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.

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.

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