Posts from — June 2010

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to be speaking at the Violin Society of America’s Violin Acoustics Workshop at Oberlin College. My talk on electric violin design went well, and I am happy to report that I had an excellent experience at the conference. I learned some new things about violin acoustics, met some interesting new people, and caught up with some people that I met at last year’s workshop. And most importantly, I am very excited about some of the opportunities that the conference has brought. Here are a few photographs and highlights from the event.

The first image, from left to right, is of the violin maker and researcher George Stoppani. He is explaining how the bridge modal analysis process works to one of the Oberlin attendees. I do not yet have the results of that experiment, but I will post them I soon as I get them from George.

The second image is of Amit Zoran, a PhD student from the MIT Media Lab, presenting to the group on his Chameleon Guitar. Amit and I had some wonderful conversations about our projects, designs, and processes. I highly encourage everyone to check out his excellent work.

The last two images are of Joseph Curtin and Aaron Boyd trying out our Digital Violin Prototype. Joseph, as you know, works on the project, while Aaron Boyd is a profession violin player and the Concertmaster for the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. We still have a ways to go with the digital violin project, but the initial reaction was great, as evidenced by the video below of Aaron playing the instrument for the first time.

When trying to perform a modal analysis on a standard violin bridge, which weighs between 1 and 3 grams, the weight of the sensors placed on the bridge will often impact the results of the experiment. To overcome this, Joseph Curtin has asked me to create a violin bridge that is roughly 5 times bigger than the standard one. Because the larger bridge is made form the very same material as a normal bridge, it should resonate in more or less the same way. The larger bridge size also means that the weight of the sensors will be a much smaller percentage of the entire system. This should dramatically reduce the sensor’s impact on the results.

The modal analysis will be performed later this week at the Violin Society of America’s Violin Acoustics Workshop at Oberlin College. On Friday at the conference, I will also be giving a talk about electric violin history and design. If everything goes well, we will be demoing our electric violin and 3D speaker on Friday as well. I’ll be sure post more as soon as there is more to post.