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 design needs a lot of work before it is complete. Nevertheless, I wanted to post an update of my progress. Three weeks ago I milled out this plastic prototype. It will help me to physically work through some of the design challenges concerning the shoulder/neck rests, back, and neck assembly.

P.S. It should also be noted that I am no longer posting to alexsobolev.blogger.com. If you have bookmarks or RSS feeds for that address, please update them to stay informed with what I am doing. I also encourage you to follow me using Google Friend Connect (it’s that box with all of the avatars in the right column).

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A few summers ago I made a banjo neck and never found the time to build a rim (the part that holds the drum head) or a resonator (the curved part in the back) for it. Last month I decided to finish that banjo! Having had little interest in bending and laminating wood to create a rim, I decided to build a large mandolin body for this instrument. This solution also gave me a chance to practice tap tuning the soundboard and back.

The first three images below illustrate my 3D Rhino model of the instrument’s body. The series continues with images of the milling process for the top and back plates, inlay of the purfling, and finished inlay on the back. There is still plenty of work to be done, so ignore the roughness around the edges.