Blog - Page 5 of 9 - Fiddler Dan Violins & Workshop, Brisbane

Cello Repairs Brisbane (broken necks etc…)

Cellos, are just like big violins and just the same to repair right? …well almost …for a good cello repair. I see a lot of cello repairs come through my workshop in Brisbane There is a lot more wood in cellos and a lot more tension from the strings. Generally speaking cellos need much the same sort of repairs as violins with cracks and chips (just on a bigger scale).

cellos in the workshop — Cello repairs in the workshop

cello neck repair button clavette — Cello button repair

Cellos, are just like big violins and just the same to repair right? …well almost for a good cello repair. There is a lot more wood in cellos and a lot more tension from the strings. Generally speaking cellos need much the same sort of repairs as violins with cracks and chips (just on a bigger scale). One big exception however are the cello necks, which have more of a tendency to break, particularly in student cellos. Why is that? well they are bigger and so more likely to fall (and have further to fall) and because of their size seem more susceptible to misadventure.

Another big factor is the construction of the neck joint itself. The grain goes lengthwise for strength in the direction of the fingerboard, this means though, that the neck root is cross grain and comparatively thin. In particularly for student cellos , where the timbers are less likely to be a higher grade, sometimes the fitting of the neck into the top block isn’t quite tight and there is more chance of misadventure these quite often come to my shop for repair.

There are many ways to repair a neck depending on the value of the instrument.

For student cello neck repairs (ie that are parent wallet friendly ) and consulate with the value of the cello. I tend to reseat and glue the neck and then go straight through the fingerboard and into the neck with some reenforcing such as hardwood dowel, optionally an almost invisible ebony plug can be put on the top (though this adds to the cost ). This avoids having to remove and refit the fingerboard (which takes time and ads to cost). Another option is to replace the neck or regrafting a neck, but this is quite cost prohibitive for a student instrument. Depending on the cello model sometimes a lamination, screw or dowel was placed into the neck when it was made to help strengthen it. Actually while it makes the neck stronger, it can makes the repair a bit trickier or limit options available. Another factor in the mix is that student cello necks are quite often poorly fitted (which is why they broke in the first place).

After a cello neck has been repaired often the neck projection sets a bit higher (60% of cases), because the dowel is supporting the neck better and so it doesn’t warp under tension anymore, in such a case sometimes the bridge needs to be replaced to recover the string action (height) above the fingerboard.

cello neck screw — Cello neck screwed during manufacture (fingerboard has to be removed to fix this broken neck)

cello neck laminate biscuit — Cello neck screwed during manufacture (fingerboard has to be removed to fix this broken neck)

With Cello neck repairs I am sometimes faced with the difficult decision, do I make a less traditional repair, a one time repair, or one that can be reversed out ( this is the usual strategy for traditional instruments). Usually this depends on the value of the cello, the condition it is in and what the owners want to do. Have a look at what is involved in removing the top of a cello to do a repair as an example.

Doing right by the instrument to maximise its life, right by the student by making sure its playable again and right by the parent/school by keeping the costs down so it’s worth doing is a juggling act of sorts. Music has to be the winner though right?

Vintage Violins (some antique violins too)

If you are looking for a new, or forever instrument, have you thought about a vintage or antique violin? These instruments have the advantage of being made from traditional European timbers from cottage makers or violin workshops of makers of old.

Many think the European timbers are superior as they are slower grown for finer grain lines, as well as having being aged for ~100 years and thus tend to have a richer tones and resonance.

These are instruments I have brought back to life through overhaul, setup or careful restoration. They often bear the marks of a life well played, which many think adds further beauty to the instrument. These instruments are not for beginners, they will need care taken with them to nurture them through to the next generation.

Competitively priced with new student instruments, these will perform far above them in tonal quality, as well as being a piece of history and unique instrument for yourself or child. Rather than the same factory instrument that everyone else has, these are as as unique as the player that play them.

These antique violins usually have more complex tonal characteristics than the typical student factory violin and are quite individual in character. While these older instruments lack the power and projection of equivalent quality modern instruments, but are lovely under the ear. If you are soloist with an accompanying full orchestra they may not be for you, though ideal for enjoyment of playing experience and chamber groups etc….

Supplied with a student bow, good strings that suit the instrument and a case, they vary in price from around $600+

Also I have a few Antique cases as well from time to time, they have been upgraded to modern protective standards

Hopf Violin restoration

The distinctive Hopf violins, notably for the burnt in label stamp near the button on the back have many copies – of which this “Hopf” violin that came across my desk, is most likely one. This particular instrument had a broken button and is missing its scroll. None the less the rest is in good condition structurally. The bottom table is sound but the surface has been scratched up pretty badly. The top plate bears the scars of a life well lived and apart from a small crack and a chipped off corner (where the upper bout meets the waist on one side) is quite intact.

I chose to remedy the Hopf’s broken button with a clavette style repair. It’s less invasive as you don’t need to take any of the plates off, nor carve the back plate for a patch.

I was able to refit the original fingerboard, the nut needed replacing (it was to thin and held on with a maple shim in any case). The violin string length was a fraction short in the body , so pushed the fingerboard just a smidge into the pegbox to get the string length almost up to regulation. (Violin standardisation is relatively recent)

I elected to replace the entire neck using a blank, which still requires fitting and plenty of shaping. I used a figured maple neck rather than the plain neck, so while not truely authentic the aesthetic is more pleasing. I elected a light touch on the tables, there is a history there which I think is part of the charm, something I consider with my restorations

Using some pigments from my teacher I was able to get a reasonable match for the colours, and a light touch of antiquing to get it to a closer match to the rest of the violin (with over doing it).

I was happy with the overall sound and looking forward to seeing how it behaves under tension, after far too long in a cupbord

Chladni plate fun

Chladni plates refer to a vibrating plate onto which fine particles like tea, sand or salt are placed. The plate is then vibrated by a speaker directly coupled to the plate. Invented by Physicist and musician Chladni

Depending on the frequency of the sound and the shape of the Chladni plate geometric patterns are formed. The particles come to rest in sound waves nodes to make these patterns. The patterns are from standing waves created in the plates based on the excitation and reflections of sound.

Old school Chladni plates were often excited by running a violin bow along the edge of them, but with a speaker you can deliver precise frequency of sound and at much higher amplitudes. Luthiers use these to tune the plates of violins to get them sounding just right – though I am yet to do something more adventurous than tap tones.

The examples below are for a STEM science trip on the Maths of music and motion see stem-fit.com. The setup has been made to be portable so its a smallish speaker, battery powered (courtesy of a power drill) and a circular plate (you get nice annular symmetry of the patterns, one of a violin to show some of the complexity there.

For this trip as my wife Charlie is also talking about ear biology and hearing, so I have also made a liner model to represent the cochlear (if it was unrolled) and kids are asked to imagine them as the little hairs in their ears. Education about the ear is particularly important outback as almost half of indigenous children have hearing loss owing to a particular infection that spreads in their communities. So a bit of fun really engages the learning aspects of it as well.

Just for fun we are not only putting pure tones through the plates, but also Beethovens 5th and my son plans to whip out his electric violin as well…sliding around to find resonant frequencies doesn’t quite count as violin practice though dude!.

Axiom violin review

The Axiom violin is only $99 and is seriously impressive for the price BUT!!!

Actually you get a lot of violin for you money with the Axiom violin, the violin looks beautiful, the case is on par with student violins BUT….

So here is my axiom violin review….

You get a lovely looking instrument, with seemingly all the hall marks of quality with a spruce top and flamed maple back, a nice case, the bow is serviceable if a little soft…so when you see it for sale for $99 its amazing value money! If your looking for an instrument to play and learn on though it’s not without its challenges.

First up the setup – the Axiom violins I have seen come with bridges too high (NOTE: this may be because its been out in the wild a while and with Qld humidity you get movement) . Though the owner of Axiom assures me all instruments are setup (see violin setups) . The running gear isn’t ebony (the pegs might be but the fingerboard isn’t) – fair enough ebony is expensive and your only laying out $99. Finetuner are serviceable , strings are OK (the usual beginner steel strings)

Secondly, the bow, which makes half the sound is a rosewood bow and they are generally too soft to play on. Ok for a few months but you really want a Brazil wood or better bow.

Critically though how does it sound?. The Axioms sound Ok up to a point ….. the reason is the timbers. You can’t carve a violin top and bottom plate for $99 there is just too much about in it. Instead the Axiom uses very thing plywood, with lovely spruce and maple veneers and presses them into shape. I get it its quick, so reduces the labour and skilled labour costs so you can do it all for $99. the problem with ply woods (this looks to be 5 ply) is the cross grains of each layer and the glues in between…yes they give it great strength but impede its ability to vibrate so the tone is sacrificed. (See inside a plywood violin here)

In fairness to the Axiom its targeting the lower end of the market and its good value for money for what it is (some people would call them a VSO) , recently they have brought out some higher end instruments but I haven’t come across these.

My verdict, if you can get the instrument setup properly its probably OK for the money for the first few months of learning. The challenge is the cost of getting the instrument setup is approaching the cost of the violin…and if you put all that money towards a better instrument you would most likely be better off.

Flood victim revived – A violin restoration

A little while back this lovely violin came to me in many pieces, in a case that was in just as many pieces. It is a treasured family violin that had just gone through its second Lismore flood.

As restorations go this was one of the more memorable and not without its challenges. As became clear this was the second time it had been back together, featuring the good the bad and ugly of repairs in years gone by. There were some other types glues used, that had to be removed and an end block needed to be replaced.

It was held together with flyscreen and staples, and various tinted finishes applied that were not always a perfect match.

One of the challenges of a restoration is somewhat idealogical. I’m not there to fix, but instead to preserve, so there is a fine line here to walk, especially with the idiosyncrasies of any instrument and how far back to take a previous repair. In this case the violin had a least a few round of repairs, evidenced by the cleating style, replacement of some of blocks with Australian hardwoods and some more agricultural style repairs

Fortunately I was able to dialogue with the owners and make decisions along the way in accordance with their wishes and budget! If the violin was to be played regularly I would have updated the running gear, but as a display piece and a part of family history retaining the orginal components for example the tail piece and pegs maintained the authenticity in accordance with their wishes (and could still be played). If a future generation decides to use it for playing these can easily be switched out then. My motto , if it doesn’t need something done to it in the near term, then don’t do it.

Heres a few pics from the restoration, I started with the case and again one of the challenges was not to bring it back to sparkly new, but to restore it without changing it, so only a light cover of spirit finish on the parts that needed it was used, rather than redoing the entire case i felt was the best fit.

One of the challenges with the wood for both the case and instrument was removing the mud from it and then working with pieces that had differentially warped, that even with re-bending were a little un happy about returning to their former form.

Still it all came together quite nicely and was a pleasure to work on.

There are plenty of restoration videos on youtube if you want to see what goes into it

Inside a cheap $99 violin

Ever seen those great looking cheap violins for sale online for $99 and thought “why are all the other violins so expensive”. Of course one play of them is usually enough to know why…but how do they make them for the price ? This one looks like reasonable spruce on the top and lightly flamed maple on the back. These violins are sometimes called VSO’s violin shaped objects

Looks like good quality spruce on the front

Once the top is off all is revealed, what you have instead is a ply wood violin with light veneers of both on the outside. The plywood here is pressed into shape rather than carved (whoch takes a lot of time to do) and stuck together with what looks like a white PVA style glue. The bar bar looks like a piece of offcut pine with grain lines all over the place and the top and bottom blocks are similar. It’s very hard to get any kind of resonance out of a violin like this cross grain ply is just too stiff.

The piece de resistance though I think is the sound post – its actually fine grained spuce, so to the casual observer looking inside “oh good sound post, nice timbers on the outside…this violin must be OK!

The asking price for a violin like this is less that $100AUD – its probably a fair price for the instrument, but when you consider this is the cost of just a few violin lessons…it’s probably better to spend a bit more! See my new violins here and my preloved secondhand violins as well.

Music for troubled times

It is said music is a balm for troubled times. I find this to be true both as a player but also listner of music from this times. Here in Brisbane we have had an unseasonally large amount of water…it was also lapping at the door to my workshop…but thats another story.

Nearby composer Grant Arnold composed a piece about it for piano on his website. What I loved about it was not only the composition, but also he provided his thinking behind it…a real insight into a composers mind.

Further afield I came across ths image of a cellist in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The contrast of the music and the horrors of war all too apparent…errie and a powerful message communicated to the world through music.

Discovering & Exploring the Chris Haigh Violin Book Series

My violin journey away from reading the “black spots” began early, with my first folk band at the tender age of 13, where were the Chris Haig violin books when I needed them? I loved the roaring pace of the Irish jigs and their Australian decendant tunes and tearing through the notes. I always had a wistful sigh though, for the guitar and drummer though who found a wonderful freedom behind the melody, to drive various rhythms, chordal progressions and dynamics to bring a nuanced depth to the music. Dial forward through numerous classical groups/performances, membership of many orchestras and a few theatre groups. It’s been quite the journey. Picking up again later in life I was determined to go Beyond Classical Violin and with a determination to free myself from the notes one of my most treasured resources along the way have been the Exploring/Discovering Violin book series by genre chameleon Chris Haigh ( http://www.fiddlingaround.co.uk ). Some other resources I have found useful I have listed here (classical, online classes etc..)

And so it was with great delight that I ordered his new Exploring Country and Bluegrass Violin book. Now to be clear I’m not a country music devotee, but there are lots of the elements of this music in music I do play and would like to learn in a pedagogical manner. These include rhythmic bowing, drone/double stops, fills, improvising/ harmonising and how to work with with singers in contemporary and worship music settings.

Previously I have enjoyed a lot out of his Discovering Rock Violin a book I keep stocked as its so useful . An introduction to chording, pentatonics and his magic harmony trick all have had great utility. The Fiddle Handbook (I think its out of print but found one secondhand)was great tour deforce on no classical styles. His jazz book, Exploring Jazz Violin was great, well the first 3/4 anyway… after that my brain got a bit full!. I suspect this is largely because the genre doesn’t much grab me (though Gypsy looks fun), but the techniques and theory I learn’t in the book were quite helpful.

As a look back across the books there is a fair bit of overlap and I reckon thats more than OK, everything needs to be put into its proper context and coming at music from different angles really helps with clarity…eventually.

I like the progressive nature of the books and indeed the country one. Chris neither drops you in the deep end, nor belabours the simple stuff. It’s truely a progression using loosely the historical development of country music and the different genre influences along the way as a vehicle. So for me it hit my Goldilocks violin sweet spot, not too hard, not too easy.

There are plenty of worked examples and Chris works hard to provide accompanying audio tracks to play along with, and backing tracks as well. These are not done as an after thought but well integrated and really support the learning pedagogy.

Having said all of that, like his previous books you won’t be able to get through the book in just a few practice sessions and readings. I found I needed to dip in an out of it…as well as have a playing space (my jam group and other groups) to explore the ideas. It takes time to take head knowledge and get it to the autonomic nervous system to make music. At least now i know what I don’t know, know how to get it …and occasionally glimpse getting it!

chris haig violin book example 1 — Book sample courtesy : www.stretta-music.com

One of the serendipitous treats in Chris’ books, and this is no exception, is the the time he takes to fill in the spaces between the musical examples. There is background, history and lots of little nuggets along the way as well. Sometimes these little nuggets are enough to make the penny drop on something I’ve been struggling with. My perennial favourite is using scales not necessarily in the key of the song..I’m still chewing that one over..but at least for now i can say to my classical brain “its OK big fella just move on worry about it later” and then one pops out in a song …from my fingers no less!

Chris’ books come in around the cost of a single violin lesson, that is even if you could find a violin teacher that could teach you this stuff. And inside are hour upon hour of lessons you can do, annotate, go back and repeat. Just like any teacher you can hear Chris demonstrate the playing of the exercises. Also if you track him down on facebook he might even answer a question or two as well.

Exploring Country & Bluegrass Violin is part bed time reading, but most of it needs to be right in front of the music stand with my fiddle and computer with an mp3 player. Seeing isn’t believing, hearing is closer to believing and then the doing and the feeling is the real stuff! I’ve found to get the most out of the book I need to slow down the audio samples (by about 25%) so I can hear and play along with the nuances. Lots of computer audio players can do this built in. Learning something new is a cognitive process for me, so slower is better.

Probably the stand out examples of Chris’ pedagogy in Exploring Country and Bluegrass Violin is the Bluegrass “Roll in my Sweet Baby’s Arms”, (and later the Banks of the Ohio) a simple tune which is given 7 pages of treatment, 8 audio samples where Chris introduces the various possible fiddle elements that could be added together progressively (and a reboot later in the book). Most important he shares his rationale and thinking behind it! If I had a wish for anything in the Chris Haig violin books it would be to do this more often. Yes it belabours the point and might be repetitive, but working through various tunes and keys it would turn his Exploring series into accompanying “workbooks” you could put on the practice stand and work through it.

PS I’m still wrestling about wether I want minor or major pentatonics in my head when I play …at least now I know they are the same thing …thanks to the circle of 5ths

Thanks Chris for your contribution to music! I might try one of your online courses one day too!

Violin Tailpiece 101

The tail piece are an essential element to any violin, without it there is nothing to hold the other end of the strings tight with. Traditionally the tail piece is made of ebony or another timber like rosewood. Traditionally strings were all low tension gut, so tuning up at the scroll end with pegs was no big deal.

However today we have much high tension strings and so it means there is more need for micro adjustments, so it’s a bit trickier up top. This is especially true with the E string which has the highest tension of all the strings.

So along came the fine adjusters to be added to the tail piece, which you often see on all strings, just the E or the A & E string. Why is in not on all strings rountinely? The problem is fine adjusters add weight to the tail piece and this is thought/shown to alter the tonal qualities of a violin. While the strings vibration is mostly on the other side of the bridge, there is a contribution from the tail piece side and extra weight meaning extra dampening of the vibration.

A committed player thus might just have a E string fine adjuster then and happily adjust all the others at the peg box end. The A string is a little tricky to adjust with the left hand for many, as keeping the peg pushed into the peg box and turning it ads an extra level of finese required. On many instruments out of the factory you will see all four with fine adjusters ….the manufacturers thinking is probably “let the player decide how many to keep on their violin”. Fine adjusters then also become something of a ‘signal’ to other players as to how advanced you are in your playing. Having just one is more traditional, thus looks way cooler, as you demonstrate your knowledge of knowing about tail pieces weights and its effect on your sound (imaginary or otherwise) to seperate yourself from the pack.

Enter the inbuilt self adjusters, these tailpieces come in at the weight of a wooden tailpiece – without the weight of the fine adjusters, the fine adjusters are also more discrete so you can’t see them from a distance. Purists don’t tend to favour them out of tradition, but also about concerns about the resonance characteristics in wood tail pieces being superior to any modern material.

For students the convenience of inbuilt fine adjuster tail pieces I think out weigh the aesthetics, also people playing outside of classical traditions tend to favour them as they are much easier to do a quick tune on in a band situation. They are a fairly quick thing to swap over and not to expensive either at ~$20 for an entry level one.

Violin Harp style tail piece (Image courtesy of violinstringreview.com)

Getting fancy there are tailpieces with variable string lengths to the bridge to help with the tone production of each string. Lower notes have a longer wavelength and this give the tail piece side more room for them to swing. I’m not convinced but hey on an instrument as standardised as a violin and being one of 20 violinists in an orchestra, having some self expression and individuality on your instrument ain’t a bad thing and gives you something to talk about at the after party 😉