Scientific experiment with old violins (2 Stradivari) - another myth destroyed

[dave_mc]

I don't think you can remove the emotion from the instrument.  Music isn't scientific, it's all about feel and emotion.  The mind is a powerful thing and if knowing you're playing a Strad or '59 Les Paul gives you THAT emotion when you play and you hit nirvana, then that's all that matters...

i'd agree with that to a certain extent, but on the other hand it's kind of annoying as it sorta ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. an expensive self-fulfilling prophecy :lol:

Uh oh.

This is turning into one of those contentious "highbrow debate" threads....

Who'd have thunk it?

:lol:

let the record show i wasn't involved :D :lol:

[Twinfan]

A computer, which is programmed with the algorithms relating to scales, chords, note choice, etc. can produce very convincing music, i.e. music which is indistinguishable from that created by a person.  However I don't think the same can be said of painting, for example, there are comparatively fewer formalisations that can be used to program a computer to do that convincingly. 

That may be true for individual notes, but what about phrasing?  Legato?  Vibrato?  All those subtle bits that when you hear the playing you go "that's SRV" or "that's Gilmour" etc.  That, to me, is the art bit.  The mechanics are science, like the brush strokes on a painting, but it's how you use them as an individual that is the artistic bit in my eyes.

[Chris]

A computer, which is programmed with the algorithms relating to scales, chords, note choice, etc. can produce very convincing music, i.e. music which is indistinguishable from that created by a person.  However I don't think the same can be said of painting, for example, there are comparatively fewer formalisations that can be used to program a computer to do that convincingly. 

That may be true for individual notes, but what about phrasing?  Legato?  Vibrato?  All those subtle bits that when you hear the playing you go "that's SRV" or "that's Gilmour" etc.  That, to me, is the art bit.  The mechanics are science, like the brush strokes on a painting, but it's how you use them as an individual that is the artistic bit in my eyes.

Exactly, that's what I have been saying - you cannot say that music is purely art, or that it is purely Science, it is a fusion of the two and either one on it's own is insufficient.

i agree with what you're trying to convey chris, as 'scientific' but we need to remember physics is an abstraction of reality not the other way round.

Physics is a representation of reality rather than an abstraction (most of it that relates to musical instruments anyway, there are abstract areas such as QM but they are largely unrelated).  Music, however, is abstract, and therefore can be well represented by mathematics (which is also abstract).

Absolutely.  Music can be represented by mathematics.  The fact that you can describe something mathematically, or in physical terms, doesn't make it "scientific", in my humble opinion.

The fact that music cannot be represented in any other way than mathematics is what makes it scientific.  I guess you may define science differently though...  fair enough...  I'm not going to argue about semantics.

Uh oh.

This is turning into one of those contentious "highbrow debate" threads....

Who'd have thunk it?

 :lol:   This one may have been my fault.  It was meant to be a throwaway comment to be honest, I don't think we need a big discussion about it.  It is clear that some people here consider music to be purely art, and that's fair enough.  Personally, I don't think it could exist without the scientific aspect also.  To be honest it doesn't really matter and we are getting away from the point of the topic - no matter what your view on art and Science, I agree with the original point that you cannot easily quantify every last difference between a vintage and a new instrument, and you also cannot separate the emotion about playing a vintage instrument from your performance.  So in effect, whether you buy the idea of vintage instruments being physically better or not, they maybe can still help some people to play better (I personally wouldn't know - I've never had the pleasure of playing a vintage instrument).

[djl]

On this link you can try it yourself (soundclips of strad vs other)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad

[Kiichi]

On this link you can try it yourself (soundclips of strad vs other)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad

lol, I actually was right....I would like to get more samples to see if it was just luck...which it probably was. I have to say though that I prefered the new one.

[Chris]

I got it wrong...  big surprise as I know nothing of violin  :lol:

[Andrew W]

I have no clue how I would have identified the Strad, I know nothing about violins, but I preferred the sound of the new one: as much as you can tell such a thing through the fog of MP3 compression. :)

[WezV]

So what the study is basically saying is that if you want a strad style violin you can either pay millions for an original or pay 100's of thousands for a very good new copy


that settles it - i will take a new one please ;)

Lets face it, most of the  who pay for one of those new copies would stretch to the real thing if they could.   and most of the people making the most expensive new copies are probably the same experts who get to tear strads apart on a regular basis. the life of a violin involves being dismantled every so often and they are generally kept playable rather than pristine.

So how do we know what a strad actually sounded like when new?   and how has this been influenced by the violin repair peeps over the years?

I would place a bet that the violins  used in the study came from similar sources or contacts - which increases the chances of getting a strad and a strad copy set up by the same ears and hands


...

if you pay enough you can get very accurate les paul copies which you would not be able to tell from the real thing.   Oddly enough they are generally made by people who have regular access to the real thing

[MDV]

@wez

All quite reasonable suggestions for possible ways that the new can sound like the old. That kinda misses the point though.

[WezV]

I dont think it does miss the point   

We have a result which shows  "there is no difference in the sound of original strad violins and modern reproductions"


The simple thing to do next is to accept it as proof that old and new sound the same and call it a myth busted (what was the myth that was busted?)... or you can be properly scientific and make an effort to consider the reasons behind the results

The reason for the results may be as simple as them actually sounding and playing almost indistinguishable... which would still lead me to wonder why they sound so close.


...

on a side note i think smells are very important to memory and emotions.  they had to cover the smell of the old ones.

the smell of raw wood and hide glue takes me straight back to being a kid staring into my grandads half dismantled pianola.  The smell of my 50's archtop and 30's resonator is similar and it has a direct effect on my mood

[MDV]

Its not really about whether old violins sound similar to new ones or replicas. Its about expectations and biases influencing perceptions. i.e. the point isnt that so many got it wrong, its that they thought they got it right.

Same with the summary that andrew linked to on paintings, and others that have been done on everything from wine to cables to valves to modellers, the point is about how we allow names, reputation and prices to fool us.

We see it in guitars all the time.

[Chris]

I'd like to see the best modelling amps blind tested against the real thing they're modelling - I'd like to think I could tell the difference, but honestly I'm not sure...

[plastercaster]

Interesting article on the guitar woods. My inclination is to broadly agree with them; and say that wood choice has a relatively small effect on amplified tone. Having said that, I got the impression they were not physicists. They note that the microphone is more sensitive to overtones than the bridge pickup, but I suspect this is at least in part because the microphone was positioned at the 12th fret above the open string- a node point for the even harmonics, that would leave it more sensitive to odd orders once results where normalised. They should really have placed the mic over the bridge pickup to counter that.

I also thought it was interesting that the bass strings where more affected by the body wood than the lighter gauge ones- I'm guessing because the body resonates far more in sympathy to the heavier strings than the light ones.

[Deadstar]

This can be one of those odd topics that can be highly dependant on perspective, reference and taste.

I remember seeing a program about Nicola Bennedetti meeting Aly Bain (Classical vs Folk) talking about the tone of
Nicola's Strad having quite a harsh tone versus the more mellow tone of Aly's modern swedish 'fiddle' however thinking about the way instruments may have been designed to sound in a certain situation acoustically - the Strad has probably been made to project into a large hall as much of the upper end energy will dissipate with distance and needs to cut through a larger accompaniment, whilst the fiddle needs to blend in at lower volumes (normally) and not sound so abrasive whilst playing loudly as it is more likely to be used in a smaller enviroment. If the two violins were recorded beyond the critical distance (point beyond where reverberation becomes dominant) there would likely be more noticable disparities.

See Aly/Nicola video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgDNSDadqos&feature=related
about half way through.


Then there's the whole thing about brand reputation or antique renown.
Obviously we all have our own particular tastes in guitar sounds so how could you say one sounded better than the other, it's really just different with each measurable characteristic being liked or loathed by the listener.
The whole thing about wine above is probably the best example of this.

[nfe]

I think it's extremely obvious why people expect to perceive (and therefore experience) much larger differences between vintage/famous instruments and those less so and don't really get why it's a conversation that would last much time at all :lol:

RE: Music as science though. Obviously it's MUCH more scientific than most people will grasp. But I think people overlook just how much science there is in almost everyone's playing. Aside from the construction of instruments themselves, which is obviously massively scientific or they couldn't even be tuned, every scale you're familiar with is mathematical. Whilst your phrasing might not be, every note choice is a scientific one - whether you think of it as science or whether it just feels right. Knowing that C, D, E, F, G, A and B will all sit happily on top of a C major chord IS scientific knowledge - even if you only know those notes and that chord as shapes on a fretboard or even just as a sound and feel in your head.