A few weeks ago the team spoke at the VSA annual violin-making conference in Cleveland, Ohio. We made some new friends and demoed our new and improved electric violin prototype. As always, there are things to work on, but we are in a much better place than we were in June when we showed our previous prototype.

Here’s an image of Joseph Curtin testing the new prototype.

Here is John Bell explaining how our system recreates directional tone color.

This is me giving an hour-long talk about rapid manufacturing and instrument making.

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.

Since I began working with Joseph Curtin, we have collaborated on several projects which have tried to improve the object that is the modern day violin. I am excited to report that we have evidence of some amount of success in our endeavors. The proof is that musicians are starting to request some of our inventions!

The photographs above show a fingerboard that features a new geometry we designed (digital model, FB just after milling, and FB on an instrument), as well as a next generation violin bridge, and a digital model of a standard bridge. Our improvements to these violin components are as follows. The new fingerboard geometry optimizes the area underneath each string to make depressing and playing a string as easy as possible, while our innovative bridge design reimagines the way bridges are constructed. This new method allows us to strengthen several fragile areas of the bridge, conferring the added benefit of improving sound conductivity between the strings and the soundboard. When our design is applied to traditionally shaped bridges, it improves the quality volume of a violin’s sound. These improvements are made even more dramatic when coupled with our inventive ultralight bridge shape.