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.

This is the latest, but soon to be outdated, version of the Digital Violin. This prototype moved me from the completely experimental design phase into the functional design phase. This weekend I will be working on the design for the next version, which I will fabricate in the coming weeks.