the point that violins and violas get a natural humidifying cycle whenever they're played, from the player's breath which is directed more or less at the f-holes of the instrument. Cellists, unfortunately, don't have this natural advantage, and this might go a little way to explaining why cellos seem to take longer to play in than fiddles. And what about guitars? they're in a similar situation to cellos.
Trevor
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Trevor,
Good point about cellos.
One thing that I would have liked to have seen in Alan's research is a plot of frequency versus amplitude when using his bowing machine and when fingering a fiddle in all positions across all 4 strings (or just the middle two), not just on the open strings. I wonder how the humidity cycling would affect both the position of the body cavity resonance and also the body plate resonance.
Alan makes the point about modern fiddles being made slightly heavier to achieve comparable stiffness with those of the old masters. We all know that bow weights are quoted extensively, but what about the weights of fiddles, versus age. It would seem that varying humidity only accounts for about 10 grms of fiddle weight. Perhaps a new thread could be initiated to record weights of various instruments minus their extraneous hardware. In fact I might do this to compile some useful information for posterity.
In terms of exposed white wood under the table of a fiddle and also of a viola (I would presume); the heaviest mass must surely be the bass bar which could shrink and grow at a fearful rate before disrupting enough of its cells before coming to any semblence of equilibrium. This must put tremendous (part diagonal) longitudinal stresses on the whole table, especially a one-piece table. A jointed table might be expected to absorb some of these stresses along the axis of its joint.
Nasty: Thanks for initiating this thread, which is near and dear to my heart.
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Nasty: I have one fiddle that I could perhaps donate to your cause. However, it lacks the waist of a Cindy Crawford, instead, being entirely rectangular in shape. The makers name is 'Best Havana' and it only has one string, so you would have to work 4 times as hard. By the way with all of those chemicals; have you tried heaping some potassium permanganate on a heat resistant sheet....I nearly used the a----- word there, but held myself in check, then putting a few drops of glycerine on the apex of the heap. Much fun will result to those who have patience.
If that fails to inspire, how about rubbing some HgCl2 solution on to an aluminium surface!! There must surely be a session application for these techniques!!
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
And a wee drop of nitric acid together with a wee drop of sulphuric acid added to the glycerine can make it even more exciting and fun An excellent trick for the TV studio with the fire officers just off camera ... just don't try it at home, guys!
Actually, scraper and treabhar put me to shame; I don't know any of that "joke" science, except lump sodium + water = goodnight sweetheart, and a heap of sugar (is it?) and conc sulphuric acid (?) makes a hilariously phallic object rise steaming out of the beaker (it was an all girls' school). Come to think of it, I know significantly less "serious" science than I oughta.
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Nasty: Joke science!!! Some of those methods can be used for quite serious applications. For instance if your local landowner or local council, decides to block a right of way with a sign; ten to one it will be an aluminium alloy model, which is quite susceptible to disappearing into a heap of white powder when a mercury salt solution is applied to it
This ranks along with crazy glue for filling the locks of padlocked gates, that suddenly appear along your favourite walking route < again so I am told>
Perhaps I had better change my name from 'scraper' to 'nastyweeangel'!!
Have fun in that stink box of yours. More power to your phallic symbols.
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Now HgCl2 solution rubbed lightly onto aluminium-wound gut-core strings (Pirastro Eudoxa for instance) should, in theory, convert them to bare gut strings - ideal for authentic early 18c playing. Scraper, there's your session application
"playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
"playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Have a gander at this, then; not content with playing in instruments the traditional way, or sitting the lucky devils in front of speakers day and night, these chaps propose a short-cut:
http://www.vintage-bass.com/Specials/Institute_of_applied_acoustics/institute_of_applied_acoustics.html
# Posted on September 10th 2003 by nastyweegirl
Whoops!
I hope nobody thinks I meant this as an advert or endorsement; I hadn't noticed that the article mentions a price for the service.
# Posted on September 11th 2003 by nastyweegirl
Re: Playing-in instruments
I've certainly heard of a guitar that didn't mature because the owner played it as if there was a baby asleep in the next room. I used to play my guitar to the kids to get them to sleep ! I've also heard of a guitar-maker, who felt that the individual components of the soundbox must resonate to different notes, otherwise you will have dominant frquencies of response, and would actually tune the seperate pieces before assembling the instrument.
How this applies to wind instruments I have no idea.
# Posted on September 12th 2003 by Guernsey Pete
Re:
Many years ago, my guitar teacher, who also made and repaired guitars, told me that how you played a new guitar in the first two years of its life would determine how it turned out. Basically, he said to play it strongly whenever possible, and then the tone would develop as the instrument matured. This confirms what has been said in previous posts.
Another thing my teacher said, and I'd like some input from other players on the matter, is that over a long period of time (i.e. many decades, a century or so) the tone of a guitar will gradually deteriorate, as it does indeed with the piano, whereas it is well-known that the bowed instruments improve in tone as the years go by, as long as they're played regularly.
BTW, it is sad to see great instruments on display in museums or collections and never played. For instance there is one of the world's greatest Strads (the "Messiah") in the Ashmolean in Oxford, and, I understand, was donated on the condition that it was never played. At the other end of the scale, though, I've been told there is in Cremona a museum of the greatest old fiddles in the world, and a professor at the local college of music has the best job on the world - playing all those instruments every day so as to keep them in good playing order.
Trevor
# Posted on September 12th 2003 by lazyhound
Playing in instruments
I've had a look at the website Nasty posted at the beginning of this thread. It doesn't give much detail about what is being done to the instruments other than that, broadly speaking, vibrations appear to be applied to the fiddles etc by mechanical means.
There is also a passing reference to patent protection. A properly drafted patent specification should include enough detail for someone "skilled in the art" to be able to carry out the invention claimed in the patent, otherwise its validity could be challenged in court on the grounds of insufficiency. Emil Weiss's patent should therefore give an adequate description of the invention. I've carried out a brief search for any relevant patent(s) in the name of Emil Weiss using Google and one of the public websites of the European Patent Office, but with no luck. Does anyone have this information?
BTW Nasty, you mentioned in your second post that there is a price for the service provided by Emil Weiss. That's nothing to worry about, because,
(a) he naturally wants to make some sort of living out of his invention and recoup his research costs, and
(b) if he has a patent (or more than one) relating to his invention then he's going to have hefty patent office and attorney fees to pay!
Trevor
# Posted on September 12th 2003 by lazyhound
A theory on "playing in" instruments
A while ago, I visited a local luthier who explained to me what I suspect is going on with this technique.
An instrument with a solid top tends to have a bright, brittle, trebly sound when it's new. The warmth and depth that develops is a result of the cell walls in the wood fracturing. The ways to make that happen are manyfold, but the technique essentially involves moving and flexing the top of the instrument. You can do this by playing the instrument long, loudly, hard, and often; by placing it in front of speakers (as my informant told me that Jean Larrivée, a noted Canadian luthier used to do--word has it that he used to crank up the Led Zeppelin on his way out of the workshop); or by some other mechanical means. Maybe Emil has a machine that flexes the top gently. If that's so, he can patent the gizmo, but not the general principle.
Note that laminate tops aren't supposed to exhibit the phenomenon; the whole purpose of a laminate top is to make the instrument sound as good as possible from the outset, and to hold it there. On the other hand, both my laminate-top instruments seem to sound better than when I bought them, but that might have something to do with improvements in the player. Well, I hope so, anyway.
If guitars deteriorate over time, I would suspect something other than the flexion of the top to be at issue. The usual problem is the neck, but on a good (expensive) guitar, that can usually be done relatively easily.
---Michael B.
# Posted on September 13th 2003 by MichaelBolton
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
At a session the other evening I was talking to one of the musicians, Chris Caton, about playing in fiddles and guitars, and mentioned the idea of exposing the instrument to Led Zeppelin at 300W for several hours. Chris wondered if it would be feasible to make an instrument using wood from old loudspeaker cabinets - such wood would be expected to be sonically well "played-in". Do any luthiers on this site have any comments on this idea?
Trevor
# Posted on September 18th 2003 by lazyhound
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Hmmm ... but there aren't that many speaker cabs made of solid woods, are there? Wouldn't such an instrument generally end up being made of well played-in veneered chipboard?
I did see a comment by a mando player on the web somewhere who said that one his favourite instruments (in terms of musicality per dollar) did turn out on closer inspection to be made of Chinese tea chests, but we're back there to Michael B's laminate top scenario.
# Posted on September 18th 2003 by nastyweegirl
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Rather than tee off your neighbours with 300W of sonic sewerage generated by Lead Zeplin or others....try this.
http://www.scoraig.com/arts/abeavitt/humiditycycling.htm
Alan makes fiddles on the remote peninsula of Scoraig in Wester-Ross, just south of Ullapool. He has researched the use of humidity cycling to accelerate the "playing in" of new instruments.
# Posted on September 19th 2003 by scraper
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
I've had a look at Alan's website. Looks like he's doing some good useful research in a difficult area. He makes the point that violins and violas get a natural humidifying cycle whenever they're played, from the player's breath which is directed more or less at the f-holes of the instrument. Cellists, unfortunately, don't have this natural advantage, and this might go a little way to explaining why cellos seem to take longer to play in than fiddles. And what about guitars? they're in a similar situation to cellos.
Trevor
# Posted on September 20th 2003 by lazyhound
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Trevor,
Good point about cellos.
One thing that I would have liked to have seen in Alan's research is a plot of frequency versus amplitude when using his bowing machine and when fingering a fiddle in all positions across all 4 strings (or just the middle two), not just on the open strings. I wonder how the humidity cycling would affect both the position of the body cavity resonance and also the body plate resonance.
Alan makes the point about modern fiddles being made slightly heavier to achieve comparable stiffness with those of the old masters. We all know that bow weights are quoted extensively, but what about the weights of fiddles, versus age. It would seem that varying humidity only accounts for about 10 grms of fiddle weight. Perhaps a new thread could be initiated to record weights of various instruments minus their extraneous hardware. In fact I might do this to compile some useful information for posterity.
In terms of exposed white wood under the table of a fiddle and also of a viola (I would presume); the heaviest mass must surely be the bass bar which could shrink and grow at a fearful rate before disrupting enough of its cells before coming to any semblence of equilibrium. This must put tremendous (part diagonal) longitudinal stresses on the whole table, especially a one-piece table. A jointed table might be expected to absorb some of these stresses along the axis of its joint.
Nasty: Thanks for initiating this thread, which is near and dear to my heart.
Ed.
# Posted on September 20th 2003 by scraper
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Wow! scraper, thanks for the article. I've got a lab full of chemicals here ....now .... where can I borrow a fiddle ....
# Posted on September 22nd 2003 by nastyweegirl
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Nasty: I have one fiddle that I could perhaps donate to your cause. However, it lacks the waist of a Cindy Crawford, instead, being entirely rectangular in shape. The makers name is 'Best Havana' and it only has one string, so you would have to work 4 times as hard. By the way with all of those chemicals; have you tried heaping some potassium permanganate on a heat resistant sheet....I nearly used the a----- word there, but held myself in check, then putting a few drops of glycerine on the apex of the heap. Much fun will result to those who have patience.
If that fails to inspire, how about rubbing some HgCl2 solution on to an aluminium surface!! There must surely be a session application for these techniques!!
Ed.
# Posted on September 25th 2003 by scraper
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
And a wee drop of nitric acid together with a wee drop of sulphuric acid added to the glycerine can make it even more exciting and fun
An excellent trick for the TV studio with the fire officers just off camera ... just don't try it at home, guys!
Trevor
# Posted on September 25th 2003 by lazyhound
How about ...
... collecting up all the busted instrument strings at the end of the session, and putting them in the pub microwave? "Playing in" the microwave.
# Posted on September 26th 2003 by nastyweegirl
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
sounds more like playing OUT your microwave...permanently... hehe
# Posted on September 26th 2003 by Zina Lee
Session science
Actually, scraper and treabhar put me to shame; I don't know any of that "joke" science, except lump sodium + water = goodnight sweetheart, and a heap of sugar (is it?) and conc sulphuric acid (?) makes a hilariously phallic object rise steaming out of the beaker (it was an all girls' school). Come to think of it, I know significantly less "serious" science than I oughta.
# Posted on September 26th 2003 by nastyweegirl
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Nasty: Joke science!!! Some of those methods can be used for quite serious applications. For instance if your local landowner or local council, decides to block a right of way with a sign; ten to one it will be an aluminium alloy model, which is quite susceptible to disappearing into a heap of white powder when a mercury salt solution is applied to it
This ranks along with crazy glue for filling the locks of padlocked gates, that suddenly appear along your favourite walking route < again so I am told>
Perhaps I had better change my name from 'scraper' to 'nastyweeangel'!!
Have fun in that stink box of yours. More power to your phallic symbols.
Ed.
# Posted on September 30th 2003 by scraper
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Now HgCl2 solution rubbed lightly onto aluminium-wound gut-core strings (Pirastro Eudoxa for instance) should, in theory, convert them to bare gut strings - ideal for authentic early 18c playing. Scraper, there's your session application
Trevor
# Posted on September 30th 2003 by lazyhound
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
NaOH, which is easier to get hold of than HgCl2, goes for aluminium as well, especially in the concentrated form.
Trevor
# Posted on September 30th 2003 by lazyhound
But, DON'T let it (NaOH) touch the skin - except of a bodhrán, of course - because it hydrolyzes the protein. Very, very nasty.
Trevor
# Posted on September 30th 2003 by lazyhound
Re: "playing in" instruments: a scientific approach?
Trevor,
Thanks for the HgCl2 application and I liked your caustic comments!!
Ed.
# Posted on September 30th 2003 by scraper