Another thing that I have to wonder is this: you seem quite adamant that there are all sorts of things that would make it impossible for blind testing to work: only the best musicians, only after much practice etc would a fair test be arrived at. I assume you must think that arranging all this is a practical impossibility, or you wouldn’t raise these points as objections.
So how can you possibly have any confidence that celebrated antique instruments are audibly better since presumably, by your own reckoning, the circumstances in which that proposition could be tested can’t have been experienced by you?
“dowser” ?? Remember that I am illiterate in English…
But do you think my children lie when they should say “No father, we didn’t go where we are not allowed and we didn’t play on your piano while we know you don’t want us to do that” instead of admitting they did it?
It is just the same as the “lottery” you proposed, only that they don’t write it down when they do it or don’t do it. It is also not something that can happen daily. They woudn’t find it an exiting game if there was no obstacle on their way to it. I don’t “invent” something that is not likely to have happened. I only detect it when it happened.
I think we came already to an agreement about the existence of myths.
By affecting the string, which makes no significant sound on its own, you create a chain reaction on which the whole construct of the violin replies. If you change your strings, bridge, bow, you have an other chain reaciont. If you hold your violin an other way, you have an other chain reaction (baroque players don’t use a neck support (name in English?) for example).
How can you test all these effects on the chain reaction “dry” in a laboratory tests on a piece of wood that is not even a whole violin?
Haha… Every violinist used to “normal” violins shall very firmly disagree with this suggestion. That I still have such a preference for the 3/4 provoking all the technical difficulties for an adult man to play such an instrument, has everything to do with his superb quality put on him by his maker. I would not even dream to play one note on an other 3/4.
And a cello is not designed to be a violin. You can’t use a completely different instrument for such a theory only because it is also made of wood and uses strings to start the chain reaction.
Side note: I made the effort to look at his label to be sure, because I always get insecure when it comes to dates (yes, rather a handicap for a historian, I know) and see I mixed things up again and called him a few years younger then he is. He is build in 1731. The poor thing.
Ah… Much much too difficult for this non-technical dyslexic mind !
To me it certainly looks interesting to have more input coming from both sides of the arguments.
It would be absolutely impossible to put a test like the one you suggest into action, with a statistically-sound sample size. And each pairing of violins would need to be tried on numerous players. And in any case, it needs to be a double blind test. If the violinists know which instrument is which, you cannot be sure that they are not approaching them differently. So you need to find top-class violinists who’ve never heard of Stradivarius. Or find a way to make a modern instrument look exactly like a Strad. Good luck.
It’s simply s not possible to arrive at an objective answer. So the only ones we have are available are subjective ones - and isn’t it fairly safe to rely on expert opinion, the majority of which prefers to play on Strads, Guaneris and Amatis? Trust me, these people will not dismiss a good modern violin without giving it a thorough trial. And most (not all) revert to the antiques.
Good argument. But you could blindfold them. I would take a bet that blindfolded I would recognize mine out of every other, but assuming it would be “unknown” instruments… I can’t say this before I have played some who are recently build and said to have the same qualities as Cremona instruments.
You would think so. But then the arguments about the “myths” come along again.
The situation is that many talented artists are in search for an other instrument then the one they have and ready to change to an other one, if by some luck they find the instrument they dream of (and can buy it get it for use).
If all these modern violins would be so fabulous, then why are all these instrumentalists still looking for a violin that suits their talent better then the instrument they have? They only need to go shopping where they are: by the modern builders.
As GorrillaMan and Aldebaran mentioned, you can’t do a double-blind test. Any violinist worth his salt will notice when he’s playing on a different instrument. Instruments have different characteristics, which means you have to play differently to achieve similar effects, but that may be compensated in other manners (like a more beautiful tone).
I really wonder whether you have any idea about what playing a violin is. You make it seem as if it is just moving hair over a string. It’s not.
I don’t think any of us in this thread believe in a mystical soul of a violin; the violin is no more than the sum total of its physical parts. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t quality differences. Why is that so hard to understand? Even with industrial products like keyboards there are differences in designs: one keyboard may be easier to type on than another, and people may have varying preferences. Piano’s have different characteristics too, just go to a shop and try a few out.
The problem is that SentientMeat states that there is no difference because he didn’t measure any difference. Us violinists on the other hand know from personal experience that there is a perceivable difference, hence SentientMeat must have failed to measure every factor.
We’re going round in circles. I refuted this point way back on page one and you never responded. I’m not going to make my refutation again. Deal.
Furthermore, I have confronted this sort of argument before: from psychics, dowsers and astrologers. It goes like this: it’s impossible to set up a perfect double blind test. Therefore we should not submit this phenomenon to a pretty damn good single blind test. We should therefore rely on total subjectivity.
Make sense to you? Because it makes none to me.
You’re shooting yourself. These experts are able to make (you say) a decision on good grounds that one sounds better than another, but the conditions under which one can tell if one sounds better than another are impossible (you say) to set up.
Actually I will make one more attempt on the single blind thing.
The proposition we are looking to test is whether celebrated antique instruments (CAI’s) are better than modern equivalents (ME’s).
You say that CAI’s are:
1/ Are better to play, and
2/ Produce audibly better sound
3/ known by experts to be better because experts do actually experience conditions under which the audibly better sound is (I assume) heard by them.
But you are concerned that:
A/ single blind testing will not be good enough. Why? See point 1/. You seem to contradict yourself. You say that CAI’s are better to play but you are concerned that if the musician knows they are playing one, they will play worse when tested. Does that make sense to you?
B/ the conditions under which such things can be heard never exist. But see point 3/.
A double blind test is not possible, at all. A single blind test is not possible for screamingly-obvious practical reasons. And in any case, we’re seeking a ‘decision’ on something which is inherently subjective, i.e. music.
They are able to identify the better instrument, without being able to describe in words what leads them to that decision. If we don’t know what to test for, then of course we can’t test for it! Your argument is like responding to the statement “Beethoven was greater than Prokofiev” with “prove it objectively, and if you can’t, then it cannot be true.”
I’m trying to avoid descending into a flame war, but I’ve got to side with Tusculan’s earlier comments: You’re out of your depth. Go and spend a lifetime playing the violin, and you’ll then appreciate the relationship between player and instrument, and how it is impossible to treat two violins the same.
Princhester, you fail to see that there really is no way you can do such a test without bringing subjectiveness into it. Both from the player and the audience.
The only way to avoid this is to test the instruments without any human interference. Since they can’t start to play themselves and then also record their findings themselves, that is impossible.
I’m afraid it is an impossible task to make someone who doesn’t play himself understand such a simple thing.
The same happens with every instrument. You don’t treat one the same as an other because not one is equal to an other.
And as Tusculan mentioned: That is already a measurable fact when it comes to such manufactured things as keyboards.
Whether you consider those practical reasons to make a test impossible seems to vary. You accept that there are experts who have played both CAI’s and ME’s to a level and extent that allows them to make a judgement as to which produces better music.
But lo and behold when I suggest that perhaps introducing blinded listeners into the equation would be good, the practical problems become insurmountable.
Nobody is asking anyone to describe in words what lead them to a decision. I have suggested that the testing be by way of a blinded panel of listeners who simply rate what they like, without knowing whether they are hearing an CAI or an ME. The entire test would be based on subjective experience, but controlling for knowledge as to which instrument is being listened to.
Sorry but you are the one saying that CAI’s are audibly better than ME’s to an expert. Not me. That is an easy proposition to test for.
No, your statement is that CAI are audibly better to experts than ME’s. That is easily testable by having experts listen to CAI’s and ME’s without knowing which they are listening to and having them say which is better. No problem
What does my experience have to do with it? I’m not suggesting that I be the one who says whether or not I can detect that CAI’s are audibly better than ME’s.
Nor have I suggested for a moment that it is possible for a player to treat two violins the same. I accept absolutely that the reason the music produced by a CAI is better could well be because it gets played better. It make no difference.
I am proposing a test of what comes out, not what goes into what comes out.
I don’t mean to be insulting but if that is true it is because you and GorillaMan are singularly failing to show me why that is so.
Finally, before either of you posts again, you may wish to consider that broadly speaking arguments from authority without logic or facts are singularly unimpressive. Posts that amount to “you just don’t understand, so there” are a waste of bandwidth. Particularly in GQ.
You also might wish to ponder this sentence, variations upon which I have heard many times before: “I’ve been dowsing/reading palms/practicing astrology for 30 years. Don’t pretend to tell me that my claims aren’t testable, due to reasons I can’t explain. Don’t you worry about that, just trust me.”
Amass a large number of world-class violinists, instruct them when they can and cannot play which instruments, for months or years, have the panel pass judgement, and repeat the whole process several times to get numerous results for each pairing of violins? No problem???
When I say it’s impossible, I don’t mean it physically cannot be done. I mean it logistically could never happen.
Many of our arguments have been down the lines of nobody knows. Because nobody, at all, has a full understanding of the physical behaviour of a violin while being played.
They’re not testable in your method for the obvious reasons I’ve just had to repeat yet again. And once again I will repeat myself that I don’t rule out new instruments being built that are preferred to Strads. And I also once again don’t rule out a better understanding of the mechanics of the instruments in the future providing us with more information.
Until you’ve assembled and conducted your experiment, I’ll rely on the advice of the experts. (And do you really feel it’s right to compare them to new-age kooks, given that you get to watch and hear everything that they are doing, close-up, should you so wish?)
You’ve merely proved that the most rigourous single blind test verges on impracticality but we can easily scale it down and still get results.
If we merely played one performance of a strad and one performance of a modern to a single group of blind folded people and 50% preferred each, then we’ve pretty much proven that there is no discernable difference. If there is a strong and consistant bias towards either, then we can concede that there may be a difference that would require further testing to confirm (maybe people always prefer the second one, or maybe the violinist was less tired at the start, or maybe the same song sounds worse when played the second time around).
The fact that nobody has yet done such a test puts the strad claim at an equal level of credibility as high end speaker cables where there is also a dearth of testing but an abundance of amateurs and “professionals” vocally claiming their case against a bunch of scientists vocally claiming theirs.
Suppose we were to compare the oscilloscope traces of a Strad playing each string, agaiants a nmodern violin…would the harmonics of each provide a key to the differences? A computer could analyze the differences, and report on a scientific basis. No need for human ears!
On a side note: have these old violins been re-glued? I would imagine that wood pieces under continuous tension would eventually break the glued joints. I will have to ask a guy up the street 9he repairs violins and other string instruments). Can we assume that the old Strads (and Amatis, Guarnerius, etc.) have been rebuilt, possibly several times?
The problem is that we’re talking about music, not sound.
At present computers still are unable to recognize even a simple polyphonic melody, while humans have no problem with that at all. As long as they cannot do that, how will you be able to let a computer compare in a meaningful way two violins being played? The computer may be unable to distinguish the one from the other, but that doesn’t mean that humans should therefore relinquish their own perception of a difference. On the contrary: computers have to be improved until they can tell a difference.
With respect to a single blind test: has that never been done? I have no doubt at all that people will notice a difference between the cheapest and the most expensive violin, but I will grant you that not everyone may notice much difference at the higher end of the scale. That doesn’t mean that there is no difference, though: some people may have ‘better ears’ than others.
With respect to comparing different violins, it is done every time people are shopping for new instruments. Every violinist with some experience has played several instruments (some more extensively, being his own, some possibly only to try them out). You immediately notice differences in the way it responds: one violin may have a brighter tone which is nice for playing virtuoso music, another may be better at soft, warm tones and a clear pianissimo, which may be better for slow movements. One will need much more pressure to get a tone out, but it may be warmer, deeper, more resonant.
Do any of you seriously doubt that there is any difference, or are you just doubtful that there is a large difference, or that modern violins cannot approach the quality of Stradivarii? That differences exist is to me a given. If you don’t belive me, go to a piano store and try out a few instruments. If you don’t notice any difference in sound, I’m afraid you have no ear for music at all which means your opinion is just as relevant as a blind person’s opinion about paintings.
With some googling I found a page with a few audio samples of violins. link I hope it is clear that there is a difference in tone. Notice also that the basic difference in frequency can be shown clearly. This doesn’t of course measure other aspects of the violin, but at least it shows that tone differences are not pure imagination.
I have also found a few links that might be of interest.
link to acoustical journal which shows some pictures about subtle differences in thickness of violin boards, which may account for differences in tone.
A violin builder’s site with pictures. Goes into detail about varnish (doubting the effect on tone).
If you mean “people” chosen at random with no knowledge of music, about playing a violin etc… I would say this type of test is worthless before it starts.
If you mean “people” who play the violin themselves, are familiar with the piece that is performed and play the work themselves, you have no lesser problem.
Suppose I’m in that jury.
1.The piece is baroque music. I find it horrible to listen to baroque music where the instruments are pitched wrongly. Yet people not familiar with the baroque pitch can find it horrible to listen to it and not everyone who plays baroque agrees with my preference.
Suppose the violinist belongs to that other group. Such a situation alone would already cloud my ability to focus on the behaviour of the instrument.
2. In addition, the violinist plays the work in a way I can not identify with → my focus shall switch completely from the violin to this interpretation, out on finding “faults” and exaggerating every tone I dislike about this performance.
It can be a marvel of an instrument I hear, the pitch of the instrument I feel as wrong and the player and his interpretation I feel as wrong pushes the instrument itself to the background and I exaggerate every tone I dislike, thereby also exaggerating what I can ever dislike about the quality of the instrument.
3. The pitching is correct in my view, but point 2 appears to be the case. Same situation occurs during my listening to the performance.
4. Pitching OK or no baroque music and no problems with the interpretation. Nevertheless I try (and you can’t prevent this) to find differences between the interpretation I hear and mine. This has (and you can’t prevent this to occur either) its influence on my ability to only listen to the instrument.
5. No baroque or good pitch and in addition the interpretation opens for me a new world of insight I never thought of before. Again my focus is not exclusively on the performance of the violin. The quality/beauty of the instrument is part of that whole concept I now enjoy greatly. I risk to exaggerate the quality of the instrument because of that.
In all these situations:
When you next hear the same piece played by the same violinist but with the other instrument, all your prejudices - good or bad - can only become more focussed on.
Your final conclusion is an overall impression of the whole performance, your judgement of the second one influenced by what you heard the first time. In addition no violinist is able to give exactly the same performance twice.
Wat is left to be counted as a judgement that is in no way the result of my (often unconcious) subjective appreciation?
Suppose you set up the procedure with a newly composed piece of music = nobody in the audience ever saw or heard it before.
The first time you hear it, you can detect already its qualities and/or flaws. You are expected to bring what you hear in direct relation with the instrument played, yet it is impossible to do that because automatically your focus is on discovering the music. You can like or dislike it, like a piece of it or like the way the violinst give it an interpretation or dislike that. Further you start to muse about how you would approach it. All of this distracts you from only listening to the instrument.
The next time you hear this work you recognize what you hear and you are able to detect new details you didn’t noticed the first time. This does not prevent that you focus on the interpretation also and on the thought how you would do it = you are distracted from the sound of the violin as you were when you heard the work for the first time.
Nevertheless your overall ability to also listen to the role of the instrument in building the sound of what you hear is much better the second time you hear it.
No way you can judge both instruments equally in such a case.
In the beginning of this thread someone claimed to have read the results of such a test. The rest of your remark is a unclear to me.
Nobody in this thread has made the claim that no modern violin can be build (or is build) that is able to compete with the old ones. Yet I don’t see any evidence in the preferences of the most famous violinists of today.