Violin Forum/Message Board

[John Cadd]

I was wary of talking about my happy discovery until I saw a question on Maestronet which did not solve the riddle .
I worked out the way to cure dead notes on classical guitars . It worked perfectly on 3 different guitars so I wondered if the same could happen on violins .
To clarify what I was finding with Dead or Un resonant notes I stuck patches of tape between the frets and wrote the note names there . On 5 strings the 5 dead notes were all on Bb.
As an experiment I thought to put some weight on the bridge and used Bluetack .Adding and subtracting eventually I worked out the best weight . The dead notes furthest from the bridge were the most persistent .
A full size Roca guitar made in Valencia needed 10. 5 grams of Bluetack to cure the dead notes. I bought a strip of stainless steel square rod about 1/4 inch thick . That would be less bulky and hideous to behold .
The short rod (about 1.5 inch long ) was glued to the bridge under the strings. A smaller size guitar by the same maker needed a longer rod . The top and back of both were tuned to the same note if you tapped them .
Sadly you cannot glue anything to a violin bridge but start with some bluetack pressed on the belly . Use your own special safe tape and put the bluetack on that . If it works --you need to think what to do about it . (Inside or outside ). The added weight had no effect on the volume or tone generally . Notes either side of the dead notes were also improved .
This is not a Wolf note solution .It`s different .For the price of a few pennies you can find out the easy way .make small pea sizes blobs and add them one at a time. Add and subtract till the dead notes are cured .
If I had not seen the Maestronet question I would not have written this .

[Michael Darnton]

Actually, it is exactly a wolf note solution. On violins the critical spot for adding weight is about 35mm below the bass side f-hole on the top. If you can get someone else to play the note, run your fingers around the top to find the exact place where the vibration of the top needs to be calmed down. On violins the easy solution is two small strong magnets, one inside, one outside--that way you can slide them around carefully until you find the best results.
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[John Cadd]

I always think of magnets as a temporary solution .Where would you fit the weight permanently ? I would guess glued to the bass bar just under the bridge foot . I did not look at these as wolf notes as they just sounded quieter and there were so many of them . Also , what would be the cause of these dead notes ? The weight itself needs to be very precise , so magnet weight would need to adjusted .
The brass weight attached to cello strings for wolf notes does not seem to be an ideal position . Do repairers shy away from anything glued inside ?

[John Cadd]

If you tune a violin in fifths the two strings create beats as they get closer together. A more permanent situation happens if the plates on a guitar or violin are tuned to the same frequency . A violin with a sound post and driven by a bow will create a more strident reaction at certain frequencies. A guitar with no post and a quieter sound level will react in a softer way .That seems to describe what happens with wolf notes .Using magnets both sides of a plate will start you off with some weight and give any easy way to adjust by adding steel washers .That is a quick way to avoid messy bluetack .
Branching out from that ,is there any connection with tuning a violin bridge where removal of tiny pieces of wood will get you exactly where the tone is best ? The legend or myth that good Strads can have annoying wolf notes may give us an extra clue . Good topic .

[John Cadd]

The resident expert on Delcamp guitar forum advised me not to use bluetack on the bridge as it would mess up the volume. But I had already done it and was happy with the result . I can`t remember why I tried it in the first place .I had no pet theory about it . One mistake I made was to fix bluetack inside the back of the guitar . That made no difference and had no effect at all . So the full size guitar was sorted out with a short stainless rod of 1.5 inches . The glue I used was evostik and if I wanted to remove it the glue would release with heat. A domestic iron warming the steel would release the glue easily . It was fitted with a gap away from the top wood .
There you have the big red line .Evostik? Inside a violin ? No way . But guitars can be happy . Your choice .

[John Cadd]

There is a useful comparison between Violins and Guitars . The "rotation" in a violin bridge is basically across the body, where in a guitar the "rotation" is along the body . Or to put it another way the Violin Axis of Rotation is along the body and the Guitar Axis of Rotation is across the body .
When I added weight to the guitar bridge it laid very close to the rotation axis.
The equivalent position on a violin should be along the plate centre rather than to one side. Certainly a cello wolf suppressor attached to a string can reduce the wolf at the expense of muting the tone . That is admitted in the publicity .The string weight is basically hindering the proper action of the bridge . The weight of a string wolf suppressor is about 10 grams. any more would be self defeating . A weight fitted under the belly in the right position would be tunable without interfering with tone .Weight along the belly centre ,near the bridge would get much closer to the best compromise without doing any damage to the sound . That`s fairly logical physics that can be applied to string instruments .

[John Cadd]

If I wanted to attach a stainless steel rod inside a violin I would not try to glue it directly to the wood. I would glue the steel to a strip of spruce first with Bostik or Evostik . Then glue the spruce to the belly using hot hide glue which would keep it all reversible. Maybe engrave the rod first to explain it`s presence . Better the beg foregiveness than to ask permission .

[John Cadd]

A useful coincidence was the tuning of the top and back plates of the twp Roca guitars . Both guitars had their plates tuned to the same frequency . That was the tap tone in the middle of the plates . They were working guitars all glued together and including the bridges and strings.
If I had arranged the extra weight in a different pattern I doubt the result would have been the same. I had added bluetack along the guitar bridges . If I had laid the bluetack along the centre it might have been a different story .The effort to "rotate " the bridge would have been greater . If you can imagine that situation it will clarify what has happened to the dead notes that were cured . One feature of Resonance is that it depends on Mass. If you add or subtract mass you will alter the resonance . Does that clarify anything ?
By keeping the added weight close enough to the axis of rotation I have reduced the chance of muting the sound but by making the weight longer or shorter I have a way to fine tune the changes .
If this result works for a guitar it should also work for violins . The added tone quality for the guitars after the alterations permeated the whole instrument. The difference I noticed first was the better resonance either side of the dead notes . The tone was more complex and musical .

[John Cadd]

The tap tone notes being the same for top and back have given me a simple .effective cure for annoying dead notes . The only reaction on a guitar forum was a sort of disapproval without offering any other solutions .Guitar players are becoming a bit more obsessive about perfectly shiny varnish . Not even violinists worry too much about that .But the chance of correcting a playing fault and having a definite reason for the changes seems very appealing . Less guesswork and fingers crossed .Often the plates on a violin are tuned much further apart but the relation between the parts needs to be understood more .

[John Cadd]

The guitar is a far less powerful instrument than a violin because it has no bow to drive the sounds . But I have added weight to a guitar bridge and produced a much nicer sound quality while I had only intended to make dead notes more reonant . So that can be tested by anyone if they care to try what I did . Well what about a violin with dead or wolf notes? There terror of doing anything to a violin is what must stop us dead .But it`s logical to compare the way a violin bridge vibrates and rotates with a guitar . Any instrument expert will tell you about the different rotation directions .But do they use that basic information ?Is it like Chladni patterns? Very pretty and interesting but not put to any use .

[Michael Darnton]

Weighs to clip on violin bridges already exist: mutes. They come in many weights from almost nothing up to several ounces. It's generally accepted that they do not improve the sound of the violin.

You can achieve the same thing on a much smaller scale by making a bridge heavier in various spots. This has some use for violins with particular specific problems (not wolves or dead spots though), and usually it's judged to be removing sound, not making it better.

The dead spots you experience are functionally wolves, areas of rogue vibration that drag energy from the note they resonate at. On violins you can feel these areas on the instrument and adding weight there can remove them. You can also use the post position and pressure to select them out or mute them by pressure from underneath the bridge. This is the closest to what you've suggested).

Violinists vary in what they want to hear, but note-to-note tonal variations keep an instrument from sounding boring so removing all of these differences is harmful from the overall effect. If you want a violin with as few of these distractions as possible buy the cheapest violin you can. The guitar equivalent of this is Ovation guitars, which made their reputation as studio backup instruments because of their unrelentingly even note-to-note quality.

Watch some of the old greats on youtube and you'll often see their bows wandering all over the place, different spots, different angles to the string, etc. This was to achieve a wide tonal variations within the phrase and even within notes. The trend to smooth and bland tonality is a modern one suited to the age of plastic and it's been attractive to unsophisticated players and audiences, but someone whose been exposed to the old style finds that modern playing can be distressingly boring. Thus also the attraction of some popular musicians to incredibly boring modern and semi-modern violins. As a concertmaster friend of mine put it: they are the perfect students, note perfect and incredibly non-musical and boring. Vacuous playing that's easy for someone who's only looking for the mistakes to rate highly. Having a violin that has no surprises helps to make this inoffensive sound.
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[John Cadd]

An interesting comment but almost the opposite of what I noticed with adding the guitar bridge weights . Close to the time I cured the guitar problem I also added short tornavozes to a few guitars . One did not start with any dead notes at all but the change struck me with some notes adjacent to each other that had very distinctly different sounds . Both rich and resonant but while in the same tone character they sounded very different . I noticed that in a Menuhin recording once that stayed in my mind . I saw no benefit in leaving an obvious fault in the guitar and don`t regret changing them . So the tornavoz and the bridge weights are moving a resonance relative to another one . I don`t know which other resonance was involved though . I am comparing a basic element in violin tuning where the beats die away as fifths are tuned in . Maybe a similar thing happens with these changes .
I read a comment about wolf notes being "moved" to notes not played . I think that`s wrong . I think they are eliminated if done properly ,
Adding weights to a violin bridge is nothing to do with this effect . Mutes are mutes and we all know how they work . Adding weights directly to a violin bridge will unbalance a delicate system .Delicate despite the power coming from the bow . I never suggested adding weights directly to a violin bridge. That`s worse than adding weight to a string . Don`t forget that . What do you say about the axis of rotation ? We all know that exists . How much physics has been done on that ? Most tests involve small hammers .What about tests with bows ? Hammers will treat a violin like a guitar .

[John Cadd]

Jascha Heifetz had a similar problem as you when he complained that Piano players had a much wider repertoire to choose from . Nowadays the music we hear has already been chosen by the music industry . Someone else apart from the musician has become a filter . I asked a probably pointless question once about violinist broadcasts on BBC where you could hear the player`s breathing while he played . That was technically eliminated for some reason . To me it was a wrong move . If you moved to Poland ,you might have a different impression of current players . The Chicago Symphony had plenty of European players . Maybe European life is a better and more fertile place to develop as musicians . It`s a cultural effect maybe .In a Piano competition in Leeds UK one Polish player was amazingly musical and was eliminated by the judges early on . My wife agreed that it was a shame he would disappear . The impression he made is still there after several years . Maybe colleges and judges and music companies plus the internet are drowning these players before they can learn to swim in the modern system .
Michael Rabin had a lot of trouble in his carreer . His problem was with his manager .At one time he was almost in tears because he was forced to play the Tchaikovsky Concerto time after time and was getting tired of the repetition . Popularity with the piece was killing him artistically. He was one of the very good American virtuosi . I used the word Virtuosi and the internet could not bear the foreign sounding word they wanted VirtuosO (in capital letters ) .
There`s part of the cramping effect right there . A feature of American media popped up in a film where the word Nuance was said .The big brash question blared out ;"What`s Nuance !!!???" . You can`t have musicians without Nuance . It`s not an American thing though .